Mr. EDMUNDS. I can readily enough conceive that in such a case that would be no reason why the affairs of the Treasury should not go on with regularity, symmetry, and propriety, without any difficulty between those gen: tlemen. But I was speaking not of political sympathy, but of matters of harmony and similarity of views respecting the administration of the Dept itself; because we all know that although all these Depts are executive, and although the Chief Magistrate is himself nothing but the executor of the laws which we make, yet in the course of the administration of affairs questions arise contin ually which require judgment, which require tact, which require cooperation between the different Depts of the Government. Now, then, in order to reach that harmony and that cooperation, I think it is fit that the Chief Executive Magistrate, who is responsible to us in a greater degree than any of his subordinates, should be allowed, if a difference of opinion respecting the administration of a particular Dept for which he is responsibleas the Chief Executive should arise between himself and his Secretary, during a recess of the Senate, to dispense with the services of that man and select some other; because if he be not thus allowed, when Congress comes to meet again and we find that the law has failed of execution, and that derangement and trouble has come upon the administration of public affairs, whom are we to reproach” If we say to the President, “You by the constitution are the head, and you are responsible that this law should have been executed according to our will, ” his reply will be, “Very well; but this Secretary whom I selected and whom you agreed to turned out to be entirely incapable to perform these duties; and while I could notcharge him with any specific crime or specific legal incapacity to perform the duties provided for by law, yet he was so generally incompe tent that the affairs of that Dept could not be administered; now blame yourselves, not me.” I think we ought to hold the executive dept of the Government to a full and rigorous and vigorous performance and execution of every law that we pass; and to do that freely and fully and j. I think we ought to give him the little, discretion which we do give him by merely allowing him in our absence to change, if he pleases, 4 or 5 officers who by all preseription and all custom and all practice are regarded, and are, in fact, his confidential, and necessarily confidential, advisers.