Mr. EDMUNDS. The misfortune about that is that it is arguing exactly as my friendfrom Indiana [Mr. HENDR1cks] and my friendfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCKALEw] did, because they contend that those early acts of Congress were a recognition of what.the constitutional law was; but the difficulty about its being the recognition of a practice is, that when the act of 1789 was passed establishing a Dept of Foreign Affairs and some of the other Depts, the Government having just gone into operation, there was no practice to recognize. They were initiating a policy or a construction as the case may be; and the dispute, therefore, has always been since, whether under the force of those laws which were then enacted a Prescription, so to speak, was running in favor of a particular construction of the Constitution because it was recognized, or whether no Prescription ran at all, because upon the other side it might be treated as a power conferred. That has been the question, and that is illustrated more largely I think than in any other way, if you attend to the course of debates in the 1st Congress of the U.S. when that act was passed. A majority of the persons who spoke in the HoRep upon the subject contended that the President under the Constitution had no such authority of removal. Some of that majority contended that it was a subject of legal regulation. Others of that majority contended that it was a power which, under the Constitution, resided incommunicably in the President in conjunction with the Senate. On the other hand, a minority of the speakers contended that the President possessed it alone. When a vote came to be taken a majority voted in favor of retaining the clause exPressed in these words: “to be removable at the pleasure of the President.” Some of them evidently voted in favor of that upon the ground that it being a subject of legal regulation it was expedient to confer the power upon the President. Others may have voted upon the ground that the President had the power alone. day or 2 afterward it was claimed by the friends of the Presidential construction that this language exPressly conferred a power, and therefore did not amount to any declaration of what the Constitution ought to be or was. They reconsidered that vote, and substituted for it this language, that when this officer, shall be removed by the POTUS then a certain other personage should exercise its functions adinterim. Even upon that vote some of the most distinguished of the members of that Congress who contended that it was a subject of legal regulation voted for those words, and voted for them upon the ground that there was still by that language a power conferred, and a power which they thought it expedient to confer. Therefore, it results, Mr. President, that this early language of the statutes, this early passage of this act and the debate upon it demon strate nothing in the way of an acknowledgment of constitutional and exclusive Presidential power; and we are jonow in resorting to that language to take it as it stands and to give it that construction which a lawyer oar judge or a satesman ought to give to it under the circumstances. I contend that we ought to give to it the construction of conferring upon the President a power which by legal regula.tion might be conferred if the lawmaking power should think expedient to bestow it; and that has been followed; that is the his togy of legislation ever since. We have even gone so far only 4 or 5 years ago, in 1863, I think, in creating the national currency Bureau, as to provide that the chief of ficer of that dept should not be removed by the President without the advice and consent of the Senate, and no man made any special objection to it. There was then nothing political in it at all. Therefore, Mr. President, to conclude, (for I am digressing from what is now the true point under consideration,) while the principle of this bill does proceed upon the idea that all this is a subject of legal regulation, the application of that principle proceeds upon the not unusual idea that there are certain classes of offices that ought to be held upon one tenure, and certain other classes of offices that ought to be held upon another tenure; and the reasons why these specific offices we are now speaking of ought to be held at the will of the President during the recess, and the reason why they ought not to be, were largely and fully and exhaustively gone into the other day, as it appears to me, when my friendfrom Wisconsin made a most able and exhaustive argument on the subject, when my friendfrom Michigan backed him with the power of his logic and his influence, and my friendfrom Massachusetts also. What, then, are we to gain by displacing the deliberate judgment of the Senate and undertaking now to accede to what appears to me to be the passionate will of the of RePresentatives? We ought to consider, it appears to me, that in undertaking to do, we ought not to allow ourselves in the heat of the moment to over do, and make that which is good in itself bad by carrying it too far. The motion to postpone was not agreed to; there being, on a."., 9, noes 25. DEATH OF HON. PHILIP JOHNSON.