certainty and delay in the delivery of the mails, Congress passed several resolutions during the year 1777 aimed at the correction of abuses and the improvement of the service. Investigating committees were frequently appointed. A committee of five appointed on May 29, 1778, to investigate abuses in the department, was enlarged to eight members on January 5, 1779, and became a standing committee to which Congress referred all matters pertaining to the Post Office. Ebenezer Hazard, who had been the "Constitutional" postmaster of New York in 1775, was elected by Congress on January 28, 1782, to succeed Bache as Postmaster General. In the same year (October 18) Congress passed an ordinance for regulating the conduct of the Post Office, which was largely a compilation of the scattered regulations previously adopted, going back as early as July, 1775." Under this act the Post Office was conducted until further provision was made by Congress under the Constitution of 1787. Summary of Administrative Organization, 1775-1789. The plan of placing administrative work under the responsibility of single heads, first adopted in 1781, marks the basis of administrative organization as it exists in the United States at the present time. Only the two departments of Foreign Affairs and War, however, remained under the supervision of a secretary until the formation of the national government in 1789. "The new organization" says Learned, "was a natural and for the most part an indigenous development out of the circumstances of the Revolution. We were creating rather than copying an administrative system."" It certainly must be conceded that previous to the establishment of executive departments in 1781, the development of the various administrative boards out of the early committees of Congress had proceeded largely according to the needs of each particular case, and without very much conscious attempt to pattern after foreign systems. It is true, as has already been pointed out, that the Boards of War, Treasury, and Admiralty had derived something of their form from analogous bodies that existed in England at that time, although it is doubtful whether more than the general conception "Journals of the Continental Congress, III, 401; IV, 107; VI, 931; VII, 29. 127, 153; IX, 816, 898; XI, 550; XIII, 26; XXII, 60; XXIII, 669. s Learned, op. cit., 55. of the system of board management was derived from this source. Also, a number of the titles applied to administrative officers by Congress were the same as those employed to designate somewhat similar officers in France. But this is as far as foreign influence can be traced with any certainty. The situation is different, however, with respect to the changes effected in 1781. Mention has been made of the inquiries into foreign systems which Congress instituted in 1779 through the United States commissioners in Europe. The adoption of a system of single-headed executive departments was a step distinctly in advance of formal English development, although the British secretariat had been maturing since the later days of the Tudors. The English title of Secretary at War, which was adopted by Congress, went back at least to the period of Charles II." It seems probable that Congress, at this point, was considerably influenced by the example of the French system of administrative organization, in which the principle of unified executive authority was further developed than in England, or, perhaps, in any other country. Hamilton, recognized as the most pronounced advocate of the adoption of the principle in America, remarked, regarding the proposed heads of departments, that they "should have nearly the same powers and functions as those in France analogous to them." 100 The title of Superintendent of Finance, as applied to the minister of finance, seems clearly to have been of French origin. On this point Mr. Learned says: "Such circumstantial evidence, then, as can be found points unmistakably to the French origin of the American title Superintendent of Finance. It was associated at the time of its appearance in America with Sully, chief minister of Henry IV and for about twelve years the most capable occupant of the office known as the surintendant des finances. The appearance of the title in 1780 helped mark that wide-spread zeal for France which after the alliance of 1778 involved almost all patriotic Ameri Moreover the title itself was one among many pieces of evidence which here and there in the eighteenth century revealed the new interest felt in the work and writings of the Duke of Sully. "Anson, Law and custom of the constitution, II, Pt. II, 192 (1907). 10 Works of Alexander Hamilton, I, 159. Somehow Sully's title gained Congressional attention, and in a form slightly altered from the French, was adopted." 99 101 We have seen that, on the question of the proper organization of the executive departments, the Revolutionary statesmen were divided into two factions. The one, moved by the love of liberty, distrust of government, and jealousy of delegated and concentrated powers, favored placing the control of administration in the hands of committees in Congress. The other, desiring governmental authority and control, contructive legislation in the field of administration, and the application of the principles of business to the affairs of state, declared for a system of permanent and singleheaded executives, chosen outside of the membership of Congress. During the first years of the struggle for independence, the advantage lay with the former. The committee system required little work to put it in operation; it was more in harmony with the ultra anti-monarchical spirit of the colonists; and it was more flexible than a system of permanent, single-headed administrative departments. Having once adopted the committee system, when it was acting merely as a convention of delegates, it was easy for Congress to retain that system when it became a government. By the year 1780, however, the "concentrative" school, as the second faction is designated by Dr. Paullin, had gained the ascendancy. 10 Permanency in tenure of the administration had been secured through the adoption of a system of boards, partly composed of persons not members of Congress. But the board. system, as well as control by committees, was found to be unsatisfactory. Two factors contributed to the necessity for a reorganization of the administration in 1781: (1) The personnel of Congress was deteriorating; and (2) there was a greater need for economy and efficiency in administration. The debate in Congress over the proposed change in the administrative system was lengthy, and is said to have been marked by the workings of party spirit, the self-interest of some members, and the doubts and fears and divided opinions of others. The adoption of the system of single-headed control, however, seems 103 101 Learned, Origin of the title superintendent of finance, American Historical Review, X, 572 (April, 1905). 103 Reed, Life and correspondence of Joseph Reed, II, 296. 104 to have met with approval from the great majority of the Revolutionary leaders. Washington, writing to John Sullivan, a member of Congress, on May 11, 1781, said: "The resolution of Congress to appoint ministers of war, foreign affairs, and finance, gave, as far I was able to learn, the sentiments of men in and out of the army, universal satisfaction." John Adams, who, in the first years of the war, was inclined to support the views of Samuel Adams and his school, wrote to Livingston, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, on February 14, 1782, as follows: "It is with great pleasure I learn that a minister is appointed for foreign affairs, who is so capable of introducing into that department an order, a constancy, and an activity which could never be expected from a committee from Congress, so often changing, and so much engaged in other great affairs, however excellent their qualifications or dispositions. Indeed, Sir, it is of infinite importance to me to know the sentiments of Congress; yet I have never known them in any detail or with any regularity since I have been in Europe. 99 105 Although only two of the departments continued under the direction of a secretary or minister until the close of the Confederation, the advantages of single-headed control had been so conclusively demonstrated that when the first Congress under the new Constitution began the consideration of administrative organization in 1789, serious objection was raised against the establishment of single-headed administrative departments in only one instance; namely, in connection with a finance department. The hostile criticism directed against Morris in 1783, his subsequent resignation, and the return to the system of board control in that department gave the opponents of single-headed control their only opportunity to present a formidable case in favor of multiple control, but even here they were badly defeated. 106 'Writings of George Washington, VIII, 39. * Works of John Adams (ed. Adams), VII, 510. Possibly Adams' direct contact with the conduct of administration as Minister to Holland served to alter his opinion as to the relative merits of committee or board and single-headed administrative control. CHAPTER III FOUNDATIONS OF ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION: 1789-1800 The experience gained during the struggle for independence and the period of the Confederation, in the repeated attempts to introduce a greater degree of efficiency and responsibility in the administration of governmental affairs, was of great value to the members of the first Congress when they proceeded to the establishment of executive departments in 1789. And it was due, no doubt, to the experience thus acquired, that Congress was led to adopt a system of administrative organization which has ever since been accepted and maintained as a basis for the further development of the national administration in the United States. The Secretaries of State, War, and Treasury still hold their offices by virtue of acts passed by Congress in 1789, the provisions of which were later incorporated in the Revised Statutes. Were it not for the fact that the frequent failures and a few successes encountered in the conduct of administration during the period from 1775 to 1789 were matters of common knowledge to most of the members of the Convention of 1787, and of the first Congress which convened two years later, this remarkable success in securing the adoption of a system of administrative organization, which has been capable of unlimited expansion and development, in accordance with the needs of a rapidly growing central government, would seem to substantiate the contentions of those who seek to explain the origin of our governmental institutions in the marvelous inspiration of the early statesmen. The movement in favor of the establishment of single-headed executive or administrative departments, which met with at least nominal success in 1781, was accompanied by various proposals for combining the principal administrative officers into an advisory |