d of Agriculture, the Board of Works, and the Local
Government Board--represent the development of administrative
commissions not conceived of originally as vested with political
character. All are in effect independent and co-ordinate governmental
departments. The composition and functions of the Board of Trade are
regulated by order in council at the opening of each reign, but the
character of the other four is determined wholly by statute. At the
head of each is a president (save that the chief of the Board of Works
is known as First Commissioner), and the membership embraces the five
secretaries of state and a variable number of other important
dignitaries. This membership, however, is but nominal. No one of the
Boards actually meets, and the work of each is performed entirely by
its president, with, in some instances, the assistance of a
parliamentary under-secretary. "In practice, therefore, these boards
are legal phantoms that provide imaginary colleagues for a single
responsible minister."[86] Very commonly the presidents are admitted
to the cabinet, but sometimes they are not.[87]

[Footnote 86: Lowell, Government of England, I.,
84.]

[Footnote 87: On the organization and workings of
the executive departments see Lowell, _op. cit._,
I., Chaps. 4-6; Marriott, English Political
Institutions, Chap. 5; Anson, Law and Custom of the
Constitution, II., Pt. 1, Chap. 3; Traill, Central
Government, Chaps. 3-11.]

VI. THE CABINET: COMPOSITION AND CHARACTER

*67. Regular and Occasional Members.*--The cabinet comprises a variable
group of the principal ministers of state upon whom devolves singly
the task of administering the affairs of their respective departments
and, collectively, that of shaping the policy and directing the conduct
of the government as a whole. The position occupied by the cabinet (p. 065)
in the constitutional system is anomalous, but transcendently
important. As has been pointed out, the cabinet as such is unknown to
English law. Legally, the cabinet member derives his administrative
function from the fact of his appointment to a ministerial post, and
his advisory function from his membership in the Privy Council. The
cabinet exists as an informal, extra-legal ministerial group into
whose hands, through prolonged historical development, has fall