Mr. BAKER. Mr. Speaker, I desire to submit a very few remarks in support of the amendment proposed by the Gentfrom Pennsylvania, [Mr. WILLIAMs, which consists in striking out of the text of the bill these words: “excepting the Secretaries of State, of the Treasury, of War, of the Navy, and of the interigr, the PostMGenl, and the AttyGen, ” the effect of which will be that the Senate must concur in the removal, as in the appointment of these cabinet officers. I favor this proposition for the following reasons: 1. " is the only opportunity likely ever to affose when it will be practicable to make this reformation. If there be a good in it, now is probably the solitary occasion on which Weoever be able to attain that good. On the contrary, if the reform in this particular does not work well it will obviously be an easy matter to go back to the old method. From this state of the case I derive a strong argument in favor of the proposed amendment. 2. This amendment simply proposes to apply to heads of Depts. general principle that both branches of the appointing power shall concur in the removal of an officer a sound principle to the whole extent, if sound at all. 3. I should rather expect much good from this change. The relation of the Cabinet to the President, as the matter now stands, is substantially the same as the relation subsisting between the British sovereign and her council. Both are officers holding by tenures at the will of their superior. It is very plain, on general principles of human nature, that such a relation is inimical to the giving of that perfectly free and independent ai. which looks only to the public good, and is calculated on the other hand to promote a facile compliance with the will of the superior. Thus the very end of advisory counsel truth elicited by truth as serted without fear or favor is continually in danger of being defeated. This I do not say is the necessary result but it is the permanent tendency of the system. English history in too many instances shows that the counselors of the Crown, especially when worn by a strong willed and perverse monarch, have only confirmed the sovereign in his evil courses, and sought to buttress up his abuses of power by gross perversions of constitution and law. The like, or something similar, I apprehend, may occur, if indeed it has not in some measurealready occurred, in the administration of our own Government, if we continue to copy in this important respect the example of GreatBritain. The President should be surrounded by a body of measurably independent counsel ors in order that we may have the best guarantee that their counsel may be upright, disinter ested, and valuable to the highest attainable degree. In my opinion the reform will work admirably, I think it is one of the most needed and most important changes this Congress can make; and I do earnestly hope, the amendment may be adopted. The suggestion that if deprived of absolute control over the removal of his Cabinet, the President will call to his aid what has been termed an irresponsible “Kitchen Cabinet, ” strikes me with little force. Under the proposed change the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, as now, would call around him his most able personal and political friends. Surely, just, manly, and proper fidelity to him would not be impaired but rather fortified by the circumstance that they did not hold their places subject to his absolute power to dismiss them at any moment The best and highest forms of friendship and fidelity are not the results of absolute authority in the one party and absolute dependence in the other. It is not fit, in my judgment, that an Amer ican officer of high grade should oa position of such absolute dependence on the will of another. The idea is European, not American. It is appropriate to monarchical systems, where the highest officers of the court are but creatures of the Crown. It appears to me utterly inappropriate in a free Republic, and I hope we s i.e an end of it.