69.-REMOVALS FROM OFFICE.

There is no country where the love of office is greater than in the United States,—whether it springs from motives of gain, distinction, or the desire of power. It extends from the presidency, through all legal gradations, and is seen in the voluntary associations for the administration of charities. The Federal Constitution explicitly provides for appointments and commissions, and that the President shall see the laws executed, but is silent in relation to removals. Hence, when once appointed, the officer will hold, as long as the office lasts, or he must be removed under an implied or incidental power. As to the offices which, under an express provision in the Constitution, Congress may devolve upon the heads of departments, or courts of law, scarcely a doubt has been suggested but the appointing power can remove; and that doubt was dissipated by the express decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in Hennen's case, some thirty years since. The Court said, in relation to appointments by the President with the consent of the Senate, that "it was very early adopted, as the practical construction of the Constitution, that this power was vested in the President alone. And such would appear to have been the legislative construction of the Constitution." This question arose, and was discussed in the First Congress by Madison and others who helped frame the Constitution, and the power was then recognized in creating the State, Treasury, and War Departments, and every President since has practically exercised it. It was alleged, by his adversaries, that President Jackson had removed about every official within his reach. So far from this being true, out of about 8,000 deputy-postmasters only 491 were removed; and the total number of all the removals made by him was only about 690, and for all sorts of causes.

The Harrison, Taylor, and Lincoln administrations were the most proscriptive known to the nation. The last scarcely left one in office who could be removed; and so tenacibus of office are the friends he left behind him in Congress, that they have passed an act over President Johnson's veto, forbidding the President to make any but a temporary removal without the consent of the

Senate. Under this act, acknowledged defaulters, plunderers of public property, and those guilty of malfeasance and neglect of duty, have been restored. Congress has thus ignored the decision of the First Congress, the acts of every President, including Mr. Lincoln, who removed many thousands, where the Senate recognized the right by confirming successors, and disregarded the decision of the Supreme Court as delivered by Mr. Justice Thompson. Besides, in very many instances, removals were made at the request of the very Senators and members who passed this law, and of their political friends all over the country. This act was passed with the avowed intention of retaining political friends in office to aid the Republican party to continue in power. Such a bold violation of the Constitution was never before resorted to, merely to hold on to the offices and cripple the President, who is literally surrounded by violent enemies, and nearly all those appointed throughout the country to aid in the execution of the laws are openly seeking to thwart him, some of them being the greatest infractors of the laws. Political violence seems to have run mad, and fastened upon society a sort of epidemic that cannot be stayed.

Offices are simple machinery for carrying on the Government. They are necessary agencies, because the people cannot assemble and transact their business involving the interests of all. No one has a legal, and scarcely any one a moral, right to claim them. They are usually injurious to those who obtain and rely upon them as the main business of life, though not objectionable when only the incidental object. But all who obtain them know the tenure by which they hold. The power of removal usually induces care and attention by the incumbent, as one means of protection in his office. The hope of securing appointments often tends to conduct calculated to show men worthy of them. If an office is a burden -we do not refer to mere clerkships and the like—it is just that the incumbent should be relieved, and if it is a matter of profit and advantage, it is right that more than one should share in it. The advantages of government should not be monopolized by any one man or set of men. The Democratic doctrine is that the rights of all are equal, and whoever is in a position to partici

improve.

pate in those rights is justified in doing so. These changes, like that of running water, tend to purify and They tend to keep up a watchfulness necessary for the general good, without which lethargy and inattention might produce ill consequences to the public. Although removals are often hard, and sometimes oppressive upon the individual, on the whole they are advantageous to the public service. The party in power being responsible for the execution of the laws, must necessarily make the removals and appointments.

70.--"TERRIBLE DISTRESS OF THE COUNTRY."

This, or equivalent expressions, has been often heard from politicians, when the distress was either imaginary, or grew out of their distressing political positions. Sometimes the national bugle is sounded, and at others the sectional or State instrument. The buglers are usually trained professional blowers, or officeseekers of the anti-Democratic persuasion, and who can sound all the notes from the lowest bass to the highest octave in the gamut. It will add to our historic acquisitions to bring to view some of these terrible distresses and trace out their causes.

In 1798 the national bugle sounded its high notes. There was an impending distress which Congress was called upon to assuage by legislation. The wicked Democrats, it was said, refused sufficient respect for official dignitaries, and the unruly Irish and French landing on our shores were becoming naturalized, preparatory to committing the sin of voting the Democratic ticket. This was a clear case of great distress-among Federal politicians, and could only be abated by statute, fixing fourteen years as the term of residence before naturalization, empowering the Executive to drive out foreigners at pleasure, and the courts to punish those who were not as respectful as required. Hence, the fourteen-year Naturalization Law and the Alien and Sedition Laws were passed. These were effective remedies in relieving the affected, not from distress, but from office, and brought the Democrats into power, with Jefferson at their head.

In 1803, when we acquired Louisiana, New England blew her sectional bugle, and Massachusetts sounded her State horn with

Æolian vigor. But the highway of the Mississippi, for Western commerce, soon much larger than that of New England, was kept open, and the Democracy sang songs of joy, while Federalism wept at the distress of her politicians.

In 1807, when the embargo was imposed, all the Federal bugles sounded high notes of distress. The country was perishing, and would soon die if not relieved by repealing the law, and defeating the election of Mr. Madison. The political sufferings of his adversaries were hard to bear. They had endured them eight years without any effectual remedy. Their sufferings were deemed unconstitutional punishments, inflicted by merciless enemies. But the sounds were not loud enough to bring assistance, and Mr. Madison took the chair of state.

In 1811 when Louisiana asked admission as a State, the Northern sectional bugle sounded long and loud, giving notes of the highest distress. Massachusetts almost deafened Congress with notes of ill-omen. She saw with inflamed eyes the monstrous phantom of slavery, and fairly screamed with assumed horror. Such indications of distress had not before been seen or heard. But the great West was seen in the future by Democrats, and Louisiana was admitted.

In 1812, the Federalists throughout the nation sounded their notes of distress at the threatened declaration of war. The Democrats were so wicked as to pretend that Old England helped to pitch the key-notes. Politicians were deeply distressed, and their hopes of relief were limited to the defeat of Madison, and repealing the wicked War Act, and extending the hand of friendship to England, and shivering the war-club on the head of France. But the people reëlected Madison, fought out the war, and covered the nation with glory, making the Stars and Stripes the signals of "free trade and sailors' rights."

In 1814 the Federal politicians had a peculiar return of their distress, and, after a few Northern State bugles sounded, the doctors assembled at Hartford, and held a secret consultation, which ended in sending eminent physicians to Washington, to inform Mr. Madison of the dangers to be apprehended from the high pulse of New England. When they arrived, they learned,

to their amazement, that all the world was well, and that they were the only sick ones; they thereupon returned home to be nursed, and to receive all the consolations which distressed men can under mortifying defeat.

In 1830, when General Jackson vetoed the Maysville Road Bill, a few distress-bugles were sounded; but when it was ascertained that most of the States, and especially the larger ones, were making their own internal improvements, the notes fell off, and the sounds died away.

In 1832, when he vetoed the bill to recharter the United States Bank, every anti-Democratic bugle in the land sounded the highest notes of distress, and the thirty-five million corporation sent up its war-rockets, and threatened to make Jackson and the Democracy of the nation tremble. Such distress, it was said, was never seen or heard of. Even revolutions were talked of, and, as it was affirmed there are no Sundays in revolutionary times, every day in the week was devoted, by politicians, to telling the world how distressed they were. To prove to Congress how badly they felt, they presented memorials with thousands of names, written by somebody, telling the extent of their distress. They were sent by the hands of committees, who always told, in addition, all the alarming symptoms that they had heard from bar-room chroniclers. A committee from Albany, of great wealth and terrible distress, particularly after dinner, bore a mammoth roll of the kind to Washington. Every thing became swollen by accumulated distress. A swollen oral account was added by way of an interesting finish, when it was handed to Mr. Webster, to present to the Senate. Their painful tale deeply affected him. He, too, was affected by the swelling tendency of the times. He so clothed the subject with sentiments of sympathy, that the good people of Albany were astonished at their own sad condition, and greatly marvelled that they had endured it thus long. They became disgusted, not only with Mr. Webster, but with themselves. General Jackson saw no distress beyond that created by the bank, and that of a political character among its friends. When he vetoed the bank charter, it seemed to add to the pain of his adversaries, because there was no known remedy for sick