for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public revenues, and I know
the importance which has been attached by men of great abilities and
patriotism to the divorce, as it is called, of the Treasury from the
banking institutions. It is not the divorce which is complained of, but
the unhallowed union of the Treasury with the executive department,
which has created such extensive alarm. To this danger to our republican
institutions and that created by the influence given to the Executive
through the instrumentality of the Federal officers I propose to apply
all the remedies which may be at my command. It was certainly a great
error in the framers of the Constitution not to have made the officer at
the head of the Treasury Department entirely independent of the
Executive. He should at least have been removable only upon the demand
of the popular branch of the Legislature. I have determined never to
remove a Secretary of the Treasury without communicating all the
circumstances attending such removal to both Houses of Congress.

The influence of the Executive in controlling the freedom of the
elective franchise through the medium of the public officers can be
effectually checked by renewing the prohibition published by Mr.
Jefferson forbidding their interference in elections further than giving
their own votes, and their own independence secured by an assurance of
perfect immunity in exercising this sacred privilege of freemen under
the dictates of their own unbiased judgments. Never with my consent
shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of
their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will.

There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which
might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the
control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from
the mother country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark