inted by the President, and who are removable at his pleasure. And
it is very clear that the Protest means to maintain that the _tenure of
office cannot be so regulated by law, as that public officers shall not
be removable at the pleasure of the President_.

The President considers the right of removal as a fixed, vested,
constitutional right, which Congress cannot limit, control, or qualify,
until the Constitution shall be altered. This, Sir, is doctrine which I
am not prepared to admit. I shall not now discuss the question, whether
the law may not place the tenure of office beyond the reach of executive
pleasure; but I wish merely to draw the attention of the Senate to the
fact, that any such power in Congress is denied by the principles and by
the words of the Protest. According to that paper, we live under a
constitution by the provisions of which the public treasures are,
necessarily and unavoidably, always under executive control; and as the
executive may remove all officers, and appoint others, at least
temporarily, without the concurrence of the Senate, he may hold those
treasures, in the hands of persons appointed by himself alone, in
defiance of any law which Congress has passed or can pass. It is to be
seen, Sir, how far such claims of power will receive the approbation of
the country. It is to be seen whether a construction will be readily
adopted which thus places the public purse out of the guardianship of
the immediate representatives of the people.

But, Sir, there is, in this paper, something even yet more strange than
these extraordinary claims of power. There is a strong disposition,
running through the whole Protest, to represent the executive department
of this government as the peculiar protector of the public liberty, the
chief security on which the people are to rely against the encroachment
of other branches of the government. Nothing can be more manifest than
this purpose. To this end, the Protest spreads out the President's
official oath, reciting all its words in a formal quotation; and yet the
oath of members of Congress is exactly equivalent. The President is to
swear that he will "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution"; and
members of Congress are to swear that they will "support the
Constitution." There are more words in one oath than the other, but the
sense is precisely the same. Why, then, this reference to his official
oath, and this ostentatious quotation of it? Would the w