a closet, small room, or retired apartment. It is also the name of a piece of furniture, consisting of a chest with drawers and doors.

a word of daily use in modern politics, applies specifically to those heads of ministerial departments in Britain whose co-operative action marks the policy of the administration. It has a similar meaning in the United States, and is applied by analogy to the chief organs or advisers of the government in other countries. The word was first used in France, where it meant the inner apartment of a house, and when employed as a general term, that of the palace. To have the entree of the cabinet meant to have influence with the sovereign, and at an early period the term was thus applied to the secret council of the king. It is singular that a body so great in its power and influence, and so well suited, according to all practice and experience, for conducting the business of a great constitutional state, should have arisen as it were by stealth, should possess no settled constitutional rights and functions, and should be subject to no specific responsibilities. By the older constitutional authorities it has always been held, that those sworn advisers of the monarch who form his privy-council are the responsible officers for conducting the government. A habit of listening to one or two favourite advisers, instead of laying matters before the privy-council, was frequently referred to as one of the innovations made by Charles I. in the direction of arbitrary government. The practice of consulting only a small committee was in full force in the reign of Charles II., whose cabinet at one time received the name of the "Cabal," from the initial letters of the names of its members. The practice became even more systematic after the Revolution, and was the object of an interesting debate in the year 1692, on the occasion of the king seeking the advice of the House of Commons on the crisis in the foreign relations of the nation. Mr Goodwin Wharton, referring to the divided and imperfect responsibility of the existing system, said, "The method is this:—Things are concerted in the cabinet and then brought to the council; such a thing resolved in the council and brought and put upon them for their assent without showing any reason. This has not been the method of England. I am credibly informed that it has been complained of in council, and not much backed there. If this method be, you will never know who gives advice." On the same occasion it was said by Mr Waller, "cabinet council" is not a word to be found in our law books. We knew it not before; we took it for a nickname. Nothing can fall out more unhappily than to have a distinction made of the 'cabinet' and 'privy-council.' It has this effect in the country, and must have, that the justices of peace and deputy lieutenants will be afraid to act; they will say they cannot go on—and why? Because several of them have been misrepresented and are not willing to act; they know not who will stand by them, and are loth to make discoveries unless seconded. If some of the privy-council must be trusted and some not, to whom must any gentleman apply? Must he ask who is a cabinet-councillor? This creates mistrust in the people. I am sure these distinctions of some being more trusted than others have given great dissatisfaction."—(Parl. Hist., v. 731-3.)

The continued prevalence of such views is apparent in the clause of the Act of Settlement of 1705, requiring all acts of state to be transacted in the privy-council, and signed by the members; a provision which, probably as inconsistent with a settled practice, was repealed two years afterwards. The last time when a privy-councillor entered a cabinet-council without invitation, was that memorable occasion of the last illness of Queen Anne, when the Dukes of Somerset and Argyle, believing that there was a plot to defeat the Hanover succession, entered the council-room and dictated measures for the safety of the kingdom and the proclamation of King George. The privy-council, from whom the cabinet is selected, now forms a considerable body, many of whom hold the membership as a mere mark of distinction. It has often been asked how the system of governing by a cabinet is consistent with personal responsibility, since there is no such executive body known to the law, it passes no specific acts, and the votes and opinions of its individual members are unrecorded. From this last feature, however, there seems to arise an effective collective responsibility, since every member of the cabinet is held to support and be compromised by the leading acts of the government. Certain great officers of state are invariably members of the cabinet: as the first lord of the treasury, the lord chancellor, the three principal secretaries of state, and the chancellor of the exchequer. Sometimes the post-master-general, the commander-in-chief, the chief secretary for Ireland, the president of the board of trade, and on one or two occasions the chief justice of the Queen's Bench, have been members. At the commencement of the year 1854, besides the invariable members, the cabinet included the lord president of the council, the lord privy-seal, the first lord of the admiralty, the president of the board of control, the secretary-at-war, and the first commissioner of public-buildings, while Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell were members without office.