{123} The propositions contained in the Tenure-of-Office bill were, however, of a very different significance. There was no clause in the Constitution which by express literal grant vested the power to dismiss from office in the President, but the clause which made the President solely responsible for the execution of the laws was interpreted by the first Congress as doing so. Madison took the ground that the President must have this power in order to secure the necessary obedience in his subordinates, and declared that the convention which framed the Constitution so understood it and so intended it. This is certainly sound political science and correct constitutional interpretation. It had also been the practice of the Government from the beginning. The Whigs had undertaken to reverse it in their contest with Jackson, and Webster had given his opinion that good political science required that dismissal from office should be treated as an incident of appointment, and should be effected in the same manner as appointment, i.e., with the concurrence of the Senate, and that the decision of 1789 on this subject was, in his opinion, erroneous from the point of view of a proper interpretation of the Constitution as well. But the Whigs did not succeed, as we have seen, in their attempt to break down Presidential prerogative and introduce parliamentary government, and the practice of the Government on this subject remained, after, as before, the fourth decade of the century, the same. [Sidenote: The reasons for the Tenure-of-Office bill.] During the experiences of the years 1865 and 1866 the Republicans feared that the President would use this great power of dismissal from office in order to make the entire official system solid with himself on the subject of Reconstruction, and toward the end of 1866 they suspected and asserted that he was dismissing officers {124} from their positions simply on the ground of a difference of opinion with himself on this subject, and they professed to believe that he would make a clean sweep of all such as soon as Congress should adjourn. There is little doubt that excessive partisan feeling made them exaggerate greatly what the President had done and what he intended to do. The President was guided by Mr. Seward in all public matters except his imprudent speeches, and Seward's conservative and diplomatic disposition and methods were all against any such radical and reckless procedure. Besides, it was the constitutional right of the President to require obedience in their official acts from his subordinates, and to dismiss them when in his opinion their views of policy interfered with the discharge of their official duties as he required them to be discharged. The Thirty-ninth Congress, however, resolved to disregard the precedents set by all of its predecessors and to dispute the President's prerogative of control over the tenure of his subordinates. [Sidenote: The contents of the bill.]