g the enumerated executive
powers, or fairly implied from some one or more of them. It cannot be
implied from the general words. The power of appointment was not left to
be so implied; why, then, should the power of removal have been so left?
They are both closely connected; one is indispensable to the other; why,
then, was one carefully expressed, defined, and limited, and not one
word said about the other? Sir, I think the whole matter is sufficiently
plain. Nothing is said in the Constitution about the power of removal,
because it is not a separate and distinct power. It is part of the power
of appointment, naturally going with it or necessarily resulting from
it. The Constitution or the laws may separate these powers, it is true,
in a particular case, as is done in respect to the judges, who, though
appointed by the President and Senate, cannot be removed at the pleasure
of either or of both. So a statute, in prescribing the tenure of any
other office, may place the officer beyond the reach of the appointing
power. But where no other tenure is prescribed, and officers hold their
places at will, that will is necessarily the will of the appointing
power; because the exercise of the power of appointment at once
displaces such officers. The power of placing one man in office
necessarily implies the power of turning another out. If one man be
Secretary of State, and another be appointed, the first goes out by the
mere force of the appointment of the other, without any previous act of
removal whatever. And this is the practice of the government, and has
been, from the first. In all the removals which have been made, they
have generally been effected simply by making other appointments. I
cannot find a case to the contrary. There is no such thing as any
distinct official act of removal. I have looked into the practice, and
caused inquiries to be made in the departments, and I do not learn that
any such proceeding is known as an entry or record of the removal of an
officer from office; and the President could only act, in such cases, by
causing some proper record or entry to be made, as proof of the fact of
removal. I am aware that there have been some cases in which notice has
been sent to persons in office that their services are, or will be,
after a given day, dispensed with. These are usually cases in which the
object is, not to inform the incumbent that he is _removed_, but to tell
him that a successor either is, or by a