in the execution of the laws is an incident of that
power; that the Secretary of the Treasury was such an officer; that the
custody of the public property and money was an executive function
exercised through the Secretary of the Treasury and his subordinates:
that in the performance of these duties the Secretary was subject to the
supervision and control of the President: and finally that the act
establishing the Bank of the United States "did not, as it could not
change the relation between the President and Secretary--did not release
the former from his obligation to see the law faithfully executed nor
the latter from the President's supervision and control."[390] In short,
the President's removal power, in this case unqualified, was the
sanction provided by the Constitution for his power and duty to control
his "subordinates" in all their official actions of public consequence.

CONGRESSIONAL POWER VERSUS PRESIDENTIAL DUTY TO THE LAW

Five years later the case of Kendall _v._ United States[391] arose. The
United States owed one Stokes money, and when Postmaster General
Kendall, at Jackson's instigation, refused to pay it, Congress passed a
special act ordering payment. Kendall, however, still proved
noncompliant, whereupon Stokes sought and obtained a mandamus in the
United States circuit court for the District of Columbia, and on appeal
this decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court. While Kendall _v._
United States, like Marbury _v._ Madison, involved the question of the
responsibility of a head of department for the performance of a
_ministerial_ duty, the discussion by counsel before the Court and the
Court's own opinion covered the entire subject of the relation of the
President to his subordinates in the performance by them of statutory
duties. The lower court had asserted that the duty of the President
under the faithful execution clause gave him no other control over the
officer than to see that he acts honestly, with proper motives, but no
power to construe the law, and see that the executive action conforms to
it. Counsel for Kendall attacked this position vigorously, relying
largely upon statements by Hamilton, Marshall, James Wilson, and Story
having to do with the President's power in the field of foreign
relations. The Court rejected the implication with emphasis. There are,
it pointed out, "certain political duties imposed upon many officers in
the executive department, the discharge of which is un