Various reasons have been assigned for the step which was taken by President Grant in asking Judge Hoar to retire from the Cabinet. Some have assumed that the President was no longer willing to tolerate the presence of two members from the same State. That consideration had been passed upon by the President at the outset, and he had overruled it or set it aside. In my interview with Mr. Washburne the Sunday before my nomination, I had said to him that Judge Hoar and I were not only from the same State, but that we were residents of the same county, and within twenty miles of each other. Moreover, any public dissatisfaction which had existed at the beginning had disappeared. In the meantime the President had become attached to Judge Hoar. Nor is there any justifying foundation for the conjecture that a vacancy was created for the purpose of giving a place in the Cabinet to another person, or to another section of the country. General Grant's attachment to his friends was near to a weakness, and the suggestion that he sacrificed Judge Hoar to the low purpose of giving a place to some other person is far away from any true view of his character. Judge Hoar had had no administrative experience on the political side of the government, and he underestimated the claims, and he undervalued the rights, of members of Congress. As individuals the members of Congress are of the Government, and in a final test the two Houses may become the Government. More than elsewhere the seat of power is in the Senate, and the Senate and Senators are careful to exact a recognition of their rights. They claim, what from the beginning they have enjoyed, the right to be heard by the President and the heads of departments in their respective States. They do not claim to speak authoritatively, but as members of the Government having a right to advise, and under a certain responsibility to the people for what may be done. It was claimed by Senators that the Attorney-General seemed not to admit their right to speak in regard to appointments, and that appointments were made of which they had no knowledge, and of which neither they nor their constituents could approve. These differences reached a crisis when Senators (I use the word in the plural) notified the President that they should not visit the Department of Justice while Judge Hoar was Attorney-General. Thus was a disagreeable alternative presented to the President, and a first impression would lead to the conclusion that he ought to have sustained the Attorney- General. Assuming that the complaints were well founded, it followed that the Attorney-General was denying to Senators the consideration which the President himself was recognizing daily.