; and although each of the
said opinions had been formed by this respondent upon an actual case,
requiring him, in his capacity of President of the United States, to
come to some judgment and determination thereon, yet this respondent,
as President of the United States, desired and determined to avoid, if
possible, any question of the construction and effect of the said first
section of the last-named act, and also the broader question of the
executive power conferred upon the President of the United States by
the Constitution of the United States to remove one of the principal
officers of one of the Executive Departments for cause seeming to him
sufficient; and this respondent also desired and determined that if,
from causes over which he could exert no control, it should become
absolutely necessary to raise and have in some way determined either
or both of the said last-named questions, it was in accordance with the
Constitution of the United States, and was required of the President
thereby, that questions of so much gravity and importance, upon which
the legislative and executive departments of the Government had
disagreed, which involved powers considered by all branches of the
Government, during its entire history down to the year 1867, to have
been confided by the Constitution of the United States to the President,
and to be necessary for the complete and proper execution of his
constitutional duties, should be in some proper way submitted to that
judicial department of the Government intrusted by the Constitution
with the power, and subjected by it to the duty, not only of
determining finally the construction and effect of all acts of Congress,
but of comparing them with the Constitution of the United States
and pronouncing them inoperative when found in conflict with that
fundamental law which the people have enacted for the government of
all their servants. And to these ends, first, that through the action
of the Senate of the United States the absolute duty of the President
to substitute some fit person in place of Mr. Stanton as one of his
advisers, and as a principal subordinate officer whose official conduct
he was responsible for and had lawful right to control, might, if
possible, be accomplished without the necessity of raising any one
of the questions aforesaid; and, second, if this duty could not
be so performed, then that these questions, or such of them as might
necessarily arise, should be judiciall