here is one case in a hundred in which the country
would have suffered the least inconvenience if no removal had been made
without the consent of the Senate. Party might have felt the
inconvenience, but the country never. Many removals have been made (by
new appointments) during the session of the Senate; and if there has
occurred one single case, in the whole six years, in which the public
convenience required the removal of an officer in the recess, such case
has escaped my recollection. Besides, it is worthy of being remembered,
when we are seeking for the true intent of the Constitution on this
subject, that there is reason to suppose that its framers expected the
Senate would be in session a much larger part of the year than the House
of Representatives, so that its concurrence could generally be had, at
once, on any question of appointment or removal.

But this argument, drawn from the supposed inconvenience of denying an
absolute power of removal to the President, suggests still another view
of the question. The argument asserts, that it must have been the
intention of the framers of the Constitution to confer the power on the
President, for the sake of convenience, and as an absolutely necessary
power in his hands. Why, then, did they leave their intent doubtful?
_Why did they not confer the power in express terms?_ Why were they thus
totally silent on a point of so much importance?

Seeing that the removing power naturally belongs to the appointing
power; seeing that, in other cases, in the same Constitution, its
framers have left the one with the consequence of drawing the other
after it,--if, in this instance, they meant to do what was uncommon and
extraordinary, that, is to say, if they meant to separate and divorce
the two powers, why did they not say so? Why did they not express their
meaning in plain words? Why should they take up the appointing power,
and carefully define it, limit it, and restrain it, and yet leave to
vague inference and loose construction an equally important power, which
all must admit to be closely connected with it, if not a part of it? If
others can account for all this silence respecting the removing power,
upon any other ground than that the framers of the Constitution regarded
both powers as one, and supposed they had provided for them together, I
confess I cannot. I have the clearest conviction, that they looked to no
other mode of displacing an officer than by impeachment, or