necessary laws, to sanction appropriations proposed by the House of
Representatives, and to confirm proper nominations made by the
President. It has already been maintained (and it is not conceivable
that the resolution of the Senate can be based on any other principle)
that the Secretary of the Treasury is the officer of Congress and
independent of the President; that the President has no right to control
him, and consequently none to remove him. With the same propriety and on
similar grounds may the Secretary of State, the Secretaries of War and
the Navy, and the Postmaster-General each in succession be declared
independent of the President, the subordinates of Congress, and
removable only with the concurrence of the Senate. Followed to its
consequences, this principle will be found effectually to destroy one
coordinate department of the Government, to concentrate in the hands
of the Senate the whole executive power, and to leave the President
as powerless as he would be useless--the shadow of authority after
the substance had departed.

The time and the occasion which have called forth the resolution of the
Senate seem to impose upon me an additional obligation not to pass it
over in silence. Nearly forty-five years had the President exercised,
without a question as to his rightful authority, those powers for the
recent assumption of which he is now denounced. The vicissitudes of
peace and war had attended our Government; violent parties, watchful to
take advantage of any seeming usurpation on the part of the Executive,
had distracted our councils; frequent removals, or forced resignations
in every sense tantamount to removals, had been made of the Secretary
and other officers of the Treasury, and yet in no one instance is it
known that any man, whether patriot or partisan, had raised his voice
against it as a violation of the Constitution. The expediency and
justice of such changes in reference to public officers of all grades