nmark
or Greece or Guatemala. When we send envoys to the great powers, we rank
ourselves along with inferior powers; and diplomatic etiquette as a rule
obliges the great powers to send to us the same grade of minister that
we send to them. There were found to be some practical inconveniences
about this, so that in 1892 the highest grade was adopted and our
ministers to Great Britain and France were made ambassadors.

[Sidenote: The secretary of the treasury.]
The cabinet officer second in rank and in some respects first in
importance is the secretary of the treasury. He conducts the financial
business of the government, superintends the collection of revenue,
and gives warrants for the payment of moneys from the treasury. He
also superintends the coinage, the national banks, the custom-houses,
the coast-survey and lighthouse system, the marine hospitals, and
life-saving service.[21] He sends reports to Congress, and suggests
such measures as seem good to him. Since the Civil War his most
weighty business has been the management of the national debt. He
is aided by two assistant secretaries, six auditors, a register, a
comptroller, a solicitor, a director of the mint, commissioner of
internal revenue, chiefs of the bureau of statistics and bureau of
engraving and printing, etc. The business of the treasury department
is enormous, and no part of our government has been more faithfully
administered. Since 1789 the treasury has disbursed more than seven
billions of dollars without one serious defalcation. No man directly
interested in trade or commerce can be appointed secretary of the
treasury, and the department has almost always been managed by "men of
small incomes bred either to politics or the legal profession." [22]

[Footnote 21: Many of these details concerning the executive
departments are admirably summarized, and with more fullness
than comports with the design of the present work, in Thorpe's
_Government of the People of the United States_, pp. 183-193.]

[Footnote 22: Schouler, _Hist. of the U.S._, vol. i. p. 95.]

[Sidenote: War and navy.]
The war and navy departments need no special description here. The
former is divided into ten and the latter into eight bureaus.
The naval department, among many duties, has charge of the naval
observatory at Washington and publishes the nautical almanac.

[Sidenote: Interior.]
The department of the interior conducts a vast and various business,
as is shown by the