hen the question of
the President's power of removal was debated in the first Congress,
those who argued for it limited it to _extreme cases_. Cases, they said,
might arise, in which it would be _absolutely necessary_ to remove an
officer before the Senate could be assembled. An officer might become
insane; he might abscond; and from these and other supposable cases, it
was said, the public service might materially suffer if the President
could not remove the incumbent. And it was further said, that there was
little or no danger of the abuse of the power for party or personal
objects. No President, it was thought, would ever commit such an outrage
on public opinion. Mr. Madison, who thought the power ought to exist,
and to be exercised in cases of high necessity, declared, nevertheless,
that if a President should resort to the power when not required by any
public exigency, and merely for personal objects, _he would deserve to
be impeached_. By a very small majority,--I think, in the Senate, by the
casting vote of the Vice-President,--Congress decided in favor of the
existence of the power of removal, upon the grounds which I have
mentioned; granting the power in a case of clear and absolute necessity,
and denying its existence everywhere else.

Mr. President, we should recollect that this question was discussed,
and thus decided, when Washington was in the executive chair. Men knew
that in his hands the power would not be abused; nor did they conceive
it possible that any of his successors could so far depart from his
great and bright example, as, by abuse of the power, and by carrying
that abuse to its utmost extent, to change the essential character of
the executive from that of an impartial guardian and executor of the
laws into that of the chief dispenser of party rewards. Three or four
instances of removal occurred in the first twelve years of the
government. At the commencement of Mr. Jefferson's administration, he
made several others, not without producing much dissatisfaction; so much
so, that he thought it expedient to give reasons to the people, in a
public paper, for even the limited extent to which he had exercised the
power. He rested his justification on particular circumstances and
peculiar grounds; which, whether substantial or not, showed, at least,
that he did not regard the power of removal as an ordinary power, still
less as a mere arbitrary one, to be used as he pleased, for whatever
ends he please