land, the president of the local government board, the
president of the board of agriculture, and the president of the board of
education, are usually members of the cabinet, but not necessarily so. A
modern cabinet contains from sixteen to twenty members. It used to be said
that a large cabinet is an evil; and the increase in its numbers in recent
years has often been criticized. But the modern widening of the franchise
has tended to give the cabinet the character of an executive committee for
the party in power, no less than that of the prime-minister's consultative
committee, and to make such a committee representative it is necessary to
include the holders of all the more important offices in the
administration, who are generally selected as the influential politicians
of the party rather than for special aptitude in the work of the
departments.

The word "cabinet," or "cabinet council," was originally employed as a term
of reproach. Thus Lord Bacon says, in his essay _Of Counsel_ (xx.), "The
doctrine of Italy and practice of France, in some kings' times, hath
introduced cabinet councils--a remedy worse than the disease"; and, again,
"As for cabinet councils, it may be their motto _Plenus rimarum sum_." Lord
Clarendon--after stating that, in 1640, when the great Council of Peers was
convened by the king at York, the burden of affairs rested principally on
Laud, Strafford and Cottington, with five or six others added to them on
account of their official position and ability--adds, "These persons made
up the committee of state, which was reproachfully after called the
_Juncto_, and enviously then in court the _Cabinet Council_." And in the
Second Remonstrance in January 1642, parliament complained "of the managing
of the great affairs of the realm in _Cabinet Councils_ by men unknown and
not publicly trusted." But this use of the term, though historically
curious, has in truth nothing in common with the modern application of it.
It meant, at that time, the employment of a select body of favourites by
the king, who were supposed to possess a larger share of his confidence
than the privy council at large. Under the Tudors, at least from the later
years of Henry VIII. and under the Stuarts, the privy council was the
council of state or government. During the Commonwealth it assumed that
name.

The Cabinet Council, properly so called, dates from the reign of William
III. and from the year 1693, for it was not until some y