New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-02-05
THE NEJy C1BJNET


Republican announces, by authority apparently,
that Mr.. Evarts "does not wish to continue
" Attorney General under Grant" "Were he
Offered the post of his old friend MIR.
Seward, his feelings might be different,
"but he will not serve as AttOrney-Gen
"eral under the new Administration MIR.
]. w. Forney reminds us that under
"Polk, Buchanan was regarded as the future
"Secretary of State three months before the
" Inauguration; so with Webster under Taylor,
Marcy under Pierce, and Seward under Lin
"coln." Now. however, "the whole situation
"impresses everybody with the belief that the
oman who can manage such condition OF
"alairs so wisely, shows by this single trait a
"rare aptitude for the great work coniided to
chin by grateful people" Even Mr. Gideon
Weles, it is rumOrcd, cOntCmplatcs retirement,
and feels no interest in the naval appropriations.
We can hardly credit this. Mr. Doolittle GER
tainly does not intend entering the Cabinet,
as lie proposes coming to New-York to reside
Nor do we suppose that Mr.. Henderson has
any ambition Of this kind, or he would not run
away to Cuba. Thus we might continue our
process of elimination, if the discussion were
really of value.
The truth is, this Cabinet Question" is of
little interest to anybody but the small COM
paDy of politicians who 1.-Two in the City of
Washington. We should like to know the
names early enough OH March 4 to have de-
cent Biographical sketches written for
The TRIBUNE of March 9th, but there
our curiosity ends. Tho Cabinet IL
not an essential part Of the Government.
In pinch, we have no doubt Republican insti-
tutions could survive the omission to appoint
any Cabinet at all. The offices are created
TO give the Executive efficiency. A Cabinet
serves the President as staff serves the
General of an army, and it remains for the
President to say just what service it shall
perform. He may select statesmen and expert
enced politicians, whose province it would be to
counsel him-leaving the routine work to sub
ordinates. He may take representative party
men, and give his Cabinet n political signii-
canoe. lie may call around him councillors,
or creatures or wOIkers-the country holds
him and not them responsible When
Gen. Washington became President, he gave
the State Department to a man eminent among
"the statesmen of the period. His War
Office was given TO a secOnd-Class MajOr-Gen-
cral. His Attorney General was a superficial
lawyer. His Secretary of the Treasury
was an aide on his military staff. young
man of thirty three. "You are to marshal us as
"may be best for the public good" This was
Jeffcrsons theory of the Presidents relations to
his Cabinet officers. Washington treated them
as ministers, with power at times to override
his own decisions A merry time they gave
him when the ambition of Hamilton and JEFF
ferson began to festcrl Jacllson's Cabinet was
composed finally of creatures-blind mediums
of his will-such q Cabinet as We now see
under Mr.. johnson. Mr.. Seward assures us
that q Secretary is merely the deacon" of
the church. We therefore presume Mr.. John
sons theory to be that his Cabinet advisers
serve at his feasts and distribute the bread and
the wine. He has certainly been well served.
Mr.. Lincoln probably had no theory. lie
seemed to have dropped the names of his rivals
at the Chicago Convention into hat and
taken out the first seven. His Cabinet was
neither one thing nor another. His policy, for
instance, had no more unsparing critic than
the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Chase
Omittng Seward, Chase, and Stanton, Lin
coins Cabinet was weak, - and of these
three Mr.. Stanton was probably the only one
upon whom he could lean, or who was person.
ally devoted to him. If the war had not held
the Lincoln Government together by the force
of outside pressure, it would have been shat
tered in two years.
Gen. Grant will find precedents for every
course he may take but one. No President
has ever made his Cabinet merely so many
staff officers, and selected them without regard to
their politics, influence, or fame. 1t is possible
he may consider that TO do this will be to
best serve the public, and that he
means to put men in power who will do
the civil work, just as Gems. Rawlns, and
Badeau, and Parker, and the remainder of his
staff, do the army work now. He may say,
for instance to Gen. Rawlins or Gen. Badeau,
Il give you the Treasury, and / want
"the revenues collected and you must
"have no thought of politics; you obey
my orders, and take counsel from no
"other authority This would be quite as con-
stitutlonal Cabinet as Mr.. Lincoln's, but ii
would practically remove out of the range of
political ambition any Cabinet station, and Its
success as an experiment would depend upon
the temper of Congress. A Cabinet Office has
grown 10 be almost the prerogative of ambitious
politicians, and they will not easily surrender it.
lhere ID large number of "ripe and expert
enced statesmen" who look upon a portfolio
as their right. When We come to coldIy