son be argued that the veto power and the power to appoint and remove for cause have not been conferred upon the President, although not a word is said in the Constitution about the power of removal. It is a derivative power, and one derived from the power to appoint; as is this a derivative power, derived from the powers to which I have already called attention. Now if the framers of the Constitution meant to say that no other oath should ever be required, why didn't they say so? Why did they confine their prohibition to this one specific religious test-oath? In short, all power is liable to abuse, whether lodged with the executive, legislative, or judicial department of the government, and each, in turn, has abused its power.

If the Constitution had said, as our State Constitution reads, "Any person who has attained the age of twenty-five, has been a citizen for seven years," etc., etc., shall be entitled or qualified to serve as a representative in Congress, then I might agree with you that the qualification was fixed and unalterable. But such is not the reading of the Constitution; it deals in the negative, and not the affirmative qualifications. It says: "No person shall be a representative without certain specified qualifications, which are deemed all-important, and shall, under no circumstances, be dispensed with." Then in another part of the Constitution ono other indispensablo requisite is prescribed, to wit, that the representative shall be sworn to support the Constitution, but no religious test-oath shall ever be required. Shall ever be required by whom and how? By Congress, and by law, of course. But is not this cquivalent to saying that, if hereafter it shall be found necessary and proper, Congress may by law require any other than a religious test-oath, especially, too, when it is provided that Congress shall have power "to make all laws which may be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing power, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof?" And can there bo any thing more necessary and proper in conducting the government than that there should be wise, judicious, patriotic, and loyal legislation, and an honest and faithful execution of the laws?

The only qualification prescribed by the Constitution for a judge of the Supreme Court, and consequently for chief-justice, is that he shall take an oath to support the Constitution. Now suppose some beast of a President, with a demoralized Senate at his heels, should nominate for chicfjustice an ignorant tool as a reward for his partisan services, or some political prostitute who had been convicted of bribery, perjury, or other infamous

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offense, or an alien, ignorant of our laws, customs, and language, or a popular military commander who had no knowledge of law, or in any other way the necessity had arisen or was likely to arise, do you think it would violate either the letter or the spirit of the Constitution if Congress were to add to this oath to support the Constitution such other qualifications as that he should be of a certain age, that he should have studied and obtained a license to practice law, that he had never been convicted of an infamous offense, and that he should be a white man, and citizen D of the United States; and if they could thus add to the constitutional qualifications of a judge, why not to those of a member of Congress?

"Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its members." I can not concur in your interpretation of this clause, that it was only intended to interdict mandamus, etc. That this was one object I do not doubt, but not the only one. Nor does it follow, as you suppose, that by my construction one house might prescribe one set of qualifications, and the other another.

I think this clause was intended to apply to the qualifications as pro'vided by the Constitution, or such as might at a future day be prescribed or required by law, and not that cach house might establish qualifications for itself, but that each should judge for itself whether its members possessed the qualifications and came up to the requirements of the Constitution and the law. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution negroes were nowhere and by nobody recognized as citizens of the United States; therefore to require that the President, Vice-president, members of Congress, etc., should be citizens of the United States, was equivalent to requiring that none but white persons should be capable of filling these offices. But now this whole matter has been changed. Negroes have been made citizens, and the right to vote and to represent has been claimed for them; and already a colored lawyer has been admitted to practice in the Supreme Court. Now let me ask you if you think it would conflict with the terms of the Constitution, or with the purposes of its framers, if Congress were to provide by law that no one of African descent should be capable of filling these high offices? Or do you think our institutions would be endangered thereby? But can any thing be more absurd than the pretensions set up, that while these men have forfeited their lives to the requirements of the Constitution and law, that, nevertheless, the same Constitution has secured to them an inalienable and indestructible right to legislate for the country they had for four years labored and fought to destroy?

You can not infer from my letter to the gentlemen in Albemarle who did me the honor to seek my opinions that I intended to deny the power of each state to fix the qualifications of its own officers, in addition to the one prescribed by the Constitution of the United States. On the contrary, my purpose was to show that they had such power, and that it had never been disputed; but my argument was, that as this clause did not operate as a limitation to the power of the state except as to the religious test-oath, so in like manner it did not operate as a limitation to the power of Congress to add to as circumstances might require, but not to depart from the qualifications therein prescribed.

I am sorry there should be any difference between us on this point, but, as I have already said, it is more in the use of terms than in substance, and I care very little for the use of terms provided I get the substance.

May I not, then, ask you to review your own argument, and tell me why more apprehension should be felt for the safety of our institutions because the law-making power is intrusted with the right to add to the qualifications of the members of Congress, and to throw additional safeguards around the legislation of the country, than they are from the power to raise armies, make war, regulate commerce, impose taxes, and enforce the laws by arms if necessary; and, when you have done this, I will take much pleasure in reviewing my own arguments, and recanting my opinions if convinced of my error.

I am over faithfully and truly yours,

JOIN M. BOTTS.

PRESIDENT JOIINSON'S POLICY OF RECONSTRUCTION.

When Mr. Johnson's policy of reconstruction was first announced, I thought he committed a mistake in not calling Congress together, that the law-making power might act harmoniously together, and because I bclieved that reconstruction could not be valid and complete without the sanction of the Senate, House, and President; nevertheless, it was not for me to cavil about it while all others seemed to acquiesce.

That policy, as I then understood it, was to extend pardon to the least culpable of the rebels, and to make "treason odious" by some judicious system of punishment for the more wicked and guilty offenders, and especially that all political power was to be withheld from those who had shown themselves so unfaithful to their obligations of duty, and so unfit and unworthy to be trusted again.

Under these circumstances, and with this understanding, I labored for months in efforts to restore harmony to the distracted South, in procuring

release of prisoners, and in obtaining pardons for the least undeserving, but by what I have always believed to be gross deceptions practiced on the President. I found that through the use of money paid to pardonbrokers and feed attorneys, aided by the influence of subordinates in the employment of the administration, pardons were more readily procured for the most vindictive and obnoxious traitors, than for those who had sinned the least but had no money wherewith to purchase a release. I found these same pardoned rebels flaunting their pardons in the faces of those whose generosity or misplaced confidence had recommended them, and assuming a superiority over those to whom they had in humility appealed for aid. I saw men in the State of Virginia, upon whom the Constitution itself had set its seal of condemnation and declared unworthy of holding office, rushing with impetuous haste into the legislative halls in utter disregard of its plainest provisions, trampling under foot the constitutional oath prescribed, and then and there exercising dictatorial and tyrannical power by hurling headlong from office better men than themselves, who had been released by the governor of the commonwealth for their loyalty to the government of the United States, and substituting for them those only who had given evidence of their loyalty to the rebellion. I saw them in the social as well as the political circles availing themselves of their superior numbers, assigning all loyal men and women to a position of absolute inferiority, and demanding for themselves, as if by Divino right, the favor to control and rule with an iron rod. I saw them educating the masses of the people to look upon every demonstration of loyalty, either during or since the war, as degrading and infamous, until the interposition of the national authorities was found necessary to set aside elections of public officers known to have been selected for their services to the rebellious government; to suspend the publication of various papers published through the state for their obnoxious and disloyal sentiments scattered among the people. All this I saw from men who but yesterday were sworn citizens of another government, warring against the government of the United States, and struggling to overthrow the great Republican Empire of the world; and I thought the time had arrived when the law should be appealed to, and justice should be enforced upon a people who in the beginning had forsworn their obligations, treacherously and sacrilegiously abandoned their posts of duty, and in the end were insensible to the mercy that had been extended to them, oblivious to all marks of kindness, and were still bent on mischief to the country, and ruin to all who did not tamely submit to their outrageous oppressions and to their despotic demands.

It was under these circumstances that I prepared the following suggestions, in the form of political axioms, for the public press, that the national authorities might be recalled to the great duties they had to perform for the future peace and safety of the republic, and for the permanent security of the rights of loyalty, which I am happy to say have not been without effect.

MR. BOTTS'S AXIOMS.

A few plain political axioms that can not be successfully disputed or denied, and which serve to solve the perplexed problem of the status of the states and the people of the states lately in rebellion against the authority of the United States: .

1st. The right of secession is not only not authorized, but is expressly forbidden by the Constitution of the United States.

2d. It follows, that all ordinances of secession adopted by the states lately in rebellion were null and void in law.

3d. That the allegiance of the citizen is due to his state, and that there are thirty-six different allegiances in the United States, and not one man owing allegiance to the great central government, which is supreme over all, is a proposition too absurd to be argued.

4th. From which it results that no state has been out of the Union, and could not be carried out otherwise than by successful revolution; and to admit that any of the rebellious states are or have been out of the Union, would necessarily amount to an admission that the Union had been dissolved, and that we had been engaged in a foreign and not a civil war; all of which would materially impair the virtue and efficacy of that instrument, which is recognized and claimed as the supreme law of the land.

5th. But while no body of men, however constituted, could take a state out of the Union except by force of arms, yet any attempt to do so by thoso owing allegiance to the United States assuredly constituted the great crime of high treason, if any such crime still exists under our institutions.

6th. The right of expatriation or denationalization, however, has never been denied to the people of this country; and while they could not take a state out of the Union, it can not be denied that the citizens of the rebellious states could take themselves out at pleasure, either individually or collectively.

7th. Nor can it be disputed that the late so-called Confederate States