Special Signs to Represent the Pagination of the Original:

• |231| is the page number 231 in the original
• *|236| is note * on page 236 in the original

|11| ON THE APPOINTING AND REMOVING POWER.
IN SENATE, FEBRUARY 18, 1835.

[General Jackson inaugurated the system of removing from and appointing to office, in reward of those whom the incumbent of the presidential chair supposed had most contributed to his election, and to punish office-holders who had not been his zealous partisans. A bird’s-eye survey will demonstrate the pernicious influence of the application of this principle, on the whole executive government of the country. It is not he who has best served his country, or who is best qualified to serve it, but he who has best served, and who promises best to serve, the incumbent of the presidential chair, that is entitled to office under that incumbent. Such had not been the rule previous to General Jackson’s administration, but it was he who was best qualified. This was a revolution in the government, and one of the worst kind of revolutions, inciting men to the service of a candidate with that expectation, and constraining them to the same personal service of the successful candidate, for whatever object, after he is elected. In this way, a president of energetic character might destroy the liberties of the country by an army of a hundred thousand office-holders, who must do his will, or lose their places. It can not but be seen, that the introduction of this principle of government has been one of the greatest misfortunes, and that it is likely to be one of the greatest perils of the country.

Shocked and alarmed at this state of things, the Senate of the Twenty-fourth Congress had brought in a bill requiring the president, in cases of dismission from office, to communicate to the Senate the reasons ; to which Mr. Clay proposed an amendment, “that, in all instances of appointment to office by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, the power of removal shall be exercised only in concurrence with the Senate,” etc. The bill and the amendment covered the whole ground, and if it had passed into law, it would have restored the |12| government to its former condition, such as it had been from the days of Washington. But, unfortunately, the virtue of Congress, already impaired by the influence of the new practice, was unequal to the occasion ; and from that day to this (1856) the country has been governed in this way.

In this speech, Mr. Clay has proved what the practice of the government had been, in this particular, and given the most solemn advice as to the consequences of the change introduced by General Jackson. It is the principle of the one-man power, and only requires a favorable exigency for the consummation of its aims. It was held in check at this time by such efforts as those of Mr. Clay ; but it only awaits the man and the circumstance to break out with irresistible power. The right of removal without the advice of the Senate, is the pivot of all power, and the president has only to apply the lever of appointments, as practiced, to accomplish his ends, whatever they may be ; for the non-concurrence of the Senate is no bar to his will, so long as he can reappoint the rejected nominee the next day, or find a substitute, and set him to work, or send him on his mission, in defiance of the Senate ; and in the recesses of the Senate, what could he not do ?]

Mr. Clay thought it extremely fortunate that this subject of executive patronage came up, at the session, unincumbered by any collateral question. At the last session we had the removal of the deposits, the treasury report sustaining it, and the protest of the president against the resolution of the Senate. The bank mingled itself in all our discussions, and the partisans of executive power availed themselves of the prejudices which had been artfully excited against that institution, to deceive and blind the people as to the enormity of executive pretensions. The bank has been doomed to destruction, and no one now thinks the re-charter of it is practicable, or ought to be attempted. I fear, said Mr. Clay, that the people will have just and severe cause to regret its destruction. The administration of it was uncommonly able ; and one is at a loss which most to admire, the imperturbable temper or the wisdom of its enlightened president. No country can possibly possess a better general currency than it supplied. The injurious consequences of the sacrifice of this valuable institution will soon be felt. There being no longer any sentinel at the head of our banking establishments to warn them, by its information and operations, of approaching danger, the local institutions, already multiplied to an alarming extent, and almost daily multiplying, in seasons of prosperity, will make free and unrestrained emissions. All the channels of circulation will become gorged. Property will rise extravagantly high, and, constantly looking up, the temptation to purchase will be irresistible. Inordinate |13| speculation will ensue, debts will be freely contracted ; and, when the season of adversity comes, as come it must, the banks, acting without concert and without guide, obeying the law of self-preservation, will all at the same time call in their issues ; the vast number will aggravate the alarm, and general distress, wide-spread ruin, and an explosion of the whole banking system, or the establishment of a new bank of the United States, will be the ultimate effects.

We can now deliberately contemplate the vast expansion of executive power, under the present administration, free from embarrassment. And is there any real lover of civil liberty, who can behold it without great and just alarm ? Take the doctrines of the protest, and the secretary’s report together, and, instead of having a balanced government with three coordinate departments, we have but one power in the State. According to those papers, all the officers concerned in the administration of the laws are bound to obey the president. His will controls every branch of the administration. No matter that the law may have assigned to other officers of the government specifically-defined duties ; no matter that the theory of the Constitution and the law supposes them bound to the discharge of those duties according to their own judgment, and under their own responsibility, and liable to impeachment for malfeasance ; the will of the president, even in opposition to their own deliberate sense of their obligations, is to prevail, and expulsion from office is the penalty of disobedience ! It has, not, indeed, in terms, been claimed, but it is a legitimate consequence from the doctrines asserted, that all decisions of the judicial tribunals, not conformable with the president’s opinion, must be inoperative, since the officers charged with their execution are no more exempt from the pretended obligation to obey his orders than any other officers of the administration.

The basis of this overshadowing superstructure of executive power is, the power of dismission, which it is one of the objects of the bill under consideration somewhat to regulate, but which it is contended by the supporters of executive authority is uncontrollable. The practical exercise of this power, during this administration, has reduced the salutary co-operation of the Senate, as approved by the Constitution, in all appointments, to an idle form. Of what avail is it, that the Senate shall have passed upon a nomination, if the president, at any time thereafter, even the next day, whether the Senate be in session or in vacation, without any known cause, may dismiss the incumbent ? Let us examine the nature of this power. It is exercised in the recesses of the executive mansion, perhaps upon secret information. The accused officer is not present nor heard, nor confronted with the witnesses against him, and the president is judge, juror, and executioner. No reasons are assigned for the dismission, and the public is left to conjecture the cause. Is not a power so exercised essentially a despotic power ? It is adverse to the genius of all free governments, the foundation of which is responsibility. Responsibility is the vital principle of civil liberty, as irresponsibility is the vital principle of despotism. Free |14| government can no more exist without this principle than animal life can be sustained without the presence of the atmosphere. But is not the president absolutely irresponsible in the exercise of this power ? How can he be reached ? By impeachment ? It is a mockery.

It has been truly said, that the office was not made for the incumbent. Nor was it created for the incumbent of another office. In both, and in all cases, public officers are created for the public ; and the people have a right to know why and wherefore one of their servants dismisses another. The abuses which have flowed, and are likely to flow from this power, if unchecked, are indescribable. How often have all of us witnessed the expulsion of the most faithful officers, of the highest character, and of the most undoubted probity, for no other imaginable reason, than difference in political sentiments ? It begins in politics, and may end in religion. If a president should be inclined to fanaticism, and the power should not be regulated, what is to prevent the dismission of every officer who does not belong to his sect, or persuasion ? He may, perhaps truly, say, if he does not dismiss him, that he has not his confidence. It was the cant language of Cromwell and his associates, when obnoxious individuals were in or proposed for office, that they could not confide in them. The tendency of this power is to revive the dark ages of feudalism, and to render every officer a feudatory. The bravest man in office, whose employment and bread depend upon the will of the president, will quail under the influence of the power of dismission. If opposed in sentiments to the administration, he will begin by silence, and finally will be goaded into partisanship.

The senator from New York (Mr. Wright) in analyzing the list of one hundred thousand, who are reported by the committee of patronage to draw money from the public treasury, contends that a large portion of them consists of the army, the navy, and revolutionary pensioners ; and, paying a just compliment to their gallantry and patriotism, asks, if they will allow themselves to be instrumental in the destruction of the liberties of their country ? It is very remarkable, that hitherto the power of dismission has not been applied to the army and navy, to which, from the nature of the service, it would seem to be more necessary than to those in civil places. But accumulation and concentration are the nature of all power, and especially of executive power. And it can not be doubted, that, if the power of dismission, as now exercised, in regard to civil officers, is sanctioned and sustained by the people, it will, in the end, be extended to the army and navy. When so extended, it will produce its usual effect of subserviency, or if the present army and navy should be too stern and upright to be molded according to the pleasure of the executive, we are to recollect, that the individuals who compose them are not to live always, and may be succeeded by those who will be more pliant and yielding. But I would ask the senator what has been the effect of this tremendous power of dismission upon the classes of officers to which it has been applied ? Upon the post-office, the land-office, and the custom-house ? They constitute |15| so many corps d’armée, ready to further on all occasions the executive views and wishes. They take the lead in primary assemblies, whenever it is deemed expedient to applaud or sound the praises of the administration, or to carry out its purposes in relation to the succession. We are assured, that a large majority of the recent convention at Columbus, in Ohio, to nominate the president’s successor, were office-holders. And do you imagine that they would nominate any other than the president’s known favorite ?

The power of removal, as now exercised, is nowhere in the Constitution expressly recognized. The only mode of displacing a public officer, for which it does provide, is by impeachment. But it has been argued, on this occasion, that it is a sovereign power, an inherent power, and an executive power ; and, therefore, that it belongs to the president. Neither the premises nor the conclusion can be sustained. If they could be, the people of the United States have all along totally misconceived the nature of their government, and the character of the office of their supreme magistrate. Sovereign power is supreme power ; and in no instance whatever is there any supreme power vested in the president. Whatever sovereign power is, if there be any, conveyed by the Constitution of the United States, is vested in Congress, or in the president and Senate. The power to declare war, to lay taxes, to coin money, is vested in Congress ; and the treaty-making power in the president and Senate. The postmaster-general has the power to dismiss his deputies. Is that a sovereign power, or has he any ?

Inherent power ? That is a new principle to enlarge the powers of the general government. Hitherto it has been supposed, that there are no powers possessed by the government of the United States, or any branch of it, but such as are granted by the Constitution ; and, in order to ascertain what has been granted, that it was necessary to show the grant, or to establish that the power claimed was necessary and proper to execute some granted power. In other words, that there are no powers but those which are expressed or incidental. But it seems that a great mistake has existed. The partisans of the executive have discovered a third and more fruitful source of power. Inherent power ! Whence is it derived ? The Constitution created the office of president, and made it just what it is. It had no powers prior to its existence. It can have none but those which are conferred upon it by the instrument which created it, or laws passed in pursuance of that instrument. Do gentlemen mean, by inherent power, such power as is exercised by the monarchs or chief magistrates of other countries ? If that be their meaning, they should avow it.

It has been argued, that the power of removal from office is an executive power ; that all executive power is vested in the president ; and that he is to see that the laws are faithfully executed, which, it is contended, he can not do, unless, at his pleasure, he may dismiss any subordinate officer.

The mere act of dismission or removal may be of an executive nature, but the judgment or sentence which precedes it is a function of a judicial, |16| and not executive nature. Impeachments, which, as has been already observed, are the only mode of removal from office expressly provided for in the Constitution, are to be tried by the Senate, acting as a judicial tribunal. In England, and in all the States, they are tried by judicial tribunals. In several of the States, removal from office sometimes is effected by the legislative authority, as in the case of judges on the concurrence of two thirds of the members. The administration of the laws of the several States proceeds regularly, without the exercise on the part of the governors of any power similar to that which is claimed for the president. In Kentucky, and in other States, the governor has no power to remove sheriffs, collectors of the revenue, clerks of courts, or any one officer employed in administration ; and yet the governor, like the president, is constitutionally enjoined to see that the laws are faithfully executed.

The clause relied upon to prove that all executive power is vested in the president, is the first section of the second article. On examining the Constitution, we find that, according to its arrangement, it treats first of the legislative power, then of the executive, and lastly of the judicial power. In each instance, it provides how those powers shall be respectively vested. The legislative power is confided to a Congress, and the Constitution then directs how the members of the body shall be chosen, and, after having constituted the body, enumerates and carefully specifies its powers. And the same course is observed both with the executive and the judiciary. In neither case does the preliminary clause convey any power ; but the powers of the several departments are to be sought for in the subsequent provisions. The legislative powers granted by the Constitution are to be vested, how ? In a Congress. What powers ? Those which are enumerated. The executive power is to be vested, how ? In a council, or in several ? No, in a President of the United States of America. What executive power ? That which is possessed by any chief magistrate, in any country, or that which speculative writers attribute to the executive head ? No such thing. That power, and that only, which the Constitution subsequently assigns to the chief magistrate.

The president is enjoined by the Constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Under this injunction, the power of dismission is claimed for him ; and it is contended that if those charged with the execution of the laws attempt to execute them in a sense different from that entertained by the president, he may prevent it, or withhold his co-operation. It would follow that, if the judiciary give to the law an interpretation variant from that of the president, he would not be bound to afford means which might become necessary to execute their decision. If these pretensions are well founded, it is manifest that the president, by means of the veto, in arresting the passage of laws which he disapproves, and the power of expounding those which are passed, according to his own sense of them, will become possessed of all the practical authority of the whole government. If the judiciary decide a law contrary to the president’s |17| opinion of its meaning, he may command the marshal not to execute the decision, and urge his constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. It will be recollected, perhaps, by the Senate, that, during the discussions on the deposit question, I predicted that the day would arrive when a president, disposed to enlarge his powers, would appeal to his official oath as a source of power. In that oath he undertakes that he will, “to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The fulfillment of the prediction quickly followed ; and during the same session, in the protest of the president, we find him referring to this oath as a source of power and duty. Now, if the president, in virtue of his oath, may interpose and prevent any thing from being done, contrary to the Constitution, as he understands it ; and may, in virtue of the injunction, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, prevent the enforcement of any law contrary to the sense in which he understands it, I would ask, what powers remain to any other branch of the government ? Are they not all substantially absorbed in the will of one man ?

The president’s oath obliges him to do no more than every member of Congress is also bound by official oath to do ; that is, to support the Constitution of the United States, in their respective spheres of action. In the discharge of the duties specifically assigned to him by the Constitution and laws, he is forever to keep in view the Constitution ; and this every member of Congress is equally bound to do, in the passage of laws. To step out of his sphere : to trench upon other departments of the government, under the notion that they are about to violate the Constitution, would be to set a most pernicious and dangerous example of violation of the Constitution. Suppose Congress, by two thirds of each branch, pass a law contrary to the veto of the president, and to his opinion of the Constitution, is he afterward at liberty to prevent its execution ? The injunction, to which I have adverted, common both to the federal and most of the State Constitutions, imposes only upon the chief magistrate the duty of executing those laws with the execution of which he is specially charged ; of supplying, when necessary, the means with which he is intrusted to enable others to execute those laws, the enforcement of which is confided to them ; and to communicate to Congress infractions of the laws, that the guilty may be brought to punishment, or the defects of legislation remedied. The most important branch of the government to the rights of the people, as it regards the mere execution of the laws, is the judiciary ; and yet they hold their offices by a tenure beyond the reach of the president. Far from impairing the efficacy of any powers with which he is invested, this permanent character in the judicial office is supposed to give stability and independence to the administration of justice.

The power of removal from office not being one of those powers which are expressly granted and enumerated in the Constitution, and having I hope successfully shown that it is not essentially of an executive nature, |18| the question arises, to what department of the government does it belong, in regard to all offices created by law, or whose tenure is not defined in the Constitution ? There is much force in the argument which attaches the power of dismission to the president and Senate conjointly, as the appointing power. But I think we must look for it to a broader and higher source : the legislative department. The duty of appointment may be performed under a law which enacts the mode of dismission. This is the case in the post-office department, the postmaster-general being invested with both the power of appointment and of dismission. But they are not necessarily allied, and the law might separate them, and assign to one functionary the right to appoint, and to a different one the right to dismiss. Examples of such a separation may be found in the State governments.

It is the legislative authority which creates the office, defines its duties, and may prescribe its duration. I speak, of course, of offices not created by the Constitution, but the law. The office coming into existence by the will of Congress, the same will may provide how, and in what manner the office and the officer shall both cease to exist. It may direct the conditions on which he shall hold the office, and when and how he shall be dismissed. Suppose the Constitution had omitted to prescribe the tenure of the judicial office, could not Congress do it ? But the Constitution has not fixed the tenure of any subordinate offices, and therefore Congress may supply the omission. It would be unreasonable to contend that, although Congress, in pursuit of the public good, brings the office and officer into being, and assigns their purposes, yet the president has a control over the officer which Congress can not reach or regulate ; and this control, in virtue of some vague and undefined implied executive power, which the friends of executive supremacy are totally unable to attach to any specific clause in the Constitution ?

It has been contended, with great ability, that, under the clause of the Constitution which declares, that Congress shall have power “to make all laws, which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all others vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof,” Congress is the sole depository of implied powers, and that no other department or officer of the government possesses any. If this argument be correct, there is an end of the controversy. But if the power of dismission be incident to the legislative authority, Congress has the clear right to regulate it. And if it belong to any other department of the government under the cited clause, Congress has the power to legislate upon the subject, and may regulate it, although it could not divest the department altogether of the right.

Hitherto I have considered the question upon the ground of the Constitution, unaffected by precedent. We have in vain called upon our opponents to meet us upon that ground ; and to point out the clause of the Constitution which, by express grant, or necessary implication, subjects the |19| will of the whole official corps to the pleasure of the president, to be dismissed whenever he thinks proper, without any cause, and without any reasons publicly assigned or avowed for the dismission, and which excludes Congress from all authority to legislate against the tremendous consequences of such a vast power. No such clause has been shown ; nor can it be, for the best of all reasons, because it does not exist. Instead of bringing forward any such satisfactory evidence, gentlemen intrench themselves behind the precedent which was established in 1789, when the first Congress recognized the power of dismission in the president : that is, they rely upon the opinion of the first Congress, as to what the Constitution meant, as conclusive of what it is.

The precedent of 1789 was established in the House of Representatives against the opinion of a large and able minority, and in the Senate by the casting vote of the vice-president, Mr. John Adams. It is impossible to read the debate which it occasioned, without being impressed with the conviction that the just confidence reposed in the father of his country, then at the head of the government, had great, if not decisive influence in establishing it. It has never, prior to the commencement of the present administration, been submitted to the process of review. It has not been reconsidered, because, under the mild administrations of the predecessors of the president, it was not abused, but generally applied to cases to which the power was justly applicable.

[Mr. Clay here proceeded to recite from a memorandum the number of officers removed under the different presidents, from Washington down ; but the reporter not having access to the memorandum, is unable to note the precise number under each, and can only state generally that it was inconsiderable, under all the administrations prior to the present, but under that of General Jackson the number of removals amounted to more than two thousand ; of which some five or six hundred were postmasters.]

Precedents deliberately established by wise men are entitled to great weight. They are the evidence of truth, but only evidence. If the same rule of interpretation has been settled, by concurrent decisions, at different and distant periods, and by opposite dominant parties, it ought to be deemed binding, and not disturbed. But a solitary precedent, established, as this was, by an equal vote of one branch, and a powerful minority in the other, under the influence of a confidence never misplaced in an illustrious individual, and which has never been re-examined, can not be conclusive.

The first inquiry which suggests itself upon such a precedent as this is, brought forward by the friends of the administration, is, what right have they to the benefit of any precedent ? The course of this administration has been marked by an utter and contemptuous disregard of all that had been previously done. Disdaining to move on in the beaten road carefully constructed by preceding administrations, and trampling upon every thing, it has seemed resolved to trace out for itself a new line of march. Then, |20| let us inquire how this administration and its partisans dispose of precedents drawn from the same source, the first Congress under the present Constitution. If a precedent of that Congress be sufficient authority to sustain an executive power, other precedents established by it, in support of legislative powers, must possess a like force. But do they admit this principle of equality ? No such thing. They reject the precedents of the Congress of 1789, sustaining the power of Congress, and cling to that only which expands the executive authority. They go for prerogative, and they go against the rights of the people.

It was in the first Congress that assembled in 1789, that the bank of the United States was established, the power to adopt a protective tariff was maintained, and the right was recognized to authorize internal improvements. And these several powers do not rest on the basis of a single precedent. They have been again and again affirmed, and reaffirmed by various Congresses, at different and distant periods, under the administration of every dominant party ; and, in regard to the bank, it has been sanctioned by every branch of the government, and by the people. Yet the same gentlemen, who console themselves with the precedent of 1789, in behalf of the executive prerogative, reject as unconstitutional all these legislative powers.

No one can carefully examine the debate in the House of Representatives in 1789, without being struck with the superiority of the argument on the side of the minority, and the unsatisfactory nature of that of the majority. How various are the sources whence the power is derived ! Scarcely any two of the majority agree in their deduction of it. Never have I seen, from the pen or tongue of Mr. Madison, one of the majority, any thing so little persuasive or convincing. He assumes that all executive power is vested in the president. He does not qualify it ; he does not limit it to that executive power which the Constitution grants. He does not discriminate between executive power assigned by the Constitution, and executive power enacted by law. He asks, if the Senate had not been associated with the president in the appointing power, whether the president, in virtue of his executive power, would not have had the right to make all appointments ? I think not ; clearly not. It would have been a most sweeping and far-fetched implication. In the silence of the Constitution, it would have devolved upon Congress to provide by law for the mode of appointing to office ; and that in virtue of the clause, to which I have already adverted, giving to Congress power to pass all laws necessary and proper to carry on the government. He says, “the danger then merely consists in this : the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power ?” What motives ! The pure heart of a Washington could have had none ; the virtuous head of Madison could conceive none ; but let him ask General Jackson, and he will tell him of motives enough. He will tell him, that he wishes his administration to be |21| a unit ; that he desires only one will to prevail in the executive branch of government ; that he can not confide in men who opposed his election ; that he wants places to reward those who supported it ; that the spoils belong to the victor ; and that he is anxious to create a great power in the State, animated by one spirit, governed by one will, and ever ready to second and sustain his administration in all its acts and measures ; and to give its undivided force to the appointment of the successor whom he may prefer. And what, Mr. President, do you suppose are the securities against the abuse of this power, on which Mr. Madison relied ? “In the first place,” he says, “he will be impeachable by this House before the Senate, for such an act of maladministration,” and so forth. Impeachment ! It is not a scarecrow. Impeach the president for dismissing a receiver or register of the land office, or a collector of the customs ! But who is to impeach him ? The House of Representatives. Now suppose a majority of that House should consist of members who approve the principle that the spoils belong to the victors ; and suppose a great number of them are themselves desirous to obtain some of these spoils, and can only be gratified by displacing men from office whose merits require that they should be continued, what chance do you think there would be to prevail upon such a House to impeach the president ? And if it were possible that he should, under such circumstances, be impeached, what prospect do you believe would exist of his conviction by two thirds of the Senate, comprising also members not particularly averse to lucrative offices, and where the spoils doctrine, long practiced in New York, was first boldly advanced in Congress ?

The next security was, that the president, after displacing the meritorious officer, could not appoint another person without the concurrence of the Senate. If Mr. Madison had shown how, by any action of the Senate, the meritorious officer could be replaced, there would have been some security. But the president has dismissed him ; his office is vacant ; the public service requires it to be filled, and the president nominates a successor. In considering this nomination, the president’s partisans have contended that the Senate is not at liberty to inquire how the vacancy was produced, but is limited to the single consideration of the fitness of the person nominated. But suppose the Senate were to reject him, they would only leave the office still vacant, and would not reinstate the removed officer. The president would have no difficulty in nominating another, and another, until the patience of the Senate being completely exhausted, they would finally confirm the appointment. What I have supposed is not theory but actually matter of fact. How often within a few years past have the Senate disapproved of removals from office, which they have been subsequently called upon to concur in filling ? How often wearied in rejecting, have they approved of persons for office whom they never would have appointed ? How often have members approved of bad appointments, fearing worse if they were rejected ? If the powers of the Senate were exercised by one |22| man, he might oppose, in the matter of appointments, a more successful resistance to executive abuses. He might take the ground that, in case of improper removal, he would persevere in the rejection of every person nominated, until the meritorious officer was reinstated. But the Senate now consists of forty-eight members, nearly equally divided, one portion of which is ready to approve of all nominations ; and of the other, some members conceive that they ought not to incur the responsibility of hazarding the continued vacancy of a necessary office, because the president may have abused his powers. There is then no security, not the slightest practical security, against abuses of the power of removal in the concurrence of the Senate in appointment to office.

During the debate, in 1789, Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, called for the clause of the Constitution granting the power. He said, “we are declaring a power in the president which may hereafter be greatly abused ; for we are not always to expect a chief magistrate in whom such entire confidence can be placed, as the present. Perhaps gentlemen are so much dazzled with the splendor of the virtues of the present president, as not to be able to see into futurity. * * * We ought to contemplate this power in the hands of an ambitious man, who might apply it to dangerous purposes. If we give this power to the president, he may from caprice remove the most worthy men from office ; his will and pleasure will be the slight tenure by which the office is to be held, and of consequence you render the officer the mere state dependent, the abject slave of a person who may be disposed to abuse the confidence his fellow-citizens have placed in him.” Mr. Huntington said, “if we have a vicious president who inclines to abuse his power, which God forbid, his responsibility will stand us in little stead.”

Mr. Gerry, afterward the republican Vice-president of the United States, contended, “that we are making these officers the mere creatures of the president ; they dare not exercise the privilege of their creation, if the president shall order them to forbear ; because he holds their thread of life. His power will be sovereign over them, and will soon swallow up the small security we have in the Senate’s concurrence to the appointment ; and we shall shortly need no other than the authority of the supreme executive officer, to nominate, appoint, continue, or remove.” Was not that prophecy ; and do we not feel and know that it is prophecy fulfilled ?

There were other members who saw clearly into the future, and predicted, with admirable forecast, what would be the practical operation of this power. But there was one eminently gifted in this particular. It seems to have been specially reserved for a Jackson to foretell what a Jackson might do. Speaking of some future president, Mr. Jackson—(I believe of Georgia—that was his name. What a coincidence !) “If he wants to establish an arbitrary authority, and finds the Secretary of Finance (Mr. Duane), not inclined to second his endeavors, he has nothing more to do than to remove him, and get one appointed (Mr. Taney), of principles |23| more congenial with his own. Then, says he, I have got the army ; let me have but the money, and I will establish my throne upon the ruins of your visionary republic. Black, indeed, is the heart of that man who even suspects him (Washington), to be capable of abusing powers. But, alas ! he can not be with us forever ; he is but mortal,” and so forth. “May not a man with a Pandora’s box in his breast come into power, and give us sensible cause to lament our present confidence and want of foresight ?”

In the early stages, and during a considerable portion of the debate, the prevailing opinion seemed so be, not that the president was invested by the Constitution with the power, but that it should be conferred upon him by act of Congress. In the progress of it, the idea was suddenly started, that the president possessed the power from the Constitution, and the first opinion was abandoned. It was finally resolved to shape the acts, on the passage of which the question arose, so as to recognize the existence of the power of removal in the president.

Such is the solitary precedent on which the contemners of all precedents rely for sustaining this tremendous power in one man ! A precedent established against the weight of argument, by a House of Representatives greatly divided, in a Senate equally divided, under the influence of a reverential attachment to the father of his country, upon the condition that, if the power were applied as we know it has been in hundreds of instances recently applied, the president himself would be justly liable to impeachment and removal from office, and which, until this administration, has never, since its adoption, been thoroughly examined or considered—a power, the abuses of which, as developed under this administration, if they be not checked and corrected, must inevitably tend to subvert the Constitution, and overthrow public liberty. A standing army has been, in all free countries, a just object of jealousy and suspicion. But is not a corps of one hundred thousand dependents upon government, actuated by one spirit, obeying one will, and aiming at one end, more dangerous and formidable than a standing army ? The standing army is separated from the mass of society, stationed in barracks or military quarters, and operates by physical force. The official corps is distributed and ramified throughout the whole country, dwelling in every city, village, and hamlet, having daily intercourse with society, and operates on public opinion. A brave people, not yet degenerated, and devoted to liberty, may successfully defend themselves against a military force. But if the official corps is aided by the executive, by the post-office department, and by a large portion of the public press, its power is invincible. That the operation of the principle, which subjects to the will of one man the tenure of all offices, which he may vacate at pleasure, without assigning any cause, must be to render them subservient to his purposes, a knowledge of human nature, and the short experience which we have had, clearly demonstrate.

It may be asked, why has this precedent of 1789 not been reviewed ? |24| Does not the long acquiescence in it prove its propriety ? It has not been re-examined for several reasons. In the first place, all feel and own the necessity of some more summary and less expensive and less dilatory mode of dismissing delinquents from subordinate offices, than that of impeachment, which, strictly speaking, was perhaps the only one in the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution ; certainly it is the only one for which it expressly provides. Then, under all the predecessors of the president, the power was mildly and beneficially exercised, having been always, or with very few exceptions, applied to actual delinquents. Notwithstanding all that has been said about the number of removals, which were made during Mr. Jefferson’s administration, they were, in fact, comparatively few. And yet he came into power as the head of a great party, which for years had been systematically excluded from the executive patronage ; a plea which can not be urged in excuse for the present chief magistrate. It was reserved for him to act on the bold and daring principle of dismissing from office those who bad opposed his election ; of dismissing from office for mere difference of opinion !

But it will be argued, that if the summary process of dismission be expedient in some cases, why take it away altogether ? The bill under consideration does not disturb the power. By the usage of the government, not I think by the Constitution, the president practically possesses the power to dismiss those who are unworthy of holding these offices. By no practice or usage but that which he himself has created, has he the power to dismiss meritorious officers only because they differ from him in politics. The principal object of the bill, is, to require the president, in cases of dismission, to communicate the reasons which have induced him to dismiss the officer ; in other words, to make an arbitrary and despotic power a responsible power. It is not to be supposed that, if the president is bound publicly to state his reasons, that he would act from passion or caprice, or without any reason. He would be ashamed to avow that he discharged the officer because he opposed his election. And yet this mild regulation of the power is opposed by the friends of the administration ! They think it unreasonable that the president should state his reasons. If he has none, perhaps it is.

But, Mr. President, although the bill is, I think, right in principle, it does not seem to me to go far enough. It makes no provision for the insufficiency of the reasons of the president, by restoring or doing justice to the injured officer. It will be some but not sufficient, restraint against abuses. I have, therefore prepared an amendment which I beg leave to offer, but which I will not press against the decided wishes of those having the immediate care of the bill. By this amendment,^*|24| as to all offices created by |25| law, with certain exceptions, the power at present exercised is made a suspensory power. The president may, in the vacation of the Senate, suspend the officer and appoint a temporary successor. At the next session of the Senate, he is to communicate his reasons ; and if they are deemed sufficient, the suspension is confirmed, and the Senate will pass upon the new officer. If insufficient, the displaced officer is to be restored. This amendment is substantially the same proposition, as one which I submitted to the consideration of the Senate at its last session. Under this suspensory power, the president will be able to discharge all defaulters or delinquents ; and it can not be doubted that the Senate will concur in all such dismissions. On the other hand, it will insure the integrity and independence of the officer, since he will feel that if he honestly and faithfully discharges his official duties, he can not be displaced arbitrarily, or from mere caprice, or because he has independently exercised the elective franchise.

It is contended, that the president can not see that the laws are faithfully executed unless he possesses the power of removal. The injunction of the Constitution, imports a mere general superintendence, except where he is specially charged with the execution of a law. It is not necessary that he should have the power of dismission. It will be a sufficient security against the abuses of subordinate officers, that the eye of the president is upon them, and that he can communicate their delinquency. The State executives do not possess this power of dismission. In several, if not all, the States, the governor can not even dismiss the Secretary of State ; yet we have heard no complaints of the inefficiency of State executives, or of the administration of the laws of the States. The president has no power to dismiss the judiciary ; and it might be asked, with equal plausibility, how he could see that the laws are executed if the judges will not conform to his opinion, and he can not dismiss them ?

But it is not necessary to argue the general question, in considering either the original bill or the amendment. The former does not touch the power of dismission, and the latter only makes it conditional instead of being absolute.

It may be said, that there are certain great officers, heads of departments and foreign ministers, between whom and the president entire confidence should exist. That is admitted. But, surely, if the president remove any of them, the people ought to know the cause. The amendment, however, does not reach those classes of officers. And supposing, as I do, that the legislative authority is competent to regulate the exercise of the power of dismission, there can be no just cause to apprehend, that it will fail to make |26| such modifications and exceptions as may be called for by the public interest ; especially as whatever bill may be passed must obtain the approbation of the chief magistrate. And if it should attempt to impose improper restrictions upon the executive authority, that would furnish a legitimate occasion for the exercise of the veto. In conclusion, I shall most heartily vote for the bill, with or without the amendment which I have proposed.

Special Signs to Represent the Pagination of the Original:

• |231| is the page number 231 in the original
• *|236| is note * on page 236 in the original

|179| THE APPOINTING AND REMOVING POWER.^*|179|

Mr. President,—The professed object of this bill is the reduction of executive influence and patronage. I concur in the propriety of that object. Having no wish to diminish or to control, in the slightest degree, the constitutional and legal authority of the presidential office, I yet think that the indirect and rapidly increasing influence which it possesses, and which arises from the power of bestowing office and of taking it away again at pleasure, and from the manner in which that power seems now to be systematically exercised, is productive of serious evils.

The extent of the patronage springing from this power of appointment and removal is so great, that it brings a dangerous mass of private and personal interest into operation in all great public elections and public questions. This is a mischief which has reached, already, an alarming height. The principle of republican governments, we are taught, is public virtue ; and whatever tends either to corrupt this principle, to debase it, or to weaken its force, tends, in the same degree, to the final overthrow of such governments. Our representative systems suppose, that, in exercising the high right of suffrage, the greatest of all political rights, and in forming opinions on great public measures, men will act conscientiously, under the influence of public principle and patriotic duty ; and that, in supporting or opposing men or measures, there will be a general prevalence of honest, intelligent judgment and manly independence. These presumptions lie at the foundation of all hope of maintaining |180| governments entirely popular. Whenever personal, individual, or selfish motives influence the conduct of individuals on public questions, they affect the safety of the whole system. When these motives run deep and wide, and come in serious conflict with higher, purer, and more patriotic purposes, they greatly endanger that system ; and all will admit that, if they become general and overwhelming, so that all public principle is lost sight of, and every election becomes a mere scramble for office, the system inevitably must fall. Every wise man, in and out of government, will endeavor, therefore, to promote the ascendency of public virtue and public principle, and to restrain as far as practicable, in the actual operation of our institutions, the influence of selfish and private interests.

I concur with those who think, that, looking to the present, and looking also to the future, and regarding all the probabilities that await us in reference to the character and qualities of those who may fill the executive chair, it is important to the stability of government and the welfare of the people that there should be a check to the progress of official influence and patronage. The unlimited power to grant office, and to take it away, gives a command over the hopes and fears of a vast multitude of men. It is generally true, that he who controls another man’s means of living controls his will. Where there are favors to be granted, there are usually enough to solicit for them ; and when favors once granted may be withdrawn at pleasure, there is ordinarily little security for personal independence of character. The power of giving office thus affects the fears of all who are in, and the hopes of all who are out. Those who are out endeavor to distinguish themselves by active political friendship, by warm personal devotion, by clamorous support of men in whose hands is the power of reward ; while those who are in ordinarily take care that others shall not surpass them in such qualities or such conduct as are most likely to secure favor. They resolve not to be outdone in any of the works of partisanship. The consequence of all this is obvious. A competition ensues, not of patriotic labors ; not of rough and severe toils for the public good ; not of manliness, independence, and public spirit ; but of complaisance, of indiscriminate support of executive measures, of pliant subserviency and gross adulation. All throng and rush together to the altar of man-worship ; |181| and there they offer sacrifices, and pour out libations, till the thick fumes of their incense turn their own heads, and turn, also, the head of him who is the object of their idolatry.

The existence of parties in popular governments is not to be avoided ; and if they are formed on constitutional questions, or in regard to great measures of public policy, and do not run to excessive length, it may be admitted that, on the whole, they do no great harm. But the patronage of office, the power of bestowing place and emoluments, creates parties, not upon any principle or any measure, but upon the single ground of personal interest. Under the direct influence of this motive, they form round a leader, and they go for “the spoils of victory.” And if the party chieftain becomes the national chieftain, he is still but too apt to consider all who have opposed him as enemies to be punished, and all who have supported him as friends to be rewarded. Blind devotion to party, and to the head of a party, thus takes place of the sentiment of generous patriotism and a high and exalted sense of public duty.

Let it not be said, Sir, that the danger from executive patronage cannot be great, since the persons who hold office, or can hold office, constitute so small a portion of the whole people.

In the first place, it is to be remembered that patronage acts, not only on those who actually possess office, but on those also who expect it, or hope for it ; and in the next place, office-holders, by their very situation, their public station, their connection with the business of individuals, their activity, their ability to help or to hurt according to their pleasure, their acquaintance with public affairs, and their zeal and devotion, exercise a degree of influence out of all proportion to their numbers.

Sir, we cannot disregard our own experience. We cannot shut our eyes to what is around us and upon us. No candid man can deny that a great, a very great change has taken place, within a few years, in the practice of the executive government, which has produced a corresponding change in our political condition. No one can deny that office, of every kind, is now sought with extraordinary avidity, and that the condition, well understood to be attached to every officer, high or low, is indiscriminate support of executive measures and implicit obedience to executive will. For these reasons, Sir, I am for arresting the |182| further progress of this executive patronage, if we can arrest it. I am for staying the further contagion of this plague.

The bill proposes two measures. One is to alter the duration of certain offices, now limited absolutely to four years ; so that the limitation shall be qualified or conditional. If the officer is in default, if his accounts are not settled, if he retains or misapplies the public money, information is to be given thereof, and thereupon his commission is to cease. But if his accounts are all regularly settled, if he collects and disburses the public money faithfully, then he is to remain in office, unless, for some other cause, the President sees fit to remove him. This is the provision of the bill. It applies only to certain enumerated officers, who may be called accounting officers ; that is to say, officers who receive and disburse the public money. Formerly, all these officers held their places at the pleasure of the President. If he saw no just cause for removing them, they continued in their situations, no fixed period being assigned for the expiration of their commissions. But the act of 1820 limited the commissions of these officers to four years. At the end of four years, they were to go out, without any removal, however well they might have conducted themselves, or however useful to the public their further continuance in office might be. They might be nominated again, or might not ; but their commissions expired.

Now, Sir, I freely admit that considerable benefit has arisen from this law. I agree that it has, in some instances, secured promptitude, diligence, and a sense of responsibility. These were the benefits which those who passed the law expected from it ; and these benefits have, in some measure, been realized. But I think that this change in the tenure of office, together with some good, has brought along a far more than equivalent amount of evil. By the operation of this law, the President can deprive a man of office without taking the responsibility of removing him. The law itself vacates the office, and gives the means of rewarding a friend without the exercise of the power of removal at all. Here is increased power, with diminished responsibility. Here is a still greater dependence, for the means of living, on executive favor, and, of course, a new dominion acquired over opinion and over conduct. The power of removal is, or at least formerly was, a suspected and odious |183| power. Public opinion would not always tolerate it ; and still less frequently did it approve it. Something of character, something of the respect of the intelligent and patriotic part of the community, was lost by every instance of its unnecessary exercise. This was some restraint. But the law of 1820 took it all away. It vacated offices periodically, by its own operation, and thus added to the power of removal, which it left still existing in full force, a new and extraordinary facility for the extension of patronage, influence, and favoritism.

I would ask every member of the Senate if he does not perceive, daily, effects which may be fairly traced to this cause. Does he not see a union of purpose, a devotion to power, a cooperation in action, among all who hold office, quite unknown in the earlier periods of the government ? Does he not behold, every hour, a stronger development of the principle of personal attachment, and a corresponding diminution of genuine and generous public feeling ? Was indiscriminate support of party measures, was unwavering fealty, was regular suit and service, ever before esteemed such important and essential parts of official duty ?

Sir, the theory of our institutions is plain ; it is, that government is an agency created for the good of the people, and that every person in office is the agent and servant of the people. Offices are created, not for the benefit of those who are to fill them, but for the public convenience ; and they ought to be no more in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the public service requires. This is the theory. But the difficulty in practice is, to prevent a direct reversal of all this ; to prevent public offices from being considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this, and it is necessary to restrain it by wise and effective legislation. There is still another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, of extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, to which I have already incidentally alluded ; and that is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the government or the country. It is, in an especial manner, important, if it be practicable, to apply some corrective to this kind of feeling and opinion. It is necessary to bring back public officers to the |184| 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, nor 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 institutions, when all the offices in these several departments 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 grasping of the spoils to have been the object of their efforts.

This part of the bill, therefore, Sir, is a subject for fair comparison. We have gained something, doubtless, 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 decidedly in favor of the present bill. I think it will make men more dependent on 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 republicanism, by causing the opinion of the people respecting the measures of government, and the men in government, to be 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, in their warfare against selfishness and cupidity.

The second check on executive patronage contained in this bill is of still greater importance than the first. This provision is, that, whenever the President removes any of these officers from office, he shall state to the Senate the reasons for such removal. |185| This part of the bill has been opposed, both on constitutional grounds and on grounds of expediency.

The bill, it is to be observed, expressly recognizes and admits the actual existence of the power of removal. I do not mean to deny, and the bill does not deny, that, at the present moment, the President may remove these officers at will, because the early decision adopted that construction, and the laws have since uniformly sanctioned it. The law of 1820, intended to be repealed by this bill, expressly affirms the power. I consider it, therefore, a settled point ; settled by construction, settled by precedent, settled by the practice of the government, and settled by statute. At the same time, after considering the question again and again within the last six years, I am very willing to say, that, in my deliberate judgment, 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 argument. 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 nowhere says one word of the power of removal from office, except in the case of conviction on impeachment. Wherever the power exists, therefore, except in cases of impeachment, it must exist as a constructive or incidental power. If it exists in the President 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 therefore, the existence of which, if proved at all, is to be proved by inference and argument. In 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, |186| in cases of conviction on impeachment. No other mention is made, in the whole instrument, of any power of removal. 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 clause 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 necessarily included.

It is true, that the Constitution declares that the executive 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 ? Executive power is not a thing so well known, and so accurately defined, as that the written constitution of a limited government can be supposed to have conferred it in the lump. What is executive power ? What are its boundaries ? What model or example had the framers of the Constitution in their minds, when they spoke of “executive 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 De Lolme ? All these differ from one another as to the extent of the executive power of government. What, then, was intended by “the executive 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 executive authority ; but they mean, further, that he shall hold this authority according to the grants and limitations of the Constitution itself.

They did not intend, certainly, a sweeping gift of prerogative. 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 general words, they proceed specifically to enumerate his several distinct and particular authorities ; to fix and define them ; to give the Senate an essential control over |187| the exercise of some of them, and to leave others uncontrolled. By the executive power conferred on the President, the Constitution means no more than that portion which itself creates, and which it qualifies, limits, and circumscribes.

A general survey of the frame of the Constitution will satisfy us of this. That instrument goes all along upon the idea of dividing the powers of government, so far as practicable, into three great departments. It describes the powers and duties of these departments in an article allotted to each. As first in importance and dignity, it begins with the legislative department. The first article of the Constitution, therefore, commences with the declaration, that “all legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” The article goes on to prescribe the manner in which Congress is to be constituted and organized, and then proceeds to enumerate, specifically, the powers intended to be granted ; and adds the general clause, conferring such authority as may be necessary to carry granted powers into effect. Now, Sir, no man doubts that this is a limited legislature ; that it possesses no powers but such as are granted by express words or necessary implication ; and that it would be quite preposterous to insist that Congress possesses any particular legislative power, merely because it is, in its nature, a legislative body, if no grant can be found for it in the Constitution itself.

Then comes, Sir, the second article, creating an executive power ; and it declares, that “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” After providing for the mode of choosing him, it immediately proceeds to enumerate, specifically, the powers which he shall possess and exercise, and the duties which he shall perform. I consider the language of this article, therefore, precisely analogous to that in which the legislature is created ; that is to say, I understand the Constitution as saying that “the executive power herein granted shall be vested in a President of the United States.”

In like manner, the third article, or that which is intended to arrange the judicial system, begins by declaring that “the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish.” But these general words do |188| not show what extent of judicial power is vested in the courts of the United States. All that is left to be done, and is done, in the following sections, by express and well-guarded provisions.

I think, therefore, Sir, that very great caution is to be used, and the ground well considered, before we admit that the President derives any distinct and specific power from those general words which vest the executive authority in him. The Constitution itself does not rest satisfied with these general words. It immediately goes into particulars, and carefully enumerates the several authorities which the President shall possess. The very first of the enumerated powers is the command of the army and navy. This, most certainly, is an executive power. And why is it particularly set down and expressed, if any power was intended to be granted under the general words ? This would pass, if any thing would pass, under those words. But enumeration, specification, particularization, was evidently the design of the framers of the Constitution, in this as in other parts of it. I do not, therefore, regard the declaration that the executive power shall be vested in a President as being any grant at all ; any more than the declaration that the legislative power shall be vested in Congress constitutes, by itself, a grant of such power. In the one case, as in the other, I think the object was to describe and denominate the department, which should hold, respectively, the legislative and the executive authority ; very much as we see, in some of the State constitutions, that the several articles are headed with the titles “legislative power,” “executive power,” “judicial power” ; and this entitling of the articles with the name of the power has never been supposed, of itself, to confer any authority whatever. It amounts to no more than naming the departments.

If, then, the power of removal be admitted to be an executive power, still it must be sought for and found among the enumerated executive powers, or fairly implied from some one or more of them. It cannot be implied from the general words. The power of appointment was not left to be so implied ; why, then, should the power of removal have been so left ? They are both closely connected ; one is indispensable to the other ; why. then, was one carefully expressed, defined, and limited, and not one word said about the other ?

Sir, I think the whole matter is sufficiently plain. Nothing is |189| said in the Constitution about the power of removal, because it is not a separate and distinct power. It is part of the power of appointment, naturally going with it or necessarily resulting from it. The Constitution or the laws may separate these powers, it is true, in a particular case, as is done in respect to the judges, who, though appointed by the President and Senate, cannot be removed at the pleasure of either or of both. So a statute, in prescribing the tenure of any other office, may place the officer beyond the reach of the appointing power. But where no other tenure is prescribed, and officers hold their places at will, that will is necessarily the will of the appointing power ; because the exercise of the power of appointment at once displaces such officers. The power of placing one man in office necessarily implies the power of turning another out. If one man be Secretary of State, and another be appointed, the first goes out by the mere force of the appointment of the other, without any previous act of removal whatever. And this is the practice of the government, and has been, from the first. In all the removals which have been made, they have generally been effected simply by making other appointments. I cannot find a case to the contrary. There is no such thing as any distinct official act of removal. I have looked into the practice, and caused inquiries to be made in the departments, and I do not learn that any such proceeding is known as an entry or record of the removal of an officer from office ; and the President could only act, in such cases, by causing some proper record or entry to be made, as proof of the fact of removal. I am aware that there have been some cases in which notice has been sent to persons in office that their services are, or will be, after a given day, dispensed with. These are usually cases in which the object is, not to inform the incumbent that he is removed, but to toll him that a successor either is, or by a day named will be, appointed. If there be any instances in which such notice is given without express reference to the appointment of a successor, they are few ; and even in these, such reference must be implied ; because in no case is there any distinct official act of removal, that I can find, unconnected with the act of appointment. At any rate, it is the usual practice, and has been from the first, to consider the appointment as producing the removal of the previous incumbent. When the President desires to remove a |190| person from office, he sends a message to the Senate nominating some other person. The message usually runs in this form : “I nominate A. B. to be collector of the customs, &c., in the place of C. D., removed.” If the Senate advise and consent to this nomination, C. D. is effectually out of office, and A. B. is in, in his place. The same effect would be produced, if the message should say nothing of any removal. Suppose A. B. to be Secretary of State, and the President to send us a message, saying merely, “I nominate C. D. to be Secretary of State.” If we confirm this nomination, C. D. becomes Secretary of State, and A. B. is necessarily removed.

I have gone into these details and particulars, Sir, for the purpose of showing, that, not only in the nature of things, but also according to the practice of the government, the power of removal is incident to the power of appointment. It belongs to it, is attached to it, forms a part of it, or results from it.

If this be true, the inference is manifest. If the power of removal, when not otherwise regulated by Constitution or law, be part and parcel of the power of appointment, or a necessary incident to it, then whoever holds the power of appointment holds also the power of removal. But it is the President and the Senate, and not the President alone, who hold the power of appointment ; and therefore, according to the true construction of the Constitution, it should be the President and Senate, and not the President alone, who hold the power of removal.

The decision of 1789 has been followed by a very strange and indefensible anomaly, showing that it does not rest on any just principle. The natural connection between the appointing power and the removing power has, as I have already stated, always led the President to bring about a removal by the process of a new appointment. This is quite efficient for his purpose, when the Senate confirms the new nomination. One man is then turned out, and another put in. But the Senate sometimes rejects the new nomination ; and what then becomes of the old incumbent ? Is he out of office, or is he still in ? He has not been turned out by any exercise of the power of appointment, for no appointment has been made. That power has not been exercised. He has not been removed by any distinct and separate act of removal, for no such act has been performed, or attempted. Is he still in, then, or is he out ? Where is he ? In |191| this dilemma, Sir, those who maintain the power of removal as existing in the President alone are driven to what seems to me very near absurdity. The incumbent has not been removed by the appointing power, since the appointing power has not been exercised. He has not been removed by any distinct and independent act of removal, since no such act has been performed.

They are forced to the necessity, therefore, of contending that the removal has been accomplished by the mere nomination of a successor ; so that the removing power is made incident, not to the appointing power, but to one part of it ; that is, to the nominating power. The nomination, not having been assented to by the Senate, it is clear, has failed, as the first step in the process of appointment. But though thus rendered null and void in its main object, as the first process in making an appointment, it is held to be good and valid, nevertheless, to bring about that which results from an appointment ; that is, the removal of the person actually in office. In other words, the nomination produces the consequences of an appointment, or some of them, though it be itself no appointment, and effect no appointment. This, Sir, appears to me to be any thing but sound reasoning and just construction.

But this is not all. The President has sometimes sent us a nomination to an office already filled, and, before we have acted upon it, has seen fit to withdraw it. What is the effect of such a nomination ? If a nomination, merely as such, turns out the present incumbent, then he is out, let what will become afterwards of the nomination. But I believe the President has acted upon the idea that a nomination made, and at any time afterwards withdrawn, does not remove the actual incumbent.

Sir, even this is not the end of the inconsistencies into which the prevailing doctrine has led. There have been cases in which nominations to offices already filled have come to the Senate, remained here for weeks, or months, the incumbents all the while continuing to discharge their official duties, and relinquishing their offices only when the nominations of their successors have been confirmed, and commissions issued to them ; so that, if a nomination be confirmed, the nomination itself makes no removal ; the removal then waits to be brought about by the appointment. But if the nomination be rejected, |192| then the nomination itself, it is contended, has effected the removal. Who can defend opinions which lead to such results ?

These reasons, Sir, incline me strongly to the opinion, that, upon a just construction of the Constitution, the power of removal is part of, or a necessary result from, the power of appointment, and, therefore, that it ought to have been exercised by the Senate concurrently with the President.

The argument may be strengthened by various illustrations. The Constitution declares that Congress may vest the appointment of inferior officers in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments ; and Congress has passed various acts providing for appointments, according to this regulation of the Constitution. Thus the Supreme Court, and other courts of the United States, have authority to appoint their clerks ; heads of departments also appoint their own clerks, according to statute provisions ; and it has never been doubted that these courts, and these heads of departments, may remove their clerks at pleasure, although nothing is said in the laws respecting such power of removal. Now, it is evident that neither the courts nor the heads of departments acquire the right of removal under a general grant of executive power, for none such is made to them ; nor upon the ground of any general injunction to see the laws executed, for no such general injunction is addressed to them. They nevertheless hold the power of removal, as all admit, and they must hold it, therefore, simply as incident to, or belonging to, the power of appointment. There is no other clause under which they can possibly claim it.

Again ; let us suppose that the Constitution had given to the President the power of appointment, without consulting the Senate. Suppose it had said, “The President shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States.” If the Constitution had stood thus, the President would unquestionably have possessed the power of removal, where the tenure of office was not fixed ; and no man, I imagine, would in that case have looked for the removing power either in that clause which says the executive authority shall be vested in the President, or in that other clause which makes it his duty to see the laws faithfully executed. Every body would have said, “The President possesses an uncontrolled power of appointment, and that |193| necessarily carries with it an uncontrolled power of removal, unless some permanent tenure be given to the office by the Constitution, or by law.”

And now, Sir, let me state, and examine, the main argument, on which the decision of 1789 appears to rest it.

The most plausible reasoning brought forward on that occasion may be fairly stated thus :—“The executive power is vested in the President ; this is the general rule of the Constitution. The association of the Senate with the President, in exercising a particular function belonging to the executive power, is an exception to this general rule, and exceptions to general rules are to be taken strictly ; therefore, though the Senate partakes of the appointing power, by express provision, yet, as nothing is said of its participation in the removing power, such participation is to be excluded.”

The error of this argument, if I may venture to call it so, considering who used it,^*|193| lies in this. It supposes the power of removal to be held by the President under the general grant of executive power. Now, it is certain that the power of appointment is not held under that general grant, because it is particularly provided for, and is conferred, in express terms, on the President and Senate. If, therefore, the power of removal be a natural appendage to the power of appointment, then it is not conferred by the general words granting executive power to the President, but is conferred by the special clause which gives the appointing power to the President and Senate. So that the spirit of the very rule on which the argument of 1789, as I have stated it, relies, appears to me to produce a directly opposite result ; for, if exceptions to a general rule are to be taken strictly, when expressed, it is still more clear, when they are not expressed at all, that they are not to be implied except on evident and clear grounds ; and as the general power of appointment is confessedly given to the President and Senate, no exception is to be implied in favor of one part of that general power, namely, the removing part, unless for some obvious and irresistible reason. In other words, this argument which I am answering is not sound in its premises, and therefore not sound in its conclusion, if the grant of the power of appointment does naturally |194| include also the power of removal, when this last power is not otherwise expressly provided for ; because, if the power of removal belongs to the power of appointment, or necessarily follows it, then it has gone with it into the hands of the President and Senate ; and the President does not hold it alone, as an implication or inference from the grant to him of general executive powers.

The true application of that rule of construction, thus relied on, would present the argument, I think, in this form : “The appointing power is vested in the President and Senate ; this is the general rule of the Constitution. The removing power is part of the appointing power ; it cannot be separated from the rest, but by supposing that an exception was intended ; but all exceptions to general rules are to be taken strictly, even when expressed ; and, for a much stronger reason, they are not to be implied, when not expressed, unless inevitable necessity of construction requires it.”

On the whole, Sir, with the diffidence which becomes one who is reviewing the opinions of some of the ablest and wisest men of the age, I must still express my own conviction, that the decision of Congress in 1789, which separated the power of removal from the power of appointment, was founded on an erroneous construction of the Constitution, and that it has led to great inconsistencies, as well as to great abuses, in the subsequent, and especially in the more recent, history of the government.

Much has been said now, and much was said formerly, about the inconvenience of denying this power to the President alone. I agree that an argument drawn from this source may have weight, in a doubtful case ; but it is not to be permitted that we shall presume the existence of a power merely because we think it would be convenient. Nor is there, I think, any such glaring, striking, or certain inconvenience as has been suggested. Sudden removals from office are seldom necessary ; we see how seldom, by reference to the practice of the government under all administrations which preceded the present. And if we look back over the removals which have been made in the last six years, there is no man who can maintain that there is one case in a hundred in which the country would have suffered the least inconvenience if no removal had been made without the consent |195| of the Senate. Party might have felt the inconvenience, but the country never. Many removals have been made (by new appointments) during the session of the Senate ; and if there has occurred one single case, in the whole six years, in which the public convenience required the removal of an officer in the recess, such case has escaped my recollection. Besides, it is worthy of being remembered, when we are seeking for the true intent of the Constitution on this subject, that there is reason to suppose that its framers expected the Senate would be in session a much larger part of the year than the House of Representatives, so that its concurrence could generally be had, at once, on any question of appointment or removal.

But this argument, drawn from the supposed inconvenience of denying an absolute power of removal to the President, suggests still another view of the question. The argument asserts, that it must have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution to confer the power on the President, for the sake of convenience, and as an absolutely necessary power in his hands. Why, then, did they leave their intent doubtful ? Why did they not confer the power in express terms ? Why were they thus totally silent on a point of so much importance ?

Seeing that the removing power naturally belongs to the appointing power ; seeing that, in other cases, in the same Constitution, its framers have left the one with the consequence of drawing the other after it,—if, in this instance, they meant to do what was uncommon and extraordinary, that is to say, if they meant to separate and divorce the two powers, why did they not say so ? Why did they not express their meaning in plain words ? Why should they take up the appointing power, and carefully define it, limit it, and restrain it, and yet leave to vague inference and loose construction an equally important power, which all must admit to be closely connected with it, if not a part of it ? If others can account for all this silence respecting the removing power, upon any other ground than that the framers of the Constitution regarded both powers as one, and supposed they had provided for them together, I confess I cannot. I have the clearest conviction, that they looked to no other mode of displacing an officer than by impeachment, or by the regular appointment of another person to the same place.

But, Sir, whether the decision of 1789 were right or wrong, |196| the bill before us applies to the actually existing state of things, It recognizes the President’s power of removal, in express terms, as it has been practically exercised, independently of the Senate. The present bill does not disturb the power ; but I wish it not to be understood that the power is, even now, beyond the reach of legislation. I believe it to be within the just power of Congress to reverse the decision of 1789, and I mean to hold myself at liberty to act, hereafter, upon that question, as I shall think the safety of the government and of the Constitution may require. The present bill, however, proceeds upon the admission that the power does at present exist. Its words are :—

“Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That, in all nominations made by the President to the Senate, to fill vacancies occasioned by the exercise of the President’s power to remove the said officers mentioned in the second section of this act, the fact of the removal shall be stated to the Senate, at the same time that the nomination is made, with a statement of the reasons for which such officer may have been removed.”

In my opinion, this provision is entirely constitutional, and highly expedient.

The regulation of the tenure of office is a common exercise of legislative authority, and the power of Congress in this particular is not at all restrained or limited by any thing contained in the Constitution, except in regard to judicial officers. All the rest is left to the ordinary discretion of the legislature. Congress may give to offices which it creates (except those of judges) what duration it pleases. When the office is created, and is to be filled, the President is to nominate the candidate to fill it ; but when he comes into the office, he comes into it upon the conditions and restrictions which the law may have attached to it. If Congress were to declare by law that the Attorney-General, or the Secretary of State, should hold his office during good behavior, I am not aware of any ground on which such a law could be held unconstitutional. A provision of that kind in regard to such officers might be unwise, but I do not perceive that it would transcend the power of Congress.

If the Constitution had not prescribed the tenure of judicial office, Congress might have thought it expedient to give the judges just such a tenure as the Constitution has itself provided ; that is |197| to say, a right to hold during good behavior ; and I am of opinion, that such a law would have been perfectly constitutional. It is by law, in England, that the judges are made independent of the removing power of the crown. I do not think that the Constitution, by giving the power of appointment, or the power both of appointment and removal, to the President and Senate, intended to impose any restraint on the legislature, in regard to its authority of regulating the duties, powers, duration, or responsibility of office. I agree, that Congress ought not to do any thing which shall essentially impair that right of nomination and appointment of certain officers, such as ministers, judges, &c., which the Constitution has vested in the President and Senate. But while the power of nomination and appointment is left fairly where the Constitution has placed it, I think the whole field of regulation is open to legislative discretion. If a law were to pass, declaring that district attorneys, or collectors of customs, should hold their offices four years, unless removed on conviction for misbehavior, no one could doubt its constitutional validity ; because the legislature is naturally competent to prescribe the tenure of office. And is a reasonable check on the power of removal any thing more than a qualification of the tenure of office ? Let it be always remembered, that the President’s removing power, as now exercised, is claimed and held under the general clause vesting in him the executive authority. It is implied, or inferred, from that clause alone.

Now, if it is properly derived from that source, since the Constitution does not say how it shall be limited, how defined, or how carried into effect, it seems especially proper for Congress, under the general provision of the Constitution which gives it authority to pass all laws necessary to carry into effect the powers conferred on any department, to regulate the subject of removal. And the regulation here required is of the gentlest kind. It only provides that the President shall make known to the Senate his reasons for removal of officers of this description, when he does see fit to remove them. It might, I think, very justly go farther. It might, and perhaps it ought, to prescribe the form of removal, and the proof of the fact. It might, I also think, declare that the President should only suspend officers, at pleasure, till the next meeting of the Senate, according to the amendment suggested by the honorable member from Kentucky ; |198| and, if the present practice cannot be otherwise checked, this provision, in my opinion, ought hereafter to be adopted. But I am content with the slightest degree of restraint which may be sufficient to arrest the totally unnecessary, unreasonable, and dangerous exercise of the power of removal. I desire only, for the present at least, that, when the President turns a man out of office, he should give his reasons for it to the Senate, when he nominates another person to fill the place. Let him give these reasons, and stand on them. If they are fair and honest, he need have no fear in stating them. It is not to invite any trial ; it is not to give the removed officer an opportunity of defence ; it is not to excite controversy and debate ; it is simply that the Senate, and ultimately the public, may know the grounds of removal. I deem this degree of regulation, at least, necessary ; unless we are willing to submit all these officers to an absolute and a perfectly irresponsible removing power ; a power which, as recently exercised, tends to turn the whole body of public officers into partisans, dependants, favorites, sycophants, and man-worshippers.

Mr. President, without pursuing the discussion further, I will detain the Senate only while I recapitulate the opinions which I have expressed ; because I am far less desirous of influencing the judgment of others, than of making clear the grounds of my own judgment.

I think, then, Sir, that the power of appointment naturally and necessarily includes the power of removal, where no limitation is expressed, nor any tenure but that at will declared. The power of appointment being conferred on the President and Senate, I think the power of removal went along with it, and should have been regarded as a part of it, and exercised by the same hands. I think, consequently, that the decision of 1789, which implied a power of removal separate from the appointing power, was erroneous.

But I think the decision of 1789 has been established by practice, and recognized by subsequent laws, as the settled construction of the Constitution, and that it is our duty to act upon the case accordingly, for the present ; without admitting that Congress may not, hereafter, if necessity shall require it, reverse the decision of 1789. I think the legislature possesses the power of regulating the condition, duration, qualification, and tenure |199| of office, in all cases where the Constitution has made no express provision on the subject.

I am, therefore, of opinion, that it is competent for Congress to declare by law, as one qualification of the tenure of office, that the incumbent shall remain in place till the President shall remove him, for reasons to be stated to the Senate. And I am of opinion that this qualification, mild and gentle as it is, will have some effect in arresting the evils which beset the progress of the government, and seriously threaten its future prosperity.

These are the reasons for which I give my support to this bill.

Special Signs to Represent the Pagination of the Original:

• |231| is the page number 231 in the original

|446| […] SPEECH
On the Bill reported by the Select Committee on Executive Patronage, delivered in the Senate, February 13th, 1835.

Mr. Calhoun said : This is not the first time that the measure now under consideration has been before the Senate. It was introduced eight years ago, on the report of a select |447| committee raised on Executive Patronage, as one of the measures then thought necessary to curtail what, at that time, was thought to be the excessive patronage of the Executive. The party then in opposition, and now in power, then pledged themselves to the community that, should they be elevated to power, they would administer the Government on the principles laid down in the report. Mr. C. said, that it was now high time to inquire how this solemn pledge, which, in his opinion, imposed a sacred obligation, has been redeemed ? Has the plighted faith been kept which the committee gave in the name of the party ? Before I undertake to answer this question, it may be proper to inquire—Who constituted that committee, and what is the position they now occupy ? The chairman was Mr. Benton, now a member of the Senate and of the present committee. The name of Mr. Macon, then a Senator from North Carolina, so well known to the country, stands next ; Mr. Van Buren, now Vice-President ; Mr. Hickerson, now Secretary of the Treasury ; Mr. Johnson, now a member of the House from Kentucky ; Mr. White, then, as now, Senator from Tennessee ; Mr. Holmes of Maine ; Mr. Hayne of South Carolina ; Mr. Findlay of Pennsylvania ; all, at the time, distinguished members of this body.

Such was the committee, which, then and now, stands so high in the confidence of the party now in power. Hear what their report says upon the subject of Executive Patronage.

[Here an extract from the Report was read as follows :]

“To be able to show to the Senate a full and perfect view of the power and workings of Federal patronage, the committee addressed a note, immediately after they were charged with this inquiry, to each of the departments, and to the Postmaster-General, requesting to be informed of the whole number of persons employed, and the whole amount of money paid out, under the direction of their respective departments ? The answers received are herewith submitted, and made part of this report. |448| With the ‘Blue Book,’ they will discover enough to show that the predictions of those who were not blind to the defects of the constitution, are ready to be realized ; that the power and influence of Federal patronage, contrary to the argument in the ‘Federalist,’ is an overmatch for the power and influence of State patronage ; that its workings will contaminate the purity of all elections, and enable the Federal Government, eventually, to govern throughout the States, as effectually as if they were so many provinces of one vast empire.

“The whole of this great power will centre in the President. The King of England is the ‘fountain of honor ;’ the President of the United States is the source of patronage. He presides over the entire system of Federal appointments, jobs, and contracts. He has ‘power’ over the ‘support’ of the individuals who administer the system. He makes and unmakes them. He chooses from the circle of his friends and supporters, and may dismiss them ; and, upon all the principles of human actions, will dismiss them, as often as they disappoint his expectations. His spirit will animate their actions in all the elections to State and Federal offices. There may be exceptions ; but the truth of a general rule is proved by the exception. The intended check and control of the Senate, without new constitutional or statutory provisions, will cease to operate. Patronage will penetrate this body, subdue its capacity of resistance, chain it to the car of power, and enable the President to rule as easily, and much more securely with, than without the nominal check of the Senate. If the President was himself the officer of the people, elected by them, and responsible to them, there would be less danger from this concentration of all power in his hands ; but it is the business of statesmen to act upon things as they are, not as they would wish them to be. We must then look forward to the time when the public revenue will be doubled ; when the civil and military officers of the Federal Government will be quadrupled ; when its influence over individuals will be multiplied to an indefinite extent ; when the nomination by the President can carry any man through the Senate, and his recommendation can carry any measure through the two Houses of Congress ; when the principle of public action will be open and avowed ; the President wants my vote, and I want his patronage ; I will vote as he wishes, and he will give me the office I wish for. What will this be, but the government of one man ? and what is the government of one man, but a monarchy ? Names are nothing. The nature of a thing is in its substance, and the name soon accommodates itself to the substance. The first Roman Emperor was styled Emperor of the Republic, and the last French Emperor took the same title ; and their respective countries were just as essentially monarchical before, as after the assumption of these titles. It cannot be |449| denied or dissembled but that the Federal Government gravitates to the same point, and that the election of the Executive by the Legislature quickens the impulsion.

“Those who make the President must support him. Their political fate becomes identified, and they must stand or fall together. Right or wrong, they must support him ; and if he is made contrary to the will of the people, he must be supported not only by votes and speeches, but by arms. A violent and forced state of things will ensue ; individual combats will take place ; and the combats of individuals will be the forerunner to general engagements. The array of man against man will be the prelude to the array of army against army, and of State against State. Such is the law of nature ; and it is equally in vain for one set of men to claim an exemption from its operation, as it would be for any other set to suppose that, under the same circumstances, they would not act in the same manner. The natural remedy for all these evils, would be to place the election of President in the hands of the people of the United States. He would then have a power to support him, which would be as able, as willing to aid him when he was himself supporting the interests of the country, as they would be to put him down when he should neglect or oppose those interests. Your committee, looking at the present mode of electing the President as the principal source of all this evil, have commenced their labors at the beginning of this session, by recommending an amendment to the constitution in that essential and vital particular ; but in this, as in many other things, they find the greatest difficulty to be in the first step. The committee recommend the amendment, but the people cannot act upon it until Congress shall ‘propose’ it, and peradventure Congress will not ‘propose ’ it to them at all.

“It is no longer true that the President, in dealing out offices to Members of Congress, will be limited, as supposed in the Federalist, to the inconsiderable number of places which may become vacant by the ordinary casualties of deaths and resignations ; on the contrary, he may now draw, for that purpose, upon the entire fund of the Executive patronage. Construction and legislation have accomplished this change. In the very first year of the constitution, a construction was put upon that instrument which enabled the President to create as many vacancies as he pleased, and at any moment that he thought proper. This was effected by yielding to him the kingly prerogative of dismissing officers without the formality of a trial. The authors of the Federalist had not foreseen this construction ; so far from it, they had asserted the contrary, and, arguing logically from the premises, ‘that the dismissing power was appurtenant to the appointing power,” they had maintained, in No. 77 of that standard work, that, as the consent of the Senate was necessary to the |450| appointment of an officer, so the consent of the same body would be equally necessary to his dismission from office. But this construction was overruled by the first Congress which was formed under the constitution ; the power of dismission from office was abandoned to the President alone, and, with the acquisition of this prerogative alone, the power and patronage of the Presidential office was instantly increased to an indefinite extent, and the argument of the Federalist against the capacity of the President, to corrupt the Members of Congress, founded upon the small number of places which he could use for that purpose, was totally overthrown. So much for construction. Now for the effects of legislation ; and without going into an enumeration of statutes which unnecessarily increase the Executive patronage, the Four Years’ Appointment Law will alone be mentioned ; for this single act, by vacating almost the entire civil list, once in every period of a presidential term of service, places more offices at the command of the President than were known to the constitution at the time of its adoption, and is, of itself amply sufficient to overthrow the whole of the argument which was used in the Federalist.”

It is impossible, said Mr. C., to read this report, which denounces in such unqualified terms the excess and the abuses of patronage at that time, without being struck with the deplorable change which a few short years have wrought in the character of our country. Then we were sensitive in all that related to our liberty ; and jealous of patronage and governmental influence : so much so, that a few inconsiderable removals, three or four printers, roused the indignation of the whole country—events which would now pass unnoticed. We have grown insensible, become callous and stupid.

But let us turn to the question which I have asked. How has the plighted faith of the party been fulfilled ? Have the abuses then denounced been corrected ? Has the Four Years’ Law been repealed ? Has the election of the President been given to the people ? Has the exercise of the dismissing power by the President, which was then pronounced to be a dangerous violation of the constitution, been restored to Congress ? All these pledges have been forgotten. Not one has been fulfilled. And what justification, I ask, is offered for so gross a violation of faith ? None is even attempted—|451| the delinquency is acknowledged ; and the only effort which the Senator from Missouri has made to defend his own conduct, and that of the administration, in adopting the practice which he then denounced, is on the plea of retaliation. He says that he has been fourteen years a member of the Senate ; and that, during the first seven, no friend of his had received the favor of the Government ; and contends that it became necessary to dismiss those in office, to make room for others who had been, for so long a time, beyond the circle of Executive favor. What, Mr. C. asked, is the principle, when correctly understood, on which this defence rests ? It assumes that retaliation is a principle in its nature so sacred, that it justifies the violation of the constitution, the breach of plighted faith, and the subversion of principles, the observance of which had been declared to be essential to the liberty of the country. The avowal of such a principle may be justified at this time by interested partisans ; but the time must arrive, when a more impartial tribunal will regard it in a far different light, and pronounce that sentence which violated faith and broken pledges deserve. Mr. C. said, the bill now before the Senate affords an opportunity to the dominant party to redeem its pledges, as late as it is, and to avert, at least in part, that just denunciation which an impartial posterity will otherwise most certainly pronounce on them. He hoped that they would embrace the opportunity, and thereby prove that, in expelling the former administration they were not merely acting a part, and that the solemn pledges and promises then given were not electioneering tricks, devoid of sincerity and truth. I consider it, said Mr. C., as an evidence of that deep degeneracy, which precedes the downfall of a republic, when those elevated to power, forget the promises on which they were elevated ; the certain effect of which is to make an impression on the public mind, that all is juggling and tricky in politics—and to create an |452| indifference to political struggles, highly favorable to the growth of despotic power.

[Mr. Benton here rose and made some remarks in defence of himself and the administration ; after which]—

Mr. Calhoun proceeded to show, that the prerogative of turning out of office, committed, without limitation to the President, is a means of increasing at once the Executive power to a dangerous and ruinous extent ; rendering him the head of a party, not founded on principles, but resting on the worst of all bases, that of personal interest and fear.

Having shown that the present administration rose to power by the hopes excited, and professions held out against the very abuses which now had grown to so alarming an excess, Mr. Calhoun deplored, in energetic terms, the falsification of those hopes ; urging the fatal effects which are produced, when the solemn promises and plighted faith of men are broken, and when the people are led to believe that political truth is extinguished, and the most solemn engagements are merely made as stepping stones to power, and as instruments of electioneering.

[Mr. Benton here again rose, and in his usual strain of rude and vulgar insolence, interrupted the debate. He was called to order by Mr. Poindexter of Mississippi, and after some time spent in discussing the point, Mr. Calhoun rose and said :]

I rise to express my surprise at the course pursued by the member from Missouri (Col. Benton) who has just taken his seat. He is a member of the committee, and regularly attended its meetings. While the report was before the committee for consideration, he sat in silence, without whispering the objections now urged with so much violence, and in language so unwarranted. I had not intended to go into the report while the present bill was under consideration. It met the approbation of the whole committee, including |453| that of the Senator from Missouri, and I had a right to expect, at least as far as he was concerned, that it would pass without opposition. Under this impression I had proposed to myself to delay the discussion on the merits of the report, till the resolution to amend the constitution, from which the member dissented, came under consideration ; when an opportunity would be afforded to repel his broad and unfounded assertions and fallacious conclusions, and to establish the correctness of the report on all the points on which it had been assailed ; but the course pursued by the Senator compels me to repel his assertions without further delay.

When the subject of printing the report was under consideration a few days since, he asserted, in the boldest manner, that the estimate of the committee in relation to the surplus revenue was so wild, that wild was a term too moderate ; and that none less strong than “hallucination” could be applied. I then repelled his objections in a manner which I trust was satisfactory to every one capable of estimating the force of just reasoning ; but in order that there might not be a shadow of doubt on a point of so much importance, I have since re-examined the subject, and now pronounce, without the fear of contradiction, that on the Senator’s own premises, the estimate of the surplus, as reported by the committee, is correct—notwithstanding the outrageous extravagance of his assertions. The Senator did not venture any argument of his own to rebut the conclusion of the committee ; but, with that deference to power which is one of the characteristics of those with whom he is politically associated, he relied solely upon the statement of the Secretary of the Treasury, furnished in his annual report. Now, said Mr. C., it is remarkable that the estimates of the Secretary of the income of the current year, instead of supporting the unwarranted assertions of the Senator from Missouri, coincide remarkably with the estimate of the committee ; which shows with what disregard to the state of the facts the Senator ventures |454| his assertions, though uttered with so much confidence. But that there may be no further question on this point, I will turn to the report of the Secretary itself, and compare in detail his estimate with that submitted by the committee. Beginning, then, with the customs, which is the principal source of our revenue, the Secretary estimates the income from this source at sixteen millions of dollars ; the committee at sixteen millions three hundred and seventy thousand dollars ; making a difference of but three hundred and seventy thousand dollars—a very striking coincidence, considering that the calculations rest upon grounds so essentially different. The Secretary assumes as his basis the income from the customs for the last year, without taking into the estimate that a very considerable portion of the receipts from that source last year were derived from duties accruing the preceding year, when the rates were much higher than they are now ; but to balance this error, he omits to take into the account the diminution of the imports of articles subject to duty, in consequence of the disturbed state of the currency, which two sums nearly balance each other ; and thus, by two errors of an opposite character, and of nearly equal magnitude, he has accidentally fallen upon the truth.

As to the next greatest source of our revenue, the public lands, the estimates of the Secretary and the committee exactly coincide ; both placing it at three millions five hundred thousand dollars. The estimates of the remaining resources are placed by the Secretary at $500,070 ; by the committee at $450,000 ; making a difference of $50,070 only. Adding these several items on both sides, the aggregate of the Secretary amounts to $20,000,070 ; and that of the committee to $20,320,000 ; making a difference of but $319,930. So much for the income. As to the expenditure, I am not ignorant that the Secretary estimates it at $19,683,541—making a difference between that and his estimate of the income, of $316,529. The committee, on the |455| contrary, make no estimate of the actual expenditure. Its object was not to estimate the expenditure on the present scale, which is admitted by the Senator himself to be enormous, profuse, and profligate. On the contrary, the object of the committee was to ascertain to what these expenditures might safely be reduced, consistently with the just efficiency of the Government. For this purpose, they selected the year 1823 as the basis on which to rest their estimate—a year which the Senator at that time, and those with whom he then acted, denounced as profuse and extravagant (Mr. Benton assented), and which he even now has the assurance to allude to as extravagant, and attempts to hold me responsible as its author. Well, then, I have taken this extravagant period. I have allowed twenty per cent, upon its expenditure—which so many who now support the present administration, then pronounced as so extravagant. Yes, twenty per cent, on the then expenditure on fortifications—on internal improvements—on pensions, and every other item, all of which the Senator has pronounced to have been so extravagant at that period, that even now he holds the then administration responsible, in his zeal to defend the present. I have gone further. I have added the actual increase of pensions, of which he now complains so much, and to which he mainly attributes the present great increase of expenditure, to the twenty per cent., and find that, with all these heavy additions, the expenditure ought not, at present, to exceed $12,060,412 per annum for the next seven years ; which, deducted from the estimate of the receipts of the present year, as given by the Secretary of the Treasury, and on which the Senator relies for his uncourteous and extravagant assertions, leaves a balance of $7,939,658. If we allow for the surplus revenue now in the treasury, deducting two millions for contingent expense, and the Government portion of the United States Bank stock—making together $13,039,381—and distribute this sum equally in the next |456| seven years, it would give $1,862,768 to each year. Add this to the surplus already obtained, and it would give a balance of upwards of nine millions, as estimated by the committee.

Thus, said Mr. C., the very authority which the Senator resorts to, and on the strength of which he has ventured to utter his bold and lawless denunciations of the report, sustains it in a most remarkable manner, and furnishes a striking proof of the carelessness and inattention of the Senator in his assumptions and his arguments.

Nature, said Mr. C., has bestowed her gifts very unequally and partially upon men. To some she has given one quality, and to others another. She has certainly been profuse of her gifts to the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton), in one particular ; she has endowed him, above all men, with boldness—yes, boldness of assertion ; but I must say she has been more niggard in the power of ratiocination. In the face of this confirmation of the estimate of the committee, by his own authority, he has ventured to assail the correctness of the report in the most unqualified manner, and bellowed out that the estimate was extravagant—a fallacy—hallucination !

He has, said Mr. C., not thought proper to repeat these offensive epithets in the speech which he has just delivered ; but in lieu of them he tells us that the report is deceptive—fallacious ; and that, while pretending to moderation but thinly veiled, it partakes of the most bitter party character ; and in the same breath with which he makes these charges, he alleges, as a serious charge against the committee, that they did not go into an inquiry of the cause of the enormous increase of patronage and expenditure, which the Senator cannot deny. I repel, said Mr. C., the charges of the Senator as destitute of any foundation, and affirm that the report is as free from party spirit as it is possible for a paper of this description to be, consistently with truth and a regard to duty. The Senate charged the committee, in its resolution, to inquire into the extent of Executive patronage—its great |457| increase of late—and the expediency and practicability of reducing it ; and how could the committee perform this duty without speaking freely of facts as they exist ? How could they inform the people of these States of the extent of Executive patronage, and the cause of its great increase of late, if they had said less than they have ? The truth is, the committee looked to the facts, and to the facts only ; and treated of them, as much as possible, separate from all personal or party considerations ; and yet the Senator from Missouri, while he charges the committee with giving a party character to the report, with a strange inconsistency and confusion of ideas, blames them for not inquiring into the fact of who were the authors of the present extravagant expenditure and enormous patronage, which he does not pretend to deny. Can the Senator be so blind as not to see that it was impossible to discuss that point without giving a violent party character to the report, which would have ended in preventing the possibility of applying a remedy to what all (and he with others) admit to be a deep and dangerous disease ? I must tell the Senator what, as a member, he ought to know, that the committee were actuated by far higher and more patriotic considerations. They were more studious of devising a remedy to arrest the dangerous progress of events, than of giving a party character to their proceedings, which, however it might bear upon those in power, could not but defeat the object which the Senate had in view in instituting the inquiry. This is the reason why the committee did not inquire who were the authors of the present state of things. They were not deterred, as the Senator seems to insinuate, by the apprehension that the inquiry would implicate others as the authors of the present diseased condition of the country, and exempt the administration. The result of such an inquiry, so far from acquitting, would deeply implicate the administration in all the extravagant expenditures to which the Senator alludes—internal improvements, pensions, removal of |458| the Indians, and those connected with the tariff, as I am prepared to show, whenever a suitable opportunity offers. But before I quit this part of the subject, let me correct an error, into which it would seem strange that the Senator should have fallen. He tells us, with his usual confidence, that Andrew Jackson was the author of the plan of removing the Indians to the west of the Mississippi, and bestows upon him all the honor and the glory, and calls upon the State of Mississippi and the new States to pay the debt of gratitude which they owe him as the author of this noble policy. Is it possible that the Senator could have been ignorant that it was Thomas Jefferson, and not the object of his adoration, who was the real author ? Can he be ignorant that Andrew Jackson himself (as he calls the President), in the treaty with the Cherokees, in 1817, acknowledges this fact ? To come to a later period, is he ignorant that Mr. Monroe recommended, in one of his messages, in the fullest and most explicit manner, the adoption of the policy of the removal of all the Indian tribes within our limits on the east of the Mississippi, to the west of that river ? and that the message of Mr. Monroe was founded on a report of which I was the author, as Secretary of War ? How, with all these facts before him, could the Senator pronounce, as he has, that the present President was the author of the system, and that, as such, he ought to have bestowed upon him exclusively whatever honor and gratitude may belong to it ? Let me tell the Senator, that he who undertakes to correct the errors of others, ought to be very cautious of committing errors himself.

But it seems that the committee have committed an enormous error in the statement of the expenditure which they have given for the ten years from 1823 to 1833. The Senator says that they have entirely overlooked the extraordinary expenditure for the last of these years. A very simple answer will set him right. The object of the committee as |459| the statement itself on its face purports to be, is to exhibit the amount of the expenditures only for the period in question, without inquiring into their nature and character, or for what reason or objects they were incurred, with the view of showing that there was a regular progression and great increase of the expenditures of late. The statement is taken from the official returns of the expenditure during the ten years, and in addition to which the report gives the estimated expenditure for 1834, and the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury gives the estimate of the expenditure of the current year : so that the committee could have had no object in selecting 1833 with a view of exhibiting the increase to be greater than it really is. It was selected simply because it is the last year of which we have official and certain returns of the expenditures—those of 1834 and 1835 being as yet in some degree uncertain and conjectural. Now, said Mr. C., if the expenditure of 1833 gives us so unfair a result ; if, as the Senator contends, it was swelled so enormously by accidental circumstances, that seven millions ought to be deducted to obtain the true result, what will he say to the estimated expenditure of 1834 and 1835, which are but little short of twenty millions of dollars for each year ? Will he pretend to say that any extraordinary occurrences affected the disbursements of the last year, or that those of the present, as estimated by the Secretary, were not based on the usual items of expenditure ? Let us then lay aside the year 1833, to which the Senator so strenuously objects as being a year of extraordinary disbursements, and take that of the last or present year, the expenditure of which, as I have stated, is estimated at nearly twenty millions of dollars, and how much will the Senator gain by comparing either of those years with 1823 instead of 1833, to which he objects. He will find, on comparison, that the expenditures of 1823, compared with the estimates of this and the last year, are less than one half ; and how will he, who in 1826 condemned |460| the comparatively moderate expenditure of that period, undertake now to justify this enormous increase since—an increase which has occurred mainly under this reform administration, of which the Senator is one of the warmest and most unqualified supporters. But let us turn and examine the items of 1833, to which the Senator objects as being improperly charged upon that year.

First, the Black Hawk war, to which he charges nine hundred thousand dollars. Now, sir, said Mr. C., if I am not greatly mistaken, it was charged on this floor by a gentleman, a friend of the administration, well acquainted with that petty contest, that it originated in the misconduct of the officers and agents of the government ; and might easily have been prevented if the complaints of the Indians had not been improperly neglected by those whose duty it was to attend to them. The Senator then tells us that there were extraordinary Indian treaties in that year, and large sums paid for the removal and subsistence of the Indians—which together amounted to more than one million of dollars. I cannot, said Mr. C., admit this deduction. Of the present extravagant and unreasonable disbursements, there are none more reckless and profuse than those for holding Indian treaties, purchasing Indian lands and removing Indians—which exceed many fold what has heretofore been usual ; and I firmly believe have been the subject of as much, if not more abuse and corruption, than the post-office department.

The Senator next deducts the expenditure under the pension act of 1832, which he denominates loose and wild, but which he takes care to charge to the credit of Congress. I will not, said Mr. C., permit the Senator to shift the responsibility from the shoulders of the administration. It is not to be tolerated that, those who expelled a former administration because of its extravagance, shall now, when the administration thus brought into power proves to be doubly so, lay the blame upon Congress instead of taking it to themselves. |461| I would ask the Senator, when he drew his report in 1826 and denounced the then administration in such severe and unqualified terms for their extravagance, whether every item of expenditure at that time had not been authorized by Congress ? and with what semblance of justice could he then transfer the blame from Congress to the administration, and now, under precisely similar circumstances, from the administration to Congress ? He, and those who are now in power, have reaped the fruit—and as they obtained power by holding others responsible, so it is just that they should, in turn, be held responsible. I go further. I maintain as a sound rule, that every administration, unless it be in a minority in both Houses, ought, upon every principle of justice and policy, to be held responsible ; and it is one of the striking evidences of the diseased and corrupt state of the present times, that such is not the fact. Has not the present administration had, at all times, a majority either in this or the other House ? and has not the President freely exercised his veto whenever any party object was to be effected ? Why then has this appropriation, which the Senator designates as so extravagant and improper, been permitted to pass ? Why was it not defeated in the House of Representatives, where the administration had a settled majority, or arrested by the President’s veto ? I will answer these questions. It is because the administration has not thought proper to make either this, or any other question of principle or policy, a party question. A member may vote on any question of the kind for or against, and be still a good Jackson man. He may be for or against internal improvements—for or against the tariff—for or against this or that expenditure—for or against the Bank, without forfeiting his party character, provided always and nevertheless, he shall submit to party discipline and sustain the party candidates for office. This is the only cohesive principle ; this is the only subject deemed of sufficient importance to be raised to the dignity of a party question. |462| All others, however important in themselves ; however sacred the principle involved ; however essential the measure to the public prosperity, are all, it seems, too insignificant to be made party questions. They are all left open questions, in reference to which the faithful may take either side. Yes, even the Bank itself is not a party question—of which we have a most striking illustration in the fact that General Jackson bestowed the highest gift in his power on a Senator (Mr. Forsyth), who had openly, on this floor, in the very heat of the controversy, avowed himself a Bank man—while other Senators who were openly opposed to the institution were denounced ; thus furnishing a most striking illustration of the truth of what I have asserted, that the only cohesive principle which binds together the powerful party rallied under the name of General Jackson, is official patronage. Their object is to get and to hold office ; and their leading political maxim, openly avowed on this floor by one of the former Senators from New-York, now governor of that State (Mr. Marcy), is that, “to the victors belong the spoils of victory !” a sentiment recently reiterated during the present session, as I understand, by an influential member in the other House, and who had the assurance to declare every man a hypocrite who does not avow it. Can any one, who will duly reflect on these things, venture to say that all is sound, and that our Government is not undergoing a great and fatal change ? Let us not deceive ourselves—the very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party ; and that system of political morals which regards offices in a different light, as public prizes to be won by combatants most skilled in all the arts and corruption of political tactics, and to be used and enjoyed as their proper spoils—strikes a fatal blow at the very vitals of free institutions.

Mr. C. said, experience has shown that there is a great |463| tendency in our system to degenerate into this diseased state ; and I will venture to repeat (it cannot be done too often), what is stated in the report, that whenever the Executive patronage shall become sufficiently strong to form a party based on its influence exclusively, the liberty of the country, should that state of things continue for any considerable period, must be lost. We would make a great mistake were we to suppose that, because the Government of Great Britain can maintain its freedom under an immense patronage, ours also can. The genius of the two governments in this particular is wholly dissimilar ; so much so as to form a perfect contrast. It is the feature by which they are most distinguished. No free government that ever existed could maintain its liberty under so much patronage as that of Great Britain, and there are few that could not bear more than ours. But, said Mr. C., it is a great subject, which I cannot enter upon on the present occasion. I return to the objection which the Senator made to the statement of the expenditures of the year 1833. I could not be ignorant, said Mr. C., in making a movement against Executive patronage, that I would bring down upon me the vengeance of that great and powerful corps now held together by this single cohesive principle—a principle as flexible as India rubber, and as tough too. The history of the world proves that he who attempts reformation, attempts it at no small hazard. I know the relation which the Senator bears to the dominant party. He is identified with them,

[Here Mr. Benton said, Mrs. Royal says so ; to which Mr. C. re plied, she says truly ; and proceeded,]

and is their organ on the present occasion. His position compels him to adopt the course he has pursued.

There remain, then, only two items of the seven millions to be deducted : certain refunded duties, and the payment under the Danish convention, amounting to less than one |464| million and a half, which, if they were paid during the year, may be deducted as of an extraordinary nature, and for which the administration is not responsible ; and thus the seven millions of the Senator dwindles down to about one-fifth of the amount, and the expenditures of the year, after being freed of all the items of which it can justly be, will give an increase of expenditure in the year 1833, over that of 1822, of $11,429,750.

When the report asserted, said Mr. C., that the period from 1823 to 1833, was one of profound peace, to which the Senator so violently objects, the committee were not ignorant of the disturbance with Black Hawk and his followers, on our northwest frontier, which the Senator has attempted to dignify by calling it a war. If my memory serves me, it was limited to a single tribe, headed by a single chief, and did not extend to the nation to which he belonged, and lasted but a few months ; and it is in vain for the Senator from Missouri to impeach the correctness of the report, which asserts the period to be one of profound peace, by calling to our recollection this paltry affair, which originated in the misconduct of the administration, and has swelled into the little magnitude which it attained, by its mismanagement. The Senator from Missouri endeavors to escape from the inconsistency in which he is placed by his report in 1826 and his present position. He says that I was mistaken in placing his defence of General Jackson’s removals from office on political grounds, on the principle of retaliation ; that it was not on that principle, but that of equalizing the offices between the parties. I, said Mr. C., have not the sagacity to perceive the difference as applied to the present case, or by what possibility the Senator can escape from the inconsistency in which he is involved, by substituting the one for the other. What are the facts ? In 1826, as Chairman of the Select Committee on Executive Patronage, he made a report, in which he condemned the principle of removal from |465| office in the severest terms, more severe than those used in the present report. He traced its destructive tendency to the great increase which it was calculated to give to Executive patronage, and pronounced the exercise of the power by the President to be unconstitutional ; and now, when the present administration has carried the exercise of this very power, thus condemned by the Senator, more than thirty-fold beyond any or all preceding administrations, the Senator ventures to rest his vindication of the administration and his support of it on the ground of equalization—equalization ! What allusion, what exception did the Senator make in favor of equalization in his report ? and how can equalization any more than retaliation justify a violation of the constitution.

Mr. C. said, I regret that I have been forced to the discussion of these topics on the present bill, in reference to which the committee is unanimous ; but the extraordinary course of the Senator from Missouri, his bold and unfounded charges and unwarranted imputations, compel me to adopt the course which I have. I now hope that the bill may be allowed to proceed, and that further discussion on the merits of the report will be postponed to some future and more suitable occasion.

Special Signs to Represent the Pagination of the Original:

• |231| is the column number 231 in the original

[Truth and Decorum in the Senate Debates Relating to Executive Patronage]

|426| […] Mr. BENTON then rose and spoke for a considerable time against the report, from which he quoted largely, and commented with great warmth and severity. He read the following : “It is to convert the entire body of those in office into corrupt and supple instruments of power, and to raise up a host of hungry, greedy, and subservient partisans, ready for every service, however base and corrupt.”

Mr. B. remarked, “corrupt and supple instruments of power !” and the gentleman has done me the honor to identify me with them, as base and corrupt. Sir, |427| the Senate prevents me from applying that epithet to him which he deserves, after connecting me with such odious and infamous epithets—of identifying me with those supple and corrupt instruments of power. It is not necessary that I should repel the accusation, for the whole people of the United States will drive it back upon him as a bold and direct attack upon truth !

Mr. POINDEXTER rose and called the gentleman to order. He wished to know whether a Senator on that floor had a right to say that any thing said on it was “a direct attack upon truth ?”

Mr. CALHOUN hoped the gentleman from Mississippi would allow the Senator from Missouri to proceed. He cared nothing about the Senator’s assertion that he (Mr. C.) was bold enough to make an attack upon truth. Nothing that fell from that gentleman deserved his attention.

Mr. POINDEXTER. My object in calling the Senator from Missouri to order was, that the words which he ascribed to the gentleman from South Carolina, that it was “a direct attack upon truth,” might be taken down. I ask if it is in order to use such language ?

[Here such was the confusion that prevailed in the Senate—several members speaking at the same time—that not one word of what was said by the Vice President reached the reporter’s gallery. When, however, order was in some measure restored—]

Mr. POINDEXTER approached the Clerk’s table, and the words were taken down by the Secretary.

Mr. BENTON exclaimed, “Take them down ! take them down ! I’ll sign them !”

Mr. LINN said, would it not be as well to take down the exceptionable words contained in the report, and which the Senator from Missouri had read ?

Mr. POINDEXTER. I wish to know whether the words were in order ?

The VICE PRESIDENT said the Senator might deny the truth of the statement without intending to impute a wilful misrepresentation of the truth to the gentleman from South Carolina. If the Senator had said that the gentleman had not told the truth, he would have been out of order.

Mr. POINDEXTER asked whether the Senator from Missouri, in alleging that the Senator from South Carolina had made “a direct attack on truth,” was not out of order ?

The VICE PRESIDENT. The impression of the Chair is, that it was in order to deny the truth of a statement read on that floor, but not what is stated by an honorable Senator.

Mr. WEBSTER dissented from the opinion of the Chair. The word untruth implied an intentional misrepresentation, and the application of it to a member of that body was unparliamentary and out of order. A member may not, said Mr. W., get up and say that the words of another are untrue, because truth is synonymous with veracity. He might say that the words of another were founded in misconception ; that he was mistaken, or had unintentionally made an erroneous statement, but he could not charge him with uttering an untruth. He remembered a case of the kind in the other House, when a gentleman of distinction from South Carolina presided there. A member applied certain epithets to the war then pending with Great Britain—he said it was a French war, and another member answered that it was untrue. The Chair decided that the charge implied want of veracity, and that the member making it was out of order.

Mr. W. then appealed to the Senate from the decision of the Chair.

Mr. CUTHBERT said that, in a contest like this, it must be in the power of the presiding officer to show the meaning of the word “truth.” There were several |428| kinds of truths—political, mathematical, philosophical, moral, and many other. Now, it was entirely within the competence of the presiding officer to determine whether it was intended to impute, or not, moral crime to any member—such was the latitude of the case.

The VICE PRESIDENT said that, inasmuch as he did not understand the Senator from Missouri to intimate an intention of untruth on the part of the gentleman from South Carolina, he conceived the Senator was not out of order.

Mr. KING, of Alabama, regretted exceedingly the course the debate had taken, because he feared that it would lead to still greater excitement. He regretted it because he thought the gentleman from South Carolina himself had given utterance to expressions produced by the feelings of the moment. He did not, however, admit that the expressions, either of the gentleman from South Carolina or the gentleman from Missouri, were such as to justify the calling them to order. He had, on many occasions, heard in debate expressions such as had fallen from the Senator from Missouri, when no notice was taken of them. It was not unusual to hear the words “unfounded in fact” used in debate. A statement is made by a gentleman as not of his own knowledge, and another applies to it the words “unfounded in fact.” This did not put the gentleman applying such language out of order. What the Senator from Missouri said in reference to the Senator from South Carolina did not impeach the personal veracity of that gentleman ; and he did hope that the Senator from Missouri would say so at once, and, by putting an end to the question of order, permit the debate to go on. If he was compelled to record his vote, he should be obliged to say that the words of the Senator from Missouri did not impeach the personal veracity of the Senator from South Carolina, and consequently did not put him out of order. He hoped that his friend from Missouri would say that his language did not imply a want of veracity in the Senator from South Carolina, and at once put an end to the delicate question before the Senate.

Mr. LEIGH concurred in the remarks of the Senator from Massachusetts, and consequently should feel himself compelled to vote against the decision of the Chair.

Mr. BIBB said that before he recorded his name on this question, he wished to say that he should feel himself bound to sustain the decision of the Chair, lest the rules of this body, instead of regulating, might be used to restrain debate. He considered the expression “a direct attack on truth” not out of order ; it was a mere inference, and was not intended to imply a wilful perversion of facts.

Mr. GOLDSBOROUGH said that it had been many years since he had the honor of a seat on this floor, and the rules for regulating debate might have become more relaxed than formerly, but he was persuaded that if, in the times to which he alluded, a member here had charged another with “a bold and direct attack on truth,” not only would the presiding officer have called him to order, but the call would have resounded from all sides of the House. The preservation of decorum in debate is among the first objects of the rules of all deliberative bodies—it is an armor which is thrown around the members for their defence.

The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Bibb] had been pleased to say that he should sustain the decision of the Chair ; lest the rules of the Senate, instead of regulating, might be made to restrain debate. There is (said Mr. G.) another and a much more dangerous means by which the freedom of debate may become restricted ; and that is, the overawing debate.

Picture to yourself, sir, said he, on this floor, (and I desire to be understood as making no particular allusions,) |429| a bold, and daring, and reckless man, the reliance of a dominant party, fired with party zeal, and ready to carry measures without calculating consequences ; what, he asked, would be the effect produced by such a man upon gentlemen of more meek and gentle tempers ? Would it not be to seal their lips and awe them into silence ? It is important, therefore, that all due decorum should be preserved in debate : it is essential to its freedom, and constitutes an ægis with which every Senator is to be clad. Mr. G. said he had much satisfaction in looking back and reflecting upon the distinguished character of this Senate, marked as it had been for the highest degree of good order, from the first establishment of the Government.

Mr. G. said he would not undertake, as other Senators had suggested, to submit the declaration, “a direct attack on truth,” to either a philosophical or fanciful definition : he regarded it as a substantial charge upon moral integrity, blended with a manner that could not be mistaken. Such an attack on moral character could not be explained away ; the truth of the Senator was the target directly aimed at ; it was no incidental or accidental affair ; and as such Mr. G. regarded it as unfit and out of order.

Mr. LINN rose to express his deep regret that any thing should have arisen to disturb the harmony of the debate. For the honorable Senator from South Carolina he entertained ; the utmost respect, and for his honorable colleague, whom he had known so many years, he felt the warmest friendship. He regretted the unpleasant occurrence of that morning, though he was bound to say it was not an unusual one. He felt convinced that the Senate had been often out of order, in the course of debate, and the friends of the administration frequently had to bear much from gentlemen on the other side. He had had his feelings often outraged by language used on that floor, and he had spoken of it as disgraceful to the Senate of the United States. Were a Senator to apply language to him not respectful, he would reply to him in such a way as not to make the question of order doubtful ; he would reply to him in a manner not to be misunderstood.

Mr. CUTHBERT said that on one point there could be but little question with the Senator from Massachusetts, and that was, that that report was strongly characterized by party feeling ; that it contained language which approached to personality could not be doubted by any one who should read it. And there were many expressions, too, which had been the rallying words of the party, not only here, but which had been reverberated throughout this Union. Then, what was to be expected ? A party debate. The gentleman from South Carolina identifies the Senator from Missouri with those whom he has chosen to term supple and corrupt instruments of party. When cause is given, the intent follows ; when the spark is laid, the magazine is blown up. It was proper that decorum should be observed ; but it was highly proper that, when it was disturbed, the blame should be charged upon the individual who should have produced the disorder.

Mr. HENDRICKS wished to state, in a very few words, the reasons why he differed from the decision of the Chair. He agreed with the Chair in the principle he had stated, and the whole case turned on that point : did or did not the language of the Senator from Missouri, imply a want of veracity in the Senator from South Carolina ? He had hoped that the Senator from Missouri, by disclaiming such an application as suggested by the Senator from Alabama, would have suffered the debate on the bill to go on. If the Senator from Missouri had disclaimed such intention, he would have felt bound to vote for sustaining the decision of the Chair ; but inasmuch as he had not done so, he was bound to believe |430| that he made an improper imputation as to the Senator from South Carolina, and he should therefore vote to sustain the appeal.

Mr. POINDEXTER said he had no personal feeling in calling the Senator from Missouri to order. He thought the Senate should debate within the bounds of decorum ; if not, personal collision might follow. The words themselves were words to be decided—not the intention, not the cause which led to them. The simple question was, was it in order for one Senator to say of another, “You have made a direct attack on truth ?”

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN regretted exceedingly that he was called upon to give his vote on the unpleasant question before the Senate, and he would have been very glad if the Senator from Missouri had taken the course suggested by his friend from Alabama. But was it desirable that decorum should be kept up in the Senate, and was it decorous for a Senator to say on that floor that another had made a direct attack on truth ? What, asked he, is our object here ! Was it not to preserve to the fullest extent the freedom of debate ? And if such language was used by one Senator, to another, would not the freedom of debate be put an end to ? He was compelled to differ with the Chair in its decision that the character of the words used by the Senator from Missouri did not imply an intentional departure from veracity. It was the greatest praise that could be applied to a man to say that he was a man of truth ; and to permit a Senator to apply to another, pointing to him as the Senator from Missouri did, and in the way he did, language implying a want of truth, was to lose the decorum that should be preserved on that floor.

Mr. TYLER could not, after the most anxious consideration given to this subject, dissent from the decision given by the Chair ; and his opinions, instead of being shaken by quotations from Jefferson’s Manual, were strengthened by them. No member in debate, the Manual said, is to call another by name, or to make ascriptions to him of improper motives. Now, he did not think that the Senator from Missouri, as decided by the Chair, imputed a want of veracity to the Senator from South Carolina. The Senator from Alabama [Mr. King] had no right to call on the Senator from Missouri, as he did, to disclaim any personal imputations. The Senator from Missouri was silenced ; he was in a manner under trial ; he could make no explanations unless voluntarily. He should have been glad if the Senator from Missouri had taken the course suggested by the Senator from Alabama, for he was sure that the Senator was greatly mistaken when he supposed that the Senator from South Carolina applied the language of the report to him or to his friends. The Senator from South Carolina makes a report in which he applies certain epithets to a certain description of office-holders ; and the Senator from Missouri, understanding him as alluding to himself and his friends, makes assertions that he is not corrupt, and that the party with which he acts is not corrupt, and that it is untrue to say that they are. I will not, said Mr. T., ask the gentleman from Missouri for an explanation of his words. I shall, said he, put my own construction on them, and will not by my vote say that the Senator from Missouri intended to apply a want of veracity to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. PRESTON expressed himself in favor of allowing great latitude in debate. For his own part, he thought it would be better that gentlemen would concur, and allow the debate to go on, and let the question of order be laid on the table.

Mr. POINDEXTER, in reply to the Senator from South Carolina, said he certainly should have waived the question of order, had he not felt it his duty to bring this matter directly before the Senate for its decision on it. It was not so much a question as regarded the Senators |431| from Missouri and South Carolina ; it was an isolated question. Was it in order for a gentleman to rise in his place, and say that another had made “a direct attack on truth ?” If it was in order, let the Senate decide so, he could protect himself. He asked the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Tyler] if such language was decorous ? If it was consistent with good manners ? Was it fit to be used between gentlemen ? The time had been when that body (the Senate) was the most decorous body in the world—he referred to the time alluded to by the Senator from Maryland, [Mr. Goldsbohough,] and the result was that it had acquired the character of being, also, the most dignified body in the world. But if the Senate should decide that the language used by the Senator from Missouri was in order, be it so. He should give his vote that it was not in order.

Mr. KING, of Alabama, expressed his regret that this misunderstanding should have taken place. He had no doubt that the Senator from South Carolina, when he made an attack on the Senator from Missouri, did not intend to convey any other meaning than the gentleman, from his political position, would be inclined to advocate a certain course of measures approved of by his party. The Senator from South Carolina could not mean to identify him with those whom he had designated supple and servile instruments of power. Mr. K. was sure he did not mean such a thing. And he felt convinced, also, that the Senator from Missouri did not intend to impeach the personal veracity of the member from South Carolina ; he therefore hoped the Senator would say so, and that the appeal might be withdrawn.

Mr. BENTON intimated that he should not explain.

Mr. WEBSTER said it was quite impossible that he should withdraw the appeal, unless the honorable gentleman would contrive some mode by which to withdraw the decision of the Chair. If that decision should stand as it was, it would become the law of the Senate, and then one member might apply to another the language used that morning by the Senator from Missouri. The honorable member [Mr. King, of Alabama] contended that the words of the Senator from Missouri imputed no motives to the Senator from South Carolina. Now he (Mr. W.) said the contrary. The word “truth” implied something distinct and specific, and the charge of the want of it carried home to the member charged an intentional departure from veracity. Such language tended to derogate from the character of the member charged in it, and was a departure from that decorum which ought to be observed in the Senate. What was the proper character of debate ? We are not to speak of others (said Mr. W.) as of ourselves—we are not to speak of the proceedings in the other House, and the injunction to speak of others with courtesy was made that we might carry on a debate without turmoil. The question was not as to what might be spoken of parties—of masses—but as to what gentlemen might speak of each other consistentenly with that courtesy which ought to characterize good manners, good feeling, and the order and dignity of the Senate.

The VICE PRESIDENT said he did not understand the gentleman from Missouri as imputing to the Senator a wilful misrepresentation of the fact. Had the Chair been under that impression, it would have decided against the Senator from Missouri. It looked upon the remarks of the Senator as a strong expression of denial of the fact, without calling in question the veracity of the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. WEBSTER contended that the question must be decided on the words used by the Senator from Missouri. Were those the words used which had been taken down ? And the question being precisely on the point—were the words parliamentary ? or did they by |432| the force of their terms imply disrespect ? That was the reason why the decision should be made on the words themselves, and on nothing else.

Mr. CUTHBERT begged leave to add one word more. Suppose some gentleman in the course of a debate had used language of this kind : “The gentleman belongs to a faction intending to raise itself on the ruins of their country.” Would the reply be that the gentleman was in a slight error ? When a party was charged with corruption, and a member was characterized as being one of that party, would it be sufficient for him to say that “the gentleman was in a slight error ?” He begged, therefore, the gentleman from Massachusetts to let the question take that turn given to it by the gentlemen from Virginia and South Carolina, [Mr. Tyler and Mr. Preston.]

The question was here taken, and the decision of the Chair was reversed—yeas 21, nays 23—as follows :

Yeas—Messrs. Bibb, Black, Brown, Buchanan, Cuthbert, Grundy, Hill, Kane, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Mangum, Morris, Preston, Robinson, Ruggles, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, Tyler, White, Wright—21.

Nays—Messrs. Bell, Clay, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, Goldsborough, Hendricks, Kent, Knight, Leigh, Linn, McKean, Moore, Naudain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Southard, Swift, Tomlinson, Webster—23.

The question having been decided, the Chair asked what order would be taken by the Senate. There was a provision in the rules of the other House to meet such a case, but none in the rules of the Senate.

Mr. CALHOUN and Mr. WEBSTER expressed the hope that the Senator from Missouri might be permitted to go on with his remarks ; and

Mr. BENTON, with the permission of the Senate, resumed. [Mr. B’s speech, in extenso, it is believed, has been given in preceding pages.]

Mr. Benton having concluded his speech,

Mr. GOLDSBOROUGH said it would be recollected, by all who heard him, that he had introduced the delineation alluded to by a preliminary remark, which obviated any supposition of a design to make any personal application. The illustration was elicited by the observations of the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Bibb,] to show other sources of danger to the freedom of debate.

Mr. BENTON expressed himself entirely satisfied with the honorable Senator’s explanation. When that gentleman should have known him longer, he would discover that, if there was one trait in his (Mr. B’s) character more prominent than another, it was that of abstinence from saying any thing that could hurt the feelings of any gentleman. But when attacked he was always ready to defend himself.