American Institutions and Their InfluenceTocqueville, Alexis de
History
American Institutions and Their Influence
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Democracy; United States -- Politics and government
[Those who are desirous of tracing the question respecting the power
of the president to remove every executive officer of the government
without the sanction of the senate, will find some light upon it by
referring to 5th Marshall's Life of Washington, p. 196: 5 Sergeant and
Rawle's Reports (Pennsylvania), 451: Elliot's Debates on the Federal
Constitution, vol iv., p. 355, contains the debate in the House of
Representatives, June 16, 1799, when the question was first mooted:
Report of a committee of the senate in 1822, in Niles's Register of 29th
August in that year. It is certainly very extraordinary that such a vast
power, and one so extensively affecting the whole administration of the
government, should rest on such slight foundations, as an _inference_
from an act of congress, providing that when the secretary of the
treasury should be removed by the president, his assistant should
discharge the duties of the office. How congress could confer the
power, even by a direct act, is not perceived. It must be a necessary
implication from the words of the constitution, or it does not exist.
It has been repeatedly denied in and out of congress, and must be
considered, as yet, an unsettled question.--_American Editor_.]
* * * * *
ACCIDENTAL CAUSES WHICH MAY INCREASE THE INFLUENCE OF THE EXECUTIVE.
External security of the Union.--Army of six thousand Men.--Few
Ships.--The President has no Opportunity of exercising his great
Prerogatives.--In the Prerogatives he exercises he is weak.
If the executive power is feebler in America than in France, the cause
is more attributable to the circumstances than to the laws of the
country.
It is chiefly in its foreign relations that the executive power of a
nation is called upon to exert its skill and vigor. If the existence of
the Union were perpetually threatened, and its chief interest were in
daily connexion with those of other powerful nations, the executive
government would assume an increased importance in proportion to the
measures expected of it, and those which it would carry into effect. The
president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the army,
but of an army composed of only six thousand men; he commands the fleet,
but the fleet reckons but few sail; he conducts the foreign relations
of the Union, but the United States are a nation without neighbors.
Separated from the rest of the world by the ocean, and too weak as yet
to aim at the dominion of the seas, they have no enemies, and their
interests rarely come into contact with those of any other nation of the
globe.
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