Mr. FESSENDEN. Would you have them all go to the President and then come here for confirmation? I do not want them to come here. I think it would be a bad system. I think we cannot carry it into the details of these mine r offices. What did the Constitution mean, when it gave to Congress the power to vest the appointment of such inferior offices as it saw fit in the heads of the Depts? It meant that there must be from the nature of the case, in a country like this, many instances where you must leave the appointing power to somebody else, where you cannot burden the President with all these little appointments. In a country as large as this is, and growing as it is, increasing every day, and the number of offices increasing continually, the thing would become utterly impracticable. If it were attempted we might resolve ourselves into a Senate in perpetual session to consider mere questions of nominations to office, and we should be obliged to do so. It would be utterly impossible that we could arrive at any correct conclusion with the 1000s of other matters we have to attend to. I think, therefore, we had better “let well enough alone, ” and not because we happen just at this moment to be in the condition we are with reference to questions of appointments to office, travel beyond what the necessity of the case requires. A word now, sir, upon the general subject. I have not been able to give my attention to the details of the bill, because I have been necessarily out of the Senate while the bill has been under consideration; but with reference to the bill itself I have the impression that we ought to confine ourselves to what is necessary in order to protect the constitutional rights of the Senate, ’ and not allow ourselves to be car ried away by our rightful and proper impressions with regard to that one point, to take action upon collateral issues and collateral matters, which would look as if they were sought out merely for the purpose of embar rassment, would have that appearance at any rate to the country, and would eventuate in embarrassing ourselves and those who are to come after us by going a great deal too far. As I said before, I do not think I should have been in favor of passing any law upon this subject had it not been that it is manifest to me that the time has come (as I gave no tice at the last session it might come) when it is perfectly evident a doctrine prevails which is utterly subversive of the constitutional rights of the Senate. The Senate is bound to protect itself if it can, and if it cannot Congress is bound to protect its coordinate branch and the constitutional rights of its coordinate branch. As I stated the other day, here is a plain, pal pable case; and it is said that the present AttyGen has given an opinion that the President had a perfect right to nominate a man to the Senate, and if the Senate rejected him to wait until the Senate adjourned and then appoint him again, and so on from session to session until at last we should be made a mere cipher, a nobody in the Government. If the present AttyGen has given any such opinion, so much the more necessary is it for us to protect ourselves. If the President in his action I am sorry he has taken the action has seen fit to proceed upon such an opinion and to treat the Senate with that which I must call discourtesy, disregard of its constitutional rights, by reappointing men after they had been rejected by the Senate to the same offices, the moment the Senate had adjourned, it is time for us to exert such power as we may have in order to protect ourselves not ourselves individually, but to protect the body of which we are members in the exercise of its constitutional rights. Inasmuch as this opinion has been given and this action has been taken, I am disposed to test it; and I am ready to go just so far as is necessary to accomplish that end; but I am not willing, because I think it unwise, to go further and to take occasion from that circumstance to put restrictions upon the power of the Executive that we may find it afterward difficult to justify, or to take oc casion to overturn the settled practice of the Government under existing laws which has been useful, and of which there has been no complaint, and of which there is no complaint to this day. I should regret very much if anything of the kind. i be done; and I am therefore opposed utterly to the amendment Pogo by the Senfrom Massachusetts.