Clearly the suspension was made under the Tenure-of-Office Act, and can be justified in no other way. From this conclusion the following dilemma results: If Mr. Stanton was within the statute, by what right was he removed? If he was not, by what right was he suspended? The President may choose his horn. Either will be sufficient to convict. I should not proceed further under this head but for the new device which makes its appearance under the auspices of the Senator from Maine [Mr. FESSENDEN], who tells us, that, “whether Mr. Stanton came under the first section of the statute or not, the President had a clear right to suspend him under the second.” Thus a statute intended as a bridle on the President gives the power to suspend Mr. Stanton, but fails to give him any protection. This statement would seem enough. The invention of the Senator is not less fallacious than the pretext of the President. It is a device well calculated to help the President and to hurt Mr. Stanton, with those who regard devices more than the reason of the statute and its spirit. Study the statute in its reason and its spirit, and you cannot fail to see that the second section was intended merely as a pendant to the first, and was meant to apply to the cases included in the first, and none other. It was a sort of safety-valve, or contrivance to guard against possible evils from bad men who could not be removed during the recess of the Senate. There was no reason to suspend a person who could be removed. It is absurd to suppose that a President would resort to a dilatory and roundabout suspension, when the short cut of removal was open to him. Construing the statute by this plain reason, its second section must have precisely the same sphere of operation as the first. By the letter, Mr. Stanton falls within both; by the intention, it is the same. It is only by applying to the first section his own idea of the intention, and by availing himself of the letter of the second, that the Senator is able to limit the one and to enlarge the other, so as to exclude Mr. Stanton from the protection of the statute, and to include him in the part allowing suspensions. Applying either letter or spirit consistently, the case is plain. I turn for the present from the Tenure-of-Office Act, insisting that Mr. Stanton is within its protection, and, being so, that his removal was, under the circumstances, a high misdemeanor, aggravated by its defiant purpose and the long series of transgressions which preceded it, all showing a criminal intent. The apologies of the President will be considered hereafter. SUBSTITUTION OF ADJUTANT-GENERAL THOMAS AD INTERIM.