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of Statistics, the Chief to receive $2,400 per

annum.

The financial business of the Department had been in the beginning intrusted to one of the clerks, and the Act of 1855 authorized a disbursing clerk, who should give bonds. By Act of March 3, 1873, the Bureau of Accounts was instituted, with the disbursing clerk as Chief, with the same salary as was allowed the other chiefs of bureau.

In 1875 the Translator of the Department, who had before that been simply one of the clerks, was placed upon the same footing as the chiefs, with the same salary.

The Appropriation Act of August 15, 1876, reduced all these salaries to $2,100, which rate maintains at the present time.

Beside the regular bureaus described above, the Department business has necessitated the institution of two others, the heads of which are selected from the clerical force. These are the Bureau of Commissions and Pardons and that

of Passports. Of the former it is sufficient to say that it was the natural outgrowth of the assignment to a certain clerk of the papers relating to appointments to office and of the duty of making out the commissions and pardons. The Passport Bureau will be described later on.*

As now constituted, the Executive force of the Department comprises the Secretary of State, three Assistant Secretaries, a Chief Clerk, a Solicitor (from the Department of Justice), Chief of the Bureau of Indexes and Archives, Chief of the Diplomatic Bureau, Chief of the Consular Bureau, Chief of the Bureau of Rolls and Library, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, Chief of the Bureau of Accounts, the Translator, Clerk to the Secretary of State, eleven clerks of class IV, four clerks of class III, eight clerks of class II, fifteen clerks of class I, a telegraph operator at $1,200 per annum, five clerks at $1,000 per annum, ten at $900 per annum, a

*See p. 176.

lithographer at $900 per annum, one messenger at $840 per annum, two assistant messengers at $720 per annum, one packer at $720 per annum, and ten laborers at $660 per

annum.

Frination
DUTIES

V.

DUTIES OF THE DEPARtment of sTATE.

HE law that created the Department of

THE

State prescribed that the Secretary should . keep the seal of the United States, and he thus became the custodian of the most important official evidence of the Federal Executive authority.

The law reads, that the Secretary of State "shall affix the said seal to all civil commissions to officers of the United States, to be appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, or by the President alone. Provided, That the said seal shall not be affixed to any commission, before the same shall have been signed by the President of the United States, nor to any other instrument or act, without the special warrant of the President there

for." The seal thus "attests, by an act supposed to be of public notoriety, the verity of the presidential signature."*

The commissions were not countersigned by the Secretary of State until a few months after Jefferson had been in office, but simply bore the President's signature and the impression of the seal. The device of the seal, as adopted by the first Congress under the Constitution, was the same as that adopted by the old Congress in 1782. The law read:

The device for an armorial achievement and reverse of the great seal for the United States in Congress assembled, is as follows:

ARMS. Paleways of thirteen pieces, argent and gules; a chief, azure; the escutcheon on the breast of the American eagle displayed proper, holding in his dexter talon an olive branch, and in his sinister a bundle of thirteen arrows, all proper, and in his beak a scroll, inscribed with this motto, "E pluribus Unum."

For the CREST. Over the head of the Eagle, which appears above the escutcheon, a glory, or, breaking through

*I U. S. Reports, 374.

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