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The library of the Department was founded by Thomas Jefferson. In his estimates of expenses of June 17, 1790, he included subscriptions to fifteen American newspapers at an average of four dollars per year for each; $200 to begin a collection of the laws of the States, and twenty-five dollars for the purchase of foreign gazettes, this amount including also payment for American papers to be sent to our agents abroad. To this basis for a library should be added the laws and public documents deposited with the Department under various statutes, and books under the copyright law.It was inevitable that some works on government and international law should find their way into an office occupied by such men of books as Jefferson and Madison. When the British invaded the city in 1814, no attempt was made to save the library and it was burned with the Department building. The work of collecting was taken up again as soon as the office was reestablished. The Department was dependent upon its own library resources and did not have the privilege of drawing books from the Library of Congress, until it was granted by law January 30, 1830; but probably it had the larger collection of the two. By 1831 the documents and laws had become so numerous that Congress appropriated $340 to pay for their storage.

We considered in a former number of the Journal the chief publications
of the Department. The President's annual message to Congress usually
contains a statement of our relations with foreign Powers, and this serves
as the annual report of the Secretary of State. A regular annual report to
the President or Congress is required from the heads of other departments
but not from him. When Richard Olney was Secretary, however, he made a
report dated December, 1896, entitled "Report of the Secretary of State" for
that year. It was intended to be the first annual report, but the example
was not followed.
The management of foreign affairs being the most important of the
regular duties of the Department, the supervision of the diplomatic and
consular service are its chief duties. The general rules which govern the
foreign service are found in the works on international law and particularly
in the American digests; but two special publications have been issued by
the Department of State for the guidance of its agents abroad — the
Diplomatic Instructions and the Consular Regulations.

Section 2 of the organic act of the Department provided that every bill, order, resolution or vote of both houses of Congress which the President approved, or which he suffered to become effective without his approval, should be sent by the President to the Secretary of State; that every such document returned by him to Congress with his disapproval and then passed by a two-thirds vote should be sent by the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate, according to which body it had originated in, to the Secretary of State; that he should as soon as possible cause it to be printed in at least three newspapers; should deliver one printed copy to each senator and representative; and should send two printed copies duly authenticated to the governors of all the States. He was to preserve the original laws carefully and cause them to be recorded in books.

Having considered in former numbers of this Journal the sometime and occasional duties of the Department, including among them certain contingent duties which it has never been called upon to perform, we may now advance to a consideration of its habitual functions.The organic act of the Department prescribed that the Secretary of State should keep " the seal of the United States." It is the mark of the supreme authority of the United States, and before the government went into operation under the Constitution, was in the custody of the Secretary of Congress, being used to verify all important acts, whether executive or legislative; but the debate on executive departments in the first constitutional congress indicated that Congress did not contemplate keeping the seal any longer, and thought it would necessarily pass to the custody of the Executive. The President did, in fact, take it under his control as soon as he assumed office and before legal provision had been made for it.

In his first annual message, December 8, 1829, President Andrew Jackson said :
The great and constant increase of business in the Department of State forced itself at an early period upon the attention of the Executive, Thirteen years ago it was, in Mr. Madison's last message to Congress, made the subject of an earnest recommendation, which has been repeated by both of his successors; and my comparatively limited experience has satisfied me of its justness. It has arisen from many causes, not the last of which is the large addition that has been made to the family of independent nations and the proportionate extension of our foreign relations. The remedy proposed was the establishment of a home department — a measure which does not appear to have met the views of Congress on account of its supposed tendency to increase, gradually and imperceptibly, the already too strong bias of the federal system towards the exercise of authority not delegated to it. I am not, therefore, disposed to revive the recommendation, but am not the less impressed with the importance of so organizing that Department that its Secretary may devote more of his time to our foreign relations. Clearly satisfied that the public good would be promoted by some suitable provision on that subject, I respectfully invite your attention to it.

Perhaps the most important of the occasional duties of the Department of State is that which involves its agency in recording the result of the quadrennial elections held in the several States for the office of President and Vice-President of the United States. Section 1 of Article II of the Constitution provided that the electors should meet in the several States, and, having voted for a President and Vice-President, should make a list of the persons voted for, which they must sign and certify to and transmit sealed to the seat of government directed to the President of the Senate.

In previous papers of this Journal I have shown that the Department of State was created to manage not only the foreign affairs of the government, but such domestic executive business as did not naturally fall under the war and treasury departments; and in addition it has performed certain temporary or occasional duties some of which have passed to other departments and some of which are still under its jurisdiction. In the natural expansion of the business of the government the tendency has been to transfer from the Department all those duties which are purely domestic, and those which have been thus transferred will now be considered.

During the interval between the inauguration of the President and the formation of the Executive Departments, the old Departments performed such executive duties as were indispensable. On July 11, 1789, for example, " by the hands of Mr. Jay," Washington sent to the Senate for ratification a consular convention with France. On July 22 the Senate —
Resolved, that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the former Congress be requested to peruse the said convention and to give his opinion how far he conceives the faith of the United States to be engaged, either by former agreed stipulations or negotiations entered into by our minister at the court of Versailles, to ratify in its present sense or form the convention now referred to the Senate.