But allow me to go a little further, and there I should like the attention of my friend opposite [Mr. JOHNSON]. If the term of the President is to be six years, should we not abolish the office of Vice-President? Are you willing to take the chance of a Vice-President becoming President a few weeks after the beginning of the six years’ term, and then serving out that full term? We all know, in fact, that the Vice-President is nominated often as a sort of balance to the President. It is too much with a view to certain political considerations, and possibly to aid the election of the President, rather than to secure the services of one in all respects competent to be President. Suppose, therefore, we have a President only, and leave to Congress the provision for a temporary filling of the office, as now on the disability of the President and Vice-President. I throw out these views without making any motion. I submit that we do not meet all the difficulties of the present hour, unless we go still further and provide against abnormal troubles from the nomination of a Vice-President selected less with reference to fitness than to transient political considerations. As my friend says, he is thrown in for a make-weight, and then, in the providence of God, the make-weight becomes Chief Magistrate. It seems to me important, that, if possible, we should provide against the recurrence of such difficulties. But suppose the proposition of the Committee to stand as reported, I am brought then to the question raised by the Senator from Maine [Mr. FESSENDEN], whether it should be applicable to a Vice-President in the providence of God called to be President. On that point I am obliged to go with the Committee. It seems to me that the evil we wish to guard against in the case of the President naturally arises in the case of a Vice-President who becomes President. I say this on the reason of the case, and then I say it on our melancholy experience. The three cases in our history which distinctly teach the necessity of the Amendment before us are of three Vice-Presidents who in the providence of God became Presidents. But for these three cases, nobody would have thought of change. It is to meet the difficulties found to arise from a Vice-President becoming President, and then hearkening to the whisperings and temptations which unhappily visit a person in his situation, that we have been led to contemplate the necessity of change. I hope, therefore, if the proposition of the Senator from Vermont [Mr. POLAND] is not taken as a substitute, that the words of the Committee will be preserved.