It is speaking tritely, although accurately, to say that our present executive departments at Washington did not spring into perfect being in 1789 like panoplied Minerva from the head of Jove. Not a little of the interest and value of a study of the administration of the Revolution comes from the fact that the administrative practices and experiences of this period gave rootage to the later and more perfect executive organs. The development of the Continental Naval Department, both in the variety and in the character of its forms, is typical of that of the other administrative departments of the Revolution. We have already seen how the naval business of the Continental Congress was first vested in the small Naval Committee; and how this Committee, early in 1776, was overshadowed and absorbed by the more numerous and more active Marine Committee. We now come to the third step in this evolution, the superseding of the Marine Committee by the Board of Admiralty. The Marine Committee had proved slow, cumbrous, inexpert, and irresponsible. The wiser members of Congress had long seen that it was a prime defect in governmental practice to add to the duties of a legislative committee, those of an executive office; for it threw upon the same men too much work of too diverse kinds, and it removed from the administrative organ its most essential attributes of permanency, technical skill, and responsibility. In December, 1776, Robert Morris had urged the employment of a corps of executives chosen outside the membership of Congress, as a requisite to a proper and orderly management of the business of the Revolutionary government.[217]