in the executive department, which was intended for the
security of liberty and the public good."[384] But this was said with
respect to the office of Secretary of State; and when shortly afterward
the question arose as to the power of Congress to regulate the tenure of
the Comptroller of the Treasury, Madison assumed a very different
attitude, conceding in effect that this officer was to be an arm of
certain of Congress's own powers, and should therefore be protected
against the removal power.[385] (_See_ p. 458). And in Marbury _v._
Madison,[386] Chief Justice Marshall traced a parallel distinction
between the duties of the Secretary of State under the original act
which had created a "Department of Foreign Affairs" and those which had
been added by the later act changing the designation of the department
to its present one. The former were, he pointed out, entirely in the
"political field," and hence for their discharge the Secretary was left
responsible absolutely to the President. The latter, on the other hand,
were exclusively of statutory origin and sprang from the powers of
Congress. For these, therefore, the Secretary was "an officer of the
law" and "amenable to the law for his conduct."[387]

ADMINISTRATIVE DECENTRALIZATION VERSUS JACKSONIAN CENTRALISM

An opinion rendered by Attorney General Wirt in 1823 asserted the
proposition that the President's duty under the "take care" clause
required of him scarcely more than that he should bring a criminally
negligent official to book for his derelictions, either by removing him
or by setting in motion against him the processes of impeachment or of
criminal prosecution.[388] The opinion entirely overlooked the
important question of the location of the power to interpret the law
which is inevitably involved in any effort to enforce it. The
diametrically opposed theory that Congress is unable to vest any head of
an executive department, even within the field of Congress's
specifically delegated powers, with any legal discretion which the
President is not entitled to control was first asserted in unambiguous
terms in President Jackson's Protest Message of April 15, 1834,[389]
defending his removal of Duane as Secretary of the Treasury, on account
of the latter's refusal to remove the deposits from the Bank of the
United States. Here it is asserted "that the entire executive power is
vested in the President"; that the power to remove those officers who
are to aid him