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 1902); Periodical Publications—Annales des mines de Belgique (Brussels, quarterly); Australian Mining Standard (Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, weekly); Engineering and Mining Journal (New York, weekly); Glückauf (Essen, weekly); Mines and Quarries; General Report and Statistics (London, annually); with details from official reports of colonial and foreign mining departments; Mines and Minerals (monthly, Scranton, Pennsylvania); The Mineral Industry (New York, annually); Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers (New York); The Mining and Scientific Press (weekly, San Francisco); Transactions of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (London); Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers (Newcastle-on-Tyne).

MINION, a favourite, pet or spoiled person. The word is adapted from the Fr. mignon (Ital. mignone), of which the origin is doubtful. Connexions with the O.H. Ger. minna, love, and with a Celtic root min-, meaning small, have been suggested. “Minion” is chiefly applied in a derogatory sense to the “creatures” of a royal court, and thus has been used of the favourites of Edward II. and James I. of England, and of Henry III. of France. In the sense pretty, delicate, dainty, the French form mignon or mignonne is often used in English. During the 17th century “minion” was the name of a type of cannon with a small bore. In typography, it is still used for the type which comes between “nonpareil” and “brevier.”

MINISTER (Lat. minister, servant), an official title both civil and ecclesiastical. The word minister as originally used in the Latin Church was a translation of the Greek , deacon; thus Lactantius speaks of presbyteri et ministri, priests and deacons (De mort. persecutorum, No. 15), and in this sense it is still technically used; thus canon vi., Sess. xxiii. of the council of Trent speaks of the hierarchy as consisting “ex episcopis, presbyteris et ministris.” But the equivocal character of the Word soon led to the blurring of any strictly technical sense it once possessed. Bishops signed themselves minister in the spirit of humility, priests were “servants of the altar” (ministri altaris), while sometimes the phrase ministri ecclesiae was used to denote the clergy in minor orders (see Lex Bajwar. tit. 8, quoted in Du Cange). A similar equivocal character attaches to the word minister as used in the Anglican formularies: “Oftentimes it is made to express the person officiating in general, whether priest or deacon; at other times it denoteth the priest alone, as contradistinguished from the deacon” (Burn’s Eccl. Law, ed. Phillimore, iii. 44). Thus the 33rd canon of 1603 orders that “no bishop shall make any person a deacon and minister both together upon one day.” Generally, however, it may be said that in the use of the Church of England “minister” means no more than executor officii, a sense in which it was used long before the Reformation. As the most colourless of all official ecclesiastical titles, it is easy to see how the word minister has come to be applied to the clergy of Protestant denominations. The phrase “minister of religion” is wide enough to embrace any evangelical office, and has about it more of the savour of humility than “pastor.”

The civil title of minister originates in the same exact sense of servant, i.e. servants of the royal household (ministri aulae regis). This origin is still clearly traceable in the titles of some ministers in Great Britain, e.g. chancellor of the exchequer, first lord of the treasury, and in the official style of “his majesty’s servants” applied to all. Practically, however, the word minister has in modern states come to be applied to the heads of the great administrative departments who as such are members of the government. On the continent there are, besides, “ministers without portfolio,” i.e. ministers who, without being in charge of any special department, are members of the government. In general it is distinctive of constitutional states that any public act of the sovereign must bear the countersignature of the minister responsible for the department concerned. (See the articles and . For the history and meanings of the word “minister” in diplomacy, see .)

 MINISTRY, the office of a (q.v.), in all its meanings, political and religious, or the body of persons holding such an office and performing its duties; more particularly the body of persons who, in theory the servants at the head of the state, act as the responsible executive over the whole sphere of government, as in the United Kingdom. On the continent of Europe, on the other hand, the word “ministry” is most usually applied to the responsible head of a particular department together with his subordinates, including the permanent officials or staff. In England, ever since the introduction of monarchical institutions the sovereign has always been surrounded by a select body of confidential advisers to assist the crown in the government of the country. At no period could a king of England act, according to law, without advice in the public concerns of the kingdom; the institutions of the crown of England and the institution of the privy council are coeval. At the Norman Conquest the king’s council, or as it is now called, the privy council, was composed of certain members of the aristocracy and great officers of state, specially summoned by the crown, with whom the sovereign usually advised in matters of state and government. In the earlier stages of English constitutional history the king’s councillors, as confidential servants of the monarch, were present at every meeting of parliament in order to advise upon matters judicial in the House of Lords; but in the reign of Richard II. the privy council dissolved its judicial connexion with the peers and assumed an independent jurisdiction of its own. It was in the reign of Henry VI. that the king’s council first assumed the name of privy council, and it was also during the minority of this sovereign that a select council gradually emerged from the larger body of the privy council, which ultimately became the modern cabinet. Since the Revolution of 1688, and the development of parliamentary government, the privy council has dwindled into comparative insignificance. The power once swayed by the privy council is now exercised by that unrecognized select committee of the council known as the (q.v.). The practice of consulting a few confidential advisers instead of the whole privy council had been resorted to by English monarchs from a very early period; but the first mention of the term cabinet council in contradistinction to privy council occurs in the reign of Charles I., when the burden of state affairs was entrusted to the committee of state which Clarendon says was enviously called the “cabinet council.” At first government by cabinet was as unpopular as it was irregular. Until the formation of the first parliamentary ministry by William III. the ministers of the king occupied no recognized position in the House of Commons; it was indeed a moot point whether they were entitled to sit at all in the lower chamber, and they were seldom of one mind in the administration of matters of importance. Before the Revolution of 1688 there were ministers, but no ministry in the modern sense of the word; colleague schemed against colleague in the council chamber, and it was no uncommon thing to see ministers opposing one another in parliament upon measures that in modern times would be supported by a united cabinet. As the change from government by prerogative to government by parliament, consequent upon the Revolution of 1688, developed, and the House of Commons became more and more the centre and force of the state, the advantage of having ministers in the legislature to explain and defend the measures and policy of the executive government began. to be appreciated. The public authority of the crown being only exercised through the medium of ministers, it became absolutely necessary that the advisers of the sovereign, who were responsible for every public act of the Crown as well as for the general policy they had been called upon to administer, should have seats in both Houses of Parliament. Still nearly a century had to elapse before political unanimity in the cabinet was recognized as a political maxim. From the first parliamentary ministry of William III. until the rise of the second Pitt, divisions in the cabinet were constantly occurring, and a prime minister had more to fear from the intrigues of his own colleagues than from the tactics of the opposition. In 1812 an attempt was made to form a ministry consisting of men of opposite political principles, who were invited to accept office, not avowedly as a coalition government, but with an offer to the Whig leaders that their friends should be allowed a majority of one in the cabinet. This offer