In the year 1824 Jefferson still maintained the same doctrine, and expressed it more concisely than ever:-- “The federal is in truth our foreign government, which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate States.”[25] “I recollect no case where a question simply between citizens of the same State has been transferred to the foreign department, except that of inhibiting tenders but of metallic money, and _ex post facto_ legislation.”[26] These expressions, taken together, partly explain why Jefferson thought his assumption of power to be “as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.” His view of governmental functions was simple and clearly expressed. The national government, as he conceived it, was a foreign department as independent from the domestic department, which belonged to the States, as though they were governments of different nations. He intended that the general government should “be reduced to foreign concerns only;” and his theory of foreign concerns was equally simple and clear. He meant to enforce against foreign nations such principles as national objects required, not by war, but by “peaceful coercion” through commercial restrictions. “Our commerce is so valuable to them that they will be glad to purchase it, when the only price we ask is to do us justice.” The history of his Administration will show how these principles were applied, and what success attended the experiment. CHAPTER VIII. IN 1801, and throughout Jefferson’s Administration, the Cabinet consisted of five heads of department,--the Secretaries of State, of the Treasury, of the Army, and of the Navy, with the Attorney-General. The law business of the government being light, the Attorney-General was frequently absent, and, indeed, was not required to reside permanently at Washington. Rather the official counsel of government than a head of department, he had no clerks or office-room, and his salary was lower than that of his colleagues. The true Cabinet consisted of the four secretaries; and the true government rested in still fewer hands, for it naturally fell within the control of the officers whose responsibility was greatest,--the President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury.