Those gentlemen contended that the clause was either unnecessary or improper. If the constitution gave the power to the President, a repetition of the grant in an act of congress was nugatory: if the constitution did not give it, the attempt to confer it by law was improper. If it belonged conjointly to the President and senate, the house of representatives should not attempt to abridge the constitutional prerogative of the other branch of the legislature. However this might be, they were clearly of opinion that it was not placed in the President alone. In the power over all the executive officers which the bill proposed to confer upon the President, the most alarming dangers to liberty were perceived. It was in the nature of monarchical prerogative, and would convert them into the mere tools and creatures of his will. A dependence so servile on one individual, would deter men of high and honourable minds from engaging in the public service; and if, contrary to expectation, such men should be brought into office, they would be reduced to the necessity of sacrificing every principle of independence to the will of the chief magistrate, or of exposing themselves to the disgrace of being removed from office, and that too at a time when it might be no longer in their power to engage in other pursuits. Gentlemen they feared were too much dazzled with the splendour of the virtues which adorned the actual President, to be able to look into futurity. But the framers of the constitution had not confined their views to the person who would most probably first fill the presidential chair. The house of representatives ought to follow their example, and to contemplate this power in the hands of an ambitious man, who might apply it to dangerous purposes; who might from caprice remove the most worthy men from office. [Illustration: View of the Old City or Federal Hall, New York, in 1789 _On the balcony of this building, the site of which is now occupied by the United States Sub-Treasury, at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, George Washington took the oath of office as First President of the United States, April 30, 1789. In the near distance, at the intersection of Wall and Broadway, may be seen the original Trinity Church structure which was completed in 1697. It was replaced by the present edifice in 1846. President Washington, who was an Episcopalian, did not attend Trinity, but maintained a pew in St. Paul's Chapel, Broadway and Vesey Street, which remains as it was when he worshipped there._]