Register of Debates in Congress, Comprising the Leading Debates and Incidents of the Second Session of the Twenty-Third Congress Page: 461

                                
461
OF DEBATES IN CONGRESS.
462
Feb. 16, 1835.]
Executive Patronage.
[Senate.
bring back public officers to the conviction that they
belong to the country, and not to any administration,
nor to any one man.
The army is the army of the country; the navy is the
navy of the country; neither of them is either the mere
instrument of the administration for the time being, or
of him who is at the head of it. The Post Office, the
Land Office, the Custom-house, are, in like manner*
institutions of the country, established for the good of
the people? and it may well alarm the lovers of free in-
stitutions, when all the offices in these several depart-
ments are spoken of, in high places, as being but
"spoils of victory," to be enjoyed by those who are
successful in a contest, in which they profess this grasp-
ing of the spoils to have been the object of their efforts.
This pax*t of the bill, therefore, sir, is a subject for
fair comparison. We have gained something, doubt-
less, by limiting the commissions of these officers to
four years. But have we gained as much as we have
lost? And may not the good be preserved, and the evil
still avoided? Is it not enough to say, that if, at the end
of four years, moneys are retained, accounts unsettled,
or other duties unperformed, the office shall be held to
be vacated, without any positive act of removal?
For one, I think the balance of advantage is decided,
ly in favor of the present bill. I think it will make men
more dependent upon their own good conduct, and
less dependent on the will of others. I believe it will
cause them to regard their country more, their own
duty more, and the favor of individuals less. I think it
will contribute to official respectability, to freedom of
opinion, to independence of character; and I think it
will tend, in no small degree, to prevent the mixture of
selfish and personal motives with the exercise of high
political duties. It will promote true and genuine re-
publicanism, by causing the opinion o'* the people, re-
specting the measures of Government and the men in
Government, to he formed and expressed without fear
or favor, and with a more entire regard to their true
and real merits or demerits. It will be, so far as its
effects reach, an auxiliary to patriotism and public
virtue, m their warfare against selfishness and cupidity.
I he second check on executive patronage,-contained
in this bill, is of still greater importance than the first,
i his provision is, that, whenever the President removes
any of these officers from office, he shall state to the
Senate the reasons for such removal.
1 his part of the bill has been opposed, both on con-
stitutional grounds, and on grounds of expediency.
The bill, it is to be observed, expressly recognises
and admits the actual existence of the power of removal.
.1 do not mean to deny, and the bill does not deny, that,
at the present moment, the President may remove these
officers at wilf, because the early decision adopted that
construction, and the laws have since, uniformly, sanc-
tioned it.
I he law of 1820, intended to be repealed by this bii),
expressly alarms the power. I consider it, therefore, a
settled point; settled by construction, settled by prece-
dent, settled by the practice of the Government, and
settled by statute. At the same time, I am very willing
to say that, after considering the question again arid
again, within the fast six years, in my deliberate judg-
ment, the original decision was wrong. I cannot but
think that those who denied the power, in 1789, had the
best of"the argument; and yet, I will not say that I know
myself so thoroughly as to affirm that this opinion may
not have been produced, in some measure by that abuse
of the power which has been passing before our eyes
for several years. It is possible that this experience of
the evil may have affected my view of the constitutional
aJ>£ument. It appears to me, however, after thorough,
and repeated, and conscientious examination, that an
erroneous interpretation .was given to the constitution,
in this respect, by the decision of the first Congress; and
I will ask leave to state, shortly, the reasons for that
opinion, although there is nothing in this bill which
proposes to disturb that decision.
The constitution no where says one word of the pow- |
er of removal from office, except in the case of convic-
tion on impeachment Wherever the power exists, there-
fore, except in cases of impeachment, it must exist as a
constructive or incidental power. If it exists in the Presi-
dent alone, it must exist in him because it is attached to
something else, or included in something else, or results
from something else,' which is granted to the President.
There is certainly no specific grant: it is a power, there-
fore, the existence of which, if proved at all, is to be
proved by inference and argument.
The only instance in which the constitution speaks of
removal from office, as I have already said, it speaks of
it as the exercise of judicial power; that is to say, it
speaks of it as one part of the judgment of the Senate,
in cases of conviction on impeachment. No other men-
tion is made, in the whole instrument, of any power of re-
moval. Whence, then, is the power derived to the
President?
It is usually said, by those who maintain its existence
in the single hands of the President, that the power is
derived from that cluse of the constitution which says
"the executive power shall be vested in a President."
The power of removal, they argue, is, in its nature, an
executive power; and, as the executive power is thus
vested in the President, the power of .removal is neces-
sarily included.
It is true that the constitution declares that the execu-
tive power shall be vested in the President; but the first
question which then arises is, what is executive power?
What is the degree, and what are the limitations? Execu-
tive power is not a thing so well known and so accurately
defined as that the written constitution of a limited Gov-
ernment can be supposed to have conferred it in the
lump. What is executive power? What are its bound-
aries? What model, or example, had the framers of
the constitution in their mindswhen they spoke of "exec-
utive power?" Did they mean executive power as
known in England, or as known in France, or as known
in Russia? Did they take it as defined by Montesquieu,
by Burlamaqui, or by I)e Lolme?' All these differ from
one another as to the extent of the executive power of,
government. What, then, was intended by the " execu-
tive power?" Now, sir, I think it perfectly plain and
manifest that, although the framers of the constitution
meant to confer executive power on the President, yet
they meant to define and limit that power, and to confer
no more than they did thus define and limit. When they
say it shall be vested in a President, they mean that one
magistrate, to be called a President, shall hold the execu-
tive authority; but they mean, further, that he should
hold this authority according to the grants and limita-
tions of the constitution itself.
They did not intend, certainly, a sweeping gift of pre-
rogative; they did not intend to grant to the President,
whatever might be construed, or supposed, or imagined,
to be executive power; and the proof that they meant
no such thing is, that, immediately after using these gene-
ral words, they proceed, specifically, to enumerate his
several distinct and particular authorities, to fix and de-
fine them; to give tile Senate an essential control over
the exercise of some of them, and to leave others uncon-
trolled. By the executive power conferred on the Presi-
dent, the constitution means no more than that portion
which itself creates, and which it qualifies, limits, and
circumscribes.v
A general survey of the frame of the constitution will
satisfy us of this. That instrument goes all along upon