_Privy council superseded by a cabinet._--A very remarkable alteration that had been silently wrought in the course of the executive government, gave rise to the fourth of the remedial articles in the act of settlement. According to the original constitution of our monarchy, the king had his privy council composed of the great officers of state, and of such others as he should summon to it, bound by an oath of fidelity and secrecy, by whom all affairs of weight, whether as to domestic or exterior policy, were debated for the most part in his presence, and determined, subordinately of course to his pleasure, by the vote of the major part. It could not happen but that some counsellors more eminent than the rest should form juntos or cabals, for more close and private management, or be selected as more confidential advisers of their sovereign; and the very name of a cabinet council, as distinguished from the large body, may be found as far back as the reign of Charles I. But the resolutions of the Crown, whether as to foreign alliances or the issuing of proclamations and orders at home, or any other overt act of government, were not finally taken without the deliberation and assent of that body whom the law recognised as its sworn and notorious counsellors. This was first broken in upon after the restoration, and especially after the fall of Clarendon, a strenuous assertor of the rights and dignity of the privy council. "The king," as he complains, "had in his nature so little reverence and esteem for antiquity, and did in truth so much contemn old orders, forms, and institutions, that the objection of novelty rather advanced than obstructed any proposition."[275] He wanted to be absolute on the French plan, for which both he and his brother, as the same historian tells us, had a great predilection, rather than obtain a power little less arbitrary, so far at least as private rights were concerned, on the system of his three predecessors. The delays and the decencies of a regular council, the continual hesitation of lawyers, were not suited to his temper, his talents, or his designs. And it must indeed be admitted that the privy council, even as it was then constituted, was too numerous for the practical administration of supreme power. Thus by degrees it became usual for the ministry or cabinet to obtain the king's final approbation of their measures, before they were laid, for a merely formal ratification, before the council. It was one object of Sir William Temple's short-lived scheme in 1679 to bring back the ancient course; the king pledging himself on the formation of his new privy council to act in all things by its advice.