will not be continued, and if they President
continues to pardon rebels and restore their property by individual
acts under the Constitution, let him do so without having the sanction
of Congress for his act."

Mr. Reverdy Johnson took issue with Mr. Trumbull. He maintained that
the President's powers to grant pardons, as conferred by the
Constitution, had not been affected by the provision of law whose
repeal was now urged. He declared that the power of the President
"to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United
States" was as broad, as general, as unrestricted as language could
make it. He could find no logical ground for the distinction made
by Mr. Trumbull between individual pardons and general amnesties by
proclamation--in illustration of which he said President Washington
had by proclamation pardoned the offenders engaged in the Whiskey
Insurrection. The enactment of the provision had not, in Mr. Johnson's
opinion, enlarged the President's pardoning power, and its repeal
would not restrict it.

It was thought that a majority of the Senate concurred in Mr. Johnson's
interpretation of the Constitution, but they passed the bill as a
rebuke to the scandalous sale of pardons which Mr. Chandler had brought
to the attention of the Senate. This vile practice had no doubt been
pursued to some extent, but only by a class of "middle men" who had
neither honor nor sensibility. They had in some form the opportunity
to secure the interposition of men who could reach the ear of the
President or the Attorney-General. It is hardly necessary to add that
neither of those high officials was in the remotest degree reflected
upon even by their bitterest opponents. However wrong-headed Mr.
Johnson and Mr. Stanbery might have been considered on certain
political issues, the personal integrity of both was unblemished. It
was believed that the nefarious practice was stopped by Mr. Chandler's
action in the Senate. Exposure made public men careful to examine
each application for pardon before they would consent to recommend it
to the President.

The President neither approved the bill nor objected to it, but
allowed it to become a law by the expiration of the Constitutional
limit of ten days. He obviously took the same view that had been
advanced by Mr. Reverdy Johnson, and did not take the trouble to sign
it, much less to veto it. It was _brutum fulmen_, and the President
used his Constitutional power to pa