The Cabinet, in a word, is a board of control chosen by the legislature, out of persons whom it trusts and knows, to rule the nation. The particular mode in which the English Ministers are selected; the fiction that they are, in any political sense, the Queen's servants; the rule which limits the choice of the Cabinet to the members of the legislature--are accidents unessential to its definition--historical incidents separable from its nature. Its characteristic is that it should be chosen by the legislature out of persons agreeable to and trusted by the legislature. Naturally these are principally its own members--but they need not be exclusively so. A Cabinet which included persons not members of the legislative assembly might still perform all useful duties. Indeed the peers, who constitute a large element in modern Cabinets, are members, now-a-days, only of a subordinate assembly. The House of Lords still exercises several useful functions; but the ruling influence--the deciding faculty--has passed to what, using the language of old times, we still call the lower house--to an assembly which, though inferior as a dignified institution, is superior as an efficient institution. A principal advantage of the House of Lords in the present age indeed consists in its thus acting as a reservoir of Cabinet Ministers. Unless the composition of the House of Commons were improved, or unless the rules requiring Cabinet Ministers to be members of the legislature were relaxed, it would undoubtedly be difficult to find, without the lords, a sufficient supply of chief Ministers. But the detail of the composition of a Cabinet, and the precise method of its choice, are not to the purpose now. The first and cardinal consideration is the definition of a Cabinet. We must not bewilder ourselves with the inseparable accidents until we know the necessary essence. A Cabinet is a combining committee--a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the State to the executive part of the State. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.