In the terminology of Weimar, the Ministry is called the “National Cabinet.” Article 52 says, “The National Cabinet consists of the National Chancellor and the National Ministers.” There is thus stated a difference--fundamental in the German system--between the Chancellor and the Ministers. It will be recalled how the Cabinet of the old Empire was organized. The Chancellor, properly speaking, was the only Minister; and the Secretaries of State, by whom he was assisted or represented, were simply high civil servants absolutely subordinate to the Chancellor. These Secretaries of State never met together to deliberate on public affairs; each of them freely decided on the affairs of his department and executed them. But the Secretaries of State had to refer to the Chancellor every time that a difference of opinion arose between their departments over any contemplated law or any administrative measure whatever. Such a discussion was often prolonged for months, because the Chancellor was not in a situation to express an opinion, nor to pronounce on the very complex problem. This was the _bureaucratic_ system. For this system, with its obvious inconveniences, von Delbrück proposed to substitute a _collegiate_ one. The Ministers form a Cabinet, to which all questions concerning general policy or involving the province of their several departments are submitted. The Prime Minister is only the first among them, _primus inter pares_; the decision is made by the whole Cabinet, which naturally assumes the whole burden of responsibility. The Constituent Assembly supported an intermediate solution, which partook both of the bureaucratic system and the collegiate. It adopted a sort of _limited collegiate_ system. The Chancellor is not as formerly the only Minister of the Reich; he is Minister by the same title as the other members of the Cabinet, but he has a character distinct from those of the other Ministers. Without being a hierarchic superior over these he is on another plane and enjoys certain rights in comparison to the others. This distinction established by the Constituent Assembly, between the two elements of the government, the Chancellor on the one hand and the Ministers on the other, is manifested in the three respects in the nomination of the ministers, their prerogatives and their responsibility.