that "whenever the said principal officer shall be removed from office
by the President of the United States, or in any other case of vacancy,"
the chief clerk should during such vacancy have charge of the papers
of the office. This change having been made for the express purpose of
declaring the sense of Congress that the President derived the power
of removal from the Constitution, the act as it passed has always been
considered as a full expression of the sense of the legislature on this
important part of the American Constitution.

Here, then, we have the concurrent authority of President Washington, of
the Senate, and the House of Representatives, numbers of whom had taken
an active part in the convention which framed the Constitution and in
the State conventions which adopted it, that the President derived an
unqualified power of removal from that instrument itself, which is
"beyond the reach of legislative authority." Upon this principle the
Government has now been steadily administered for about forty-five
years, during which there have been numerous removals made by the
President or by his direction, embracing every grade of executive
officers from the heads of Departments to the messengers of bureaus.

The Treasury Department in the discussions of 1789 was considered on
the same footing as the other Executive Departments, and in the act
establishing it were incorporated the precise words indicative of the
sense of Congress that the President derives his power to remove the
Secretary from the Constitution, which appear in the act establishing
the Department of Foreign Affairs. An Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury was created, and it was provided that he should take charge of
the books and papers of the Department "whenever the Secretary shall
be removed from office by the President of the United States." The
Secretary of the Treasury being appointed by the President, and being