ciple, 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,* as to all offices created by 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 cannot be doubted that the Senate will concur in all such dismissions. On the other hand, it will insure the integrity and ndependence of the officer, since he will feel that if he honestly ind faithfully discharges his official duties, he cannot be dislaced arbitrarily, or from mere caprice, or because he has indeendently exercised the elective franchise.

It is contended that the President cannot see that the laws are aithfully executed, unless he possesses the power of removal. That injunction of the constitution imports a mere general superntendence, 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 cannot 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 cannot dismiss them?

But it is not necessary to argue the general question, in considering either the original bill or the amendment. The former

The amendment was in the following words:

Be it further enacted, 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; and when the Senate is not in session, the President may suspend any such officer, communicating his reasons for the suspension during the first month of its succeeding session, and if the Senate concur with him the officer shall be removed, but if it do not concur with him, the officer shall be restored to office.

Mr. Clay was subsequently induced not to urge his amendment at this time.

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 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 amend ment which I have proposed.

THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION.

On the resolution to expunge a part of the Journal for the session of 1833-1834.

In the Senate, Monday, January 16, 1837.

Mr. Clay rose and said that, considering that he was the mover of the resolution of March, 1834, and the consequent re lation in which he stood to the majority of the Senate by whose vote it was adopted, he had felt it to be his duty to say something on this expunging resolution; and he had always intended to do so when he should be persuaded that there existed a settled purpose of pressing it to a final decision. But it had been so taken up and put down at the last session-taken up one day, when a speech was prepared for delivery, and put down when it was pronounced, that he had really doubted whether there existed any serious intention of ever putting it to the vote. At the very close of the last session, it will be recollected that the resolution came up, and in several quarters of the Senate a disposition was manifested to come to a definitive decision. On that occasion he had offered to waive his right to address the Senate, and silently to vote upon the resolution; but it was again laid upon the table, and laid there forever, as the country supposed, and as he believed. It is, however, now revived; and sundry changes having taken place in the members of this body, it would seem that the present design is to bring the resolution to an absolute conclu sion.

I have not risen, continued Mr. Clay, to repeat, at full length,

the argument by which the friends of the resolution of March, 1834, sustained it. That argument is before the world, was unanswered at the time, and is unanswerable. And I here, in my place, in the presence of my country and my GOD, after the fullest consideration and deliberation of which my mind is capable, re-assert my solemn conviction of the truth of every proposition contained in that resolution. But, whilst it is not my intention to commit such an infliction upon the Senate as that would be of retracing the whole ground of argument formerly occupied, I desire to lay before it, at this time, a brief and true state of the the case. Before the fatal step is taken of giving to the expunging resolution the sanction of the American Senate, I wish by presenting a faithful outline of the real questions involved in the resolution of 1834, to make a last, even if it is to be an ineffectual appeal to the sober judgments of senators. I begin by re-asserting the truth of that resolution.

Our British ancestors understood perfectly well the immense importance of the money power in a representative government. It is the great lever by which the crown is touched, and made to conform its administration to the interests of the kingdom, and the will of the people. Deprive parliament of the power of freely granting or withholding supplies, and surrender to the king the purse of the nation, he instantly becomes an absolute monarch. Whatever may be the form of government, elective or hereditary, democratic or despotic, that person who commands the force of the nation, and at the same time has uncontrolled possession of the purse of the nation, has absolute power, whatever may be the official name by which he is called."

Our immediate ancestors, profiting by the lessons on civil liberty which had been taught in the country from which we sprung, endeavored to encircle around the public purse, in the hands of Congress, every possible security against the intrusion of the executive. With this view, Congress alone is invested, by the constitution, with the power to lay and collect the taxes. When collected, not a cent is to be drawn from the public treasury, but in virtue of an act of Congress. And, among the first acts of this government, was the passage of a law establishing the treasury department, for the safe keeping and the legal and regular disbursement of the money so collected. By that act a Secretary of the Treasury is placed at the head of the department; and, varying in the respect from all the other departments, he is to report, not to the President, but directly to Congress, and is liable to be called to give information in person before Congress. It is impossible to examine dispassionately that act, without coming to the conclusion that he is emphatically the agent of Congress in performing the duties assigned by the constitution to Congress. The act further provides that a Treasurer shall be appointed to receive and keep the public money, and none can be drawn from his custody but under the authority of a law, and in virtue of a warrant drawn by the

Secretary of the Treasury, countersigned by the Comptroller, and recorded by the Register. Only when such a warrant is presented can the Treasurer lawfully pay one dollar from the public purse. Why was the concurrence of these four officers required in disbursements of the public money? Was it not for greater security? Was it not intended that each, exercising a separate and independent will, should be a check upon every other? Was it not the purpose of the law to consider each of these four officers, acting in his proper sphere, not as a mere automaton, but as an intellectual, intelligent and responsible person, bound to observe the law, and to stop the warrant, or stop the money, if the authority of the law were wanting?

Thus stood the treasury from 1789 to 1816. During that long time no President had ever attempted to interfere with the custody of the public purse. It remained where the law placed it, undisturbed, and every Chief Magistrate, including the father of his country, respected the law.

In 1816 an act passed to establish the late bank of the United States for the term of twenty years; and, by the 16th section of the act, it is enacted "that the deposites of the money of the United States in places in which the said bank and the branches thereof may be established, shall be made in said bank or branches thereof, unless the Secretary of the Treasury shall at any time otherwise order and direct; in which case, the Secretary of the Treasury shall immediately lay before Congress, if in session, and, if not, immediately after the commencement of the next session, the reasons of such order or direction."

Thus it is perfectly manifest, from the express words of the law, that the power to make any order or direction for the removal of the public deposites is confided to the Secretary alone, to the absolute exclusion of the President, and all the world besides. And the law, proceeding upon the established principle that the Secretary of the Treasury, in all that concerns the public purse, acts as the direct agent of Congress, requires, in the event of his ordering or directing a removal of the deposites, that he shall immediately lay his reasons therefor before whom? The President? No; before Congress.

So stood the public treasury and the public deposites from the year 1816 to September, 1833. In all that period of seventeen years, running through or into four several administrations of the government, the law had its uninterrupted operation, no Chief Magistrate having assumed upon himself the power of diverting the public purse from its lawful custody, or of substituting his will to that of the officer to whose care it was exclusively entrusted.

In the session of Congress of 1832-'3 an inquiry had been instituted by the House of Representatives into the condition of the bank of the United States. It resulted in a conviction of its entire safety, and a declaration by the House, made only a short time before the adjournment of Congress on the fourth

of March, 1833, that the public deposites were perfectly secure. This declaration was probably made in consequence of suspicions then afloat of a design on the part of the executive to remove the deposites. These suspicions were denied by the press friendly to the administration. Nevertheless, the members had scarcely reached their respective homes, before measures were commenced by the executive to effect a removal of the deposites from that very place of safety which it was among the last acts of the House to declare existed in the bank of the United States.

In prosecution of this design, Mr. McLain, the Secretary of the Treasury, who was decidedly opposed to such a measure, was promoted to the Department of State, and Mr. Duane was appointed to succeed him. But Mr. Duane was equally convinced with his predecessor that he was forbidden by every consideration of duty to execute the power with which the law had entrusted the Secretary of the Treasury, and refused to remove the deposites; whereupon he was dismissed from office, a new Secretary of the Treasury was appointed, and, in September, 1833, by the command of the President, the measure was finally accomplished. That it was the President's act was never denied, but proclaimed, boasted, defended. It fell upon the country like a thunderbolt, agitating the Union from one extremity to the other. The stoutest adherents of the administration were alarmed; and all thinking men, not blinded by party prejudice, beheld in the act a bold and dangerous exercise of power; and no human sagacity can now foresee the tremendous consequences which will ensue. The measure was adopted not long before the approaching session of Congress; and, as the concurrence of both branches might be necessary to compel a restoration of the deposites, the object was to take the chance of a possible division between them, and thereby defeat the restoration.

And where did the President find the power for this most extraordinary act? It has been seen that the constitution, jealous of all executive interference with the treasury of the nation, has confined it to the exclusive care of Congress, by every precautionary guard, from the first imposition of the taxes to the final disbursement of the public money.

It has been seen that the language of the sixteenth section of the law of 1816 is express and free from all ambiguity; and that the Secretary of the Treasury is the sole and exclusive depository of the authority which it confers.

Those who maintain the power of the President have to support it against the positive language of the constitution, against the explicit words of the statute, and against the genius and theory of all our institutions.

And how do they surmount these insuperable obstacles? By a series of far-fetched implications, which, if every one of them were as true as they are believed to be incorrect or perverted,