Next after the Inaugural Address, his first official act was the selection of his Cabinet; and here the general disappointment was equalled by the general wonder. As the President was little known except from the victories which had commended him, it was not then seen how completely characteristic was this initial act. Looking back upon it, we recognize the pretension by which all tradition, usage, and propriety were discarded, by which the just expectations of the party that had elected him were set at nought, and the safeguards of constitutional government were subordinated to the personal pretensions of One Man. In this Cabinet were persons having small relations with the Republican Party and little position in the country, some absolutely without claims from public service, and some actually disqualified by the gifts they had made to the President. Such was the political phenomenon presented for the first time in American history, while reported sayings of the President showed the simplicity with which he acted. To a committee he described his Cabinet as his “family,” with which no stranger could be allowed to interfere, and to a member of Congress he announced that he selected his Cabinet “to please himself and nobody else,”--being good rules unquestionably for the organization of a household and the choice of domestics, to which the Cabinet seem to have been likened. This personal government flowered in the Navy Department, where a gift-bearing Greek was suddenly changed to a Secretary. No less a personage than the grand old Admiral, the brave, yet modest Farragut, was reported as asking, on the fifth of March, the very day when the Cabinet was announced, in unaffected ignorance, “Do you know anything of Borie?” And yet this unconspicuous citizen, bearer of gifts to the President, was constituted the naval superior of that historic character. If others were less obscure, the Cabinet as a unit was none the less notable as the creature of Presidential will, where Chance vied with Favoritism as arbiter.