%210.  The United States Courts.%—­The Constitution declares that the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.  Acting under this power, Congress made provision for a Supreme Court, consisting of a Chief Justice and five Associate Justices, and marked out the United States into circuits and districts.  The circuits were three in number.  In the first were the Eastern States; in the second, the Middle States; and in the third, the Southern States.  To each were assigned two Justices of the Supreme Court, whose business it was to go to some city in each state in the circuit, and there, with the district judge of that state, hold a circuit court.  The district courts were thirteen in number, one being established in each state.[1] Washington appointed John Jay the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

[Footnote 1:  For later changes, see Andrews’s Manual of the Constitution, p. 183.]

%211.  The Secretaries.%—­During the management of affairs by the Continental Congress three great executive departments had gradually grown up and been placed in charge of three men, called the “Superintendent of Finance,” the “Secretary of the United States for the Department of Foreign Affairs,” and the “Secretary of War.”  These the Constitution recognized in the expression “principal officer in each of the executive departments.”  Congress by law now continued the departments and placed them in charge of a Secretary of the Treasury, a Secretary of State, and a Secretary of War.  Washington filled the offices promptly, making Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, Thomas Jefferson Secretary of State, and General Henry Knox Secretary of War.

%212.  The “Cabinet."%—­It has long been the custom for the President to gather his secretaries about him on certain days in each week for the purpose of discussing public measures.  To these gatherings has been given the name “Cabinet meetings,” while the secretaries have come to be called “Cabinet officers.”  The Constitution, however, never intended to give the President a body of advisers.  Indeed, a proposition to provide him with a council was voted down in the constitutional convention.  But Washington at once began to consult the Chief Justice, the Vice President, his three secretaries, and the Attorney-general on matters of importance.  At first he asked their opinions individually and in writing, but toward the end of his first term he convened a general meeting of the heads of departments, and by so doing set a custom out of which, in time, the “Cabinet” has grown.

%213.  The Origin of the National Debt.%—­As soon as Hamilton was made Secretary of the Treasury, it became his duty, in accordance with an order from Congress, to prepare a plan for the payment of the debts contracted by the Continental Congress.  When that body was unexpectedly called on, in May, 1775, to conduct the war, it had nothing with which to pay expenses, and was forced to use all sorts of means to raise money.