Mr. HALE. I must be excused, as my time is so short, from yielding any further. Mr. Speaker, I was remarking this bill does not extend the tenure of office. It leaves the law as it is now as to the expiration by legal limitation. Most of these officers are appointed for a definite term of years and their office will expire as before. Now, a single word as to the different amendments which have been proposed to this bill. An amendment has been moved by the Gentfrom Pennsylvania o: WILLIAMsl in regard to the exception of its application to Cabinet officers. Another amendment has been moved to the 3rd section, the nature of which I will not now stop to specify. Another amendment is proposed by the Gentfrom Minnesota, [Mr. DoNNELLY;] and the 4th by the Gentfrom Pennsylvania, [Mr. soft chairman of the Committee On Poo. As to all these amendments I wish to say preliminarily one thing: at least two, and I think 3, have been submitted to the House in another form and passed upon. By decided and emphatic votes the House has rejected the amendments now proposed. One of them has been submitted in the Senate. I do not know whether the others have arrived at that importance. One was moved in the Senate and discussed at length, and rejected by a vote of 2 to one. I ask gentlemen in the House who are anx ious to make this bill as they term it moreingent, more sweeping, to consider on thing. We have arrived at the last month of the ses. and little time remains for us to act. certain as we adopt the amendments proposed the result will be we will fail to enact this into a law. We have to anticipate, if this is adopted, a veto. If the amendments are adopted the bill will go back to the Senate, where debate is unlimited, to compel it to pass upon. it has already decided. It has passed at least upon one of them by a decided vote. Will gentlemen then tell me what probability there is time will remain for action after the veto? What reason have they to suppose there will be time enough to pass it over the veto in that body? I know gentlemen here act on the principle that if they cannot have all they ask they will take nothing. I submit that is not wise or rudent action. The true doctrine should be if they cannot get all they want to take the best can get. I am willing to act on that principle; and today I am not so strenuous for this bill. If in the judgment of the Senate and the House it should include the Cabinet I will vote for it in that form. The Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. WILLIAMs] has made a plausible argument for putting them upon the same footing as all other officers. If his constitutional construction is correct the House is inconsistent in excepting them. If he is right the Constitution gives the power of removal to the President and Senate. I believe the better opinion, the larger share of sentiment among intelligent and patriotic states men, is that it is wiser to leave the Cabinet in that position, where they have been placed by constitutional power, not by constitutional enactment, but by Congress; the legal construction beginning with the 1st Congress in 1789, and continuing to this day, that those officers were the confidential advisers of the President. That being so, I think it is wise for us to leave them as they are. So far as argument in this House is concerned, it is resadjudicata. So far as the Senate is concerned it has spoken most emphatically upon it, and there is no possible hope of passing, such a bill othat body over an executive veto. As to the amendment proposed by the distinguished Gentfrom Pennsylvania, [Mr. STEVENs, I will not go over the ground again. The same provision was offered by mim to a former bill, and was condemned by this House by a vote of more than 6 to one; and I have failed to hear any argument from him today which in my judgment will satisfy the House that it committed a great error in that decision. One word as to the amendment of the Gentfrom Minnesota, [Mr. DoNNELLY] I have no time to examine or consider that point perhaps with the care it deserves, but it seems to me that his amendment is wholly unnecessary, for the reason that it must, after all, turn upon a pure question of constitutional construction, namely, When does the appointment of an officer take effect? I think it will not be found under the other provisions of this bill to be a necessary provision. If it is necessary, and if it means to change the rule as to when an appointee's term begins or his appointment i.effect, then it is not a subject of legislation, but of constitutional provision, and was directly adjudged in the case of Mar bury vs. Madison, that the appointment took effect on the final passage of all the papers and the signing of the commission. That being so, I do not see how the gentleman's proposition, to make the question whether a vacancy exists determinable upon the question whether the incumbent is actually in possession of the office or not, can be admissible.