Part 77

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 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 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 tell 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 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 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_, 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. Everybody would have said, "The President possesses an uncontrolled power of appointment, and that 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,[1] 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 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 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, 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.