Mr. FESSENDEN. I do not know that he has. If he has it indirectly, he has not got it directly. It is to be put directly in his hands now by this amendment; the President is the man to make these appointments. I wish, says the honorable Senator, to curtail his power; give him, therefore, in order to curtail it, the appointment of from ten to 20,000 more, and then cut it off. That is a queer way of curtailment. If he has it now indirectly through others, if he chooses to exercise it, or can find time to exercise it, he has not got it directly coming home to himself when every man must make or may make a particular and specific approach to the President for an appointment. I confess that I do not see the efficacy of the remedy. As to the Supreme Court, I am surprised that my honorable friendfrom Massachusetts has stuck to any of his original ideas, for since the dissatisfaction that has been expressed in the country at a recent decision or 2 of the Supreme Court I supposed of course that he would say it would be better to cut them from the appointment of their own clerks and their own mine r officers and their own doorkeepers, and all that. Now, sir, my objection to this legislation, in the 1st place, is that it is running everything into the ground. But the amendment proposed by the honorable Senator, from massachusetts has this further difficulty about it, in my judgment. The last clause provides that all officers who have been appointed since July 1, 1866, shall go out of office. Now, why is that? There is no feeling with regard to the exercise of the President's power, not the slightest. There is no feeling on the part of the honorable Senfrom Wisconsin with regard to the exercise of the President's power, not a article. All is calm as a summer's morning is heart is perfectly free from guile. He is legislating for the greatinterests of the country for all future time; and so is my honorable friendfrom Massachusetts. But there is a loittle c:lause there that everybody that has been since July 1, 1866, shall go out of office in order that we may have new appointments made, and that they may be sent to the Senate. Although I do not say that this would be improper, it does strike me that it looks a little as if there was something in this amendment beyond merely legislating for future time and setting all things right. I may be mistaken about it, but it has that look at any rate, as if there was some object to be accomplished, some particular thing to be done that has ref. erence not so much to the future as to the past. Sir, in legislating for the country for the future and upon great principles there is danger sometimes that we may let the present animosities and present feeling enter somewhat into our consideration. I will say frankly that while I wish to defend my friends in office and will doothat an honorable man and a Senator, can do to keep them in office, so far as they are worthy, I do not think that the great object for which the Constitution was framed was to parcel out offices to our friends and keep them there; and in my judgment any legislation which looks as if we were directin our attention to that particular thing with ref. erence to individuals in office at the present time, or who may be in the future, appears as if we were thinking not so much of the country as of particular purposes of our own. Now, sir, I do not approve, I utterly and entirely disapprove, without reservation, of the action of the President in removing so many men from office from among those who helped to elect him, simply because" they did not choose to support policy as against congress in a matter which belonged to Congress and not to him. I say it here openly, so that my position may not be misunderstood. I do not approve, and I disapprove the whole thing. It meets my condemnation. That the President has had occasion to remove some men from office and appoint others for good reasons I have no doubt. That in many cases when a term of office expires it may be proper (and this President has as much right to do it as any other) to appoint somebody else in the place of the previous incumbent is well enough. All that may be:.It is an exercise of power that belongs to him. Nobody has a right to an office to keep it forever. But the avowal of the principle by the President or the head of a Dept (and it has been done I think somewhat rashly, to say the least of it,) that men were to be removed from office and others appointed because they supported the President with regard to a policy upon a question which did not belong to him but belonged to the Congress of the U.S., is, in my judgment, utterly unjustifiable. But, sir, while I say this, I do not think it necessary on account of this temporary emergency, this particular position in which we happen to be placed at the present time, to direct our legislation and spend our time so much with reference to curtailing executive power in the direction in which it E. always has exercised. That we have this difficulty with the President is unfortunate. We must take the consequences of it to a certain extent. We shall not better it by legislation such as is proposed in the last clause of the Senator's amendment, that everybody whom the President has happened to appoint since last July shall be turned out of office in order to have a new "Woo made to be sent to the senate. Why not go back to a period anterior to that and apply it to all who have been appointed since the present Executive assumed power or became the POTUS? I think it is unwise; I think it has not a good effect upon the country; I think it has not a good effect upon public opinion; I do not believe it tends to elevate jus if we spend so much time upon a matter which is compara tively so unimportant. I say, as I said before, so far as this subject of appointments to office is concerned, I should be perfectly willing to leave it where it was and take the consequences, had not the President interfered, as he did interfere, under the advice perhaps I should say the bad advice as I am told (I have never seen the opinion) of the AttyGen as to what he might do with regard to men rejected by the Senate. There comes a point where we are obliged to stand upon our rights and upon our constitutional duty. But what do gentlemen propose? In addition to that which I admit to . necessary, and which I am disposed to stand by, as I avowed in advance I would be if the contingency occurred, what do gentlemen proose? They propose to take up the Blue ook and go through it, and say that the appointment of every officer they find there, and if there are any outside of that whose names are not in the Blue Book all others whose salaries amount to $1,000 shall go, for the sake of curtailing the President's power, directly into the hands of the President himself, and out of the hands of the Secretaries who now make them. I asked one Senator the question the other was not in the Chamber at the moment to answer me, why stop at $1,000? There is no limit on the principle upon which this is advocated, a principle not recognized by the Constitution, because the Constitution expressly provides for these inferior officers in another way. Senators must go further. They must go down to the very bottom. Why not? Every man who is in office has his degree of influence. Why should we not scrutinize him? Every tide waiter can exercise political influence. It is put upon that ground. We now, says the Senator, confirm all postmasters whose salary exceeds $1,000 a year. What is the reason of the limitation? Not that they exercised political power, but that they were important, officers, for the reason. that they received that amount of salary. Why did it not go lower? On account of the inconvenience of the thing. Let me tell you your important postmasters in important places do not exercise one 20th part of the political influence as a general rule that your petty postmasters in country villages do, and are not so important men, comparatively, compared with the population that } is about them. They are a different class of men altogether as a general rule. Why not go to the bottom, then, and take the whole upon the same ground 7 The answer would be evident. You cannot do it; the thing is too inconvenient; it is too burdensome. All the petty postmasters cannot be appointed by the President. The Senfrom Massachusetts says they may be counted. The hairs upon his head may be counted; but I reckon it would take him some considerable time to do it; it would be something of a job, because his head happens to be well covered. Well, sir, the same argument precisely applies to these other offices. I was looking over the Blue Book, and the list of offices in the customs and other branches of the Treasury Dept alone occupies 70 pages of the Blue Book, and perhaps one out of 50 of them, certainly not more than one out of 20, is a man who is now nominated to the Senate and confirmed; the rest are not. Senators say this is a great power. Unquestionably it i;s but power must be exercised by somebody; confidence must be placed in somebody. The heads of Depts are selected by, the Constitution as the proper persons with whom to deposit this power of appointment. Why? Not simply because the men themselves may be understood to know, but because it is necessary that they should have the control of their own Depts, and because they are supposed from their communication with those under them and their agents to know more of the proper men to be placed in such offices than the President can now, and better able to exercise that power. That is the logic of the thing. The appointment of men to mine r offices has gone on precisely in that way from the very necessity of the case ever since the foundation of the Government. What evil has followed? None that has been complained of. Nobody has complained to this day that by depriving the President of the direct power of appointment of so many men his power has been increased, and that the way to diminish it is to say to him, “You shall appoint all of them.” Well, you might diminish it by that means, but it would be in this way: you would impose upon him a duty that he could not possibly perform; he would not be able to decide upon the /100th part of the cases that came before him, and certainly he would not be able to do anything else if he considered them at all. Therefore, sir, I object to this proposition again because I consider it utterly unwise. I see no occasion, from the temporary evils under which we are laboring to change a system which has been so long established, to utterly ignore all the experience of the past, and to take from the places where the founders of the Government deposited it a power of this description, and where it has continued through so many Administrations and been exercised without complaint from anybody, simply for the purpose of taking it here in order that finally we may have a negative, if we choose to exercise it, upon these petty appointments, which are well enough made as they are now. There is another thing. Adopt this amendment here, and what is the consequence? The provisions of the bill of the honorable Senfrom Vermont apply to it, and not one man in all the customhouse offices in this country; not one man of all the men connected with the internalrevenue; not one man in any dept, whatever and wherever he may be, in the transaction of ordinary business, can be removed during the recess of Congress. If an inspector is unfit for his place you cannot remove him. If a weigher or gauger is unfit you cannot remove him. If an asst assessor is unfit you cannot remove him. He may be suspended by the President, and at the next session of congress we are to have the reasons given and the name sent in to us for the removal of a tide waiter or something of that sort. Why, sir you could not, without increasing the force o your Printing Office, print the number of cases that would happen under such a regulation as that. These officers are continually being changed. Some die; some are found dishon est; some are found unfit for their duty. One reason or another may render it oto turn them out and put somebody else in their places. It is every day's experience in the Treasury Dept. A day does not pass there, from the beginning to the end of the year hardly, in which the SecyTreasury does not have occasion to appoint some new officer and to remove some old one. Is all that to be suspended and hung up during the recess of Congress and until Congress comes together again, and then are we to have the reasons for it given to us? Sir, in m judgment the whole idea is an absurdity of gentlemen for so characterizing it, but it looks to me like an absurdity and nothing else to try toingraft this amendment upon a bill of this description, or upon any bill.