Mr. PRESIDENT: It is with extreme diffidence and reluctance that I rise to address you on the present occasion. It was my intention to suffer this bill to pass, contenting myself with a simple vote in the negative. This course I should have pursued, had the constitutional question been fully discussed by any gentleman on our side of the Senate. As this has not been done, I feel it to be a duty which I owe to those who sent me here, as well as to myself, to express my opinion on the subject, and the reasons on which that opinion is founded. The present bill presents a most important question concerning our fundamental institutions. It attacks a construction of the Constitution of the United States which has been considered settled for almost half a century. Has the President, under the Constitution, the power of removing executive officers? If any question can ever be put at rest in this country, this, emphatically, ought to be considered that one. It was solemnly settled in 1789 by the first Congress of the United States. Of whom was that Congress composed? Of the men who had sustained the toils and dangers of the revolutionary war—of the men who sat in the convention which framed the Constitution, and who passed from that convention into the first Congress. These men, who laid the foundations of our Republic broad and deep, most solemnly and deliberately decided, that to the President, and to him alone, belonged the power of removal. This was not at a moment when the country was convulsed by party spirit. Very far from it. The Fathers of the Republic were then occupied in putting the Government in motion, and in establishing such principles as might preserve the liberties and promote the best interests of the American people for ages. In what condition are we, at the present moment, to rejudge the judgment of those men and reverse their solemn decision? Is not party spirit raging throughout the land? Are there not high party feelings in this body? Are we in a condition calmly and deliberately, without prejudice and without passion, to review and to condemn their judgment? Why, sir, even if there were no authority in the Constitution for the power of removal, the decision of this body, at this time, would have but little influence among the people. They would compare the calmness—the self-possession—the freedom from political excitement of the sages who established the precedent, with the party violence and the high political feeling of the Senate at the present day; and the weight of authority would be all against us.