icate
violated law and to stand as its champion.

This was not the first occasion in which Mr. Stanton, in discharge of
a public duty, was called upon to consider the provisions of that law.
That tenure-of-office law did not pass without notice. Like other acts,
it was sent to the President for approval. As is my custom, I submitted
its consideration to my Cabinet for their advice upon the question
whether I should approve it or not. It was a grave question of
constitutional law, in which I would, of course, rely most upon the
opinion of the Attorney-General and of Mr. Stanton, who had once been
Attorney-General.

Every member of my Cabinet advised me that the proposed law was
unconstitutional. All spoke without doubt or reservation, but Mr.
Stanton's condemnation of the law was the most elaborate and emphatic.
He referred to the constitutional provisions, the debates in Congress,
especially to the speech of Mr. Buchanan when a Senator, to the
decisions of the Supreme Court, and to the usage from the beginning of
the Government through every successive Administration, all concurring
to establish the right of removal as vested by the Constitution in the
President. To all these he added the weight of his own deliberate
judgment, and advised me that it was my duty to defend the power of
the President from usurpation and to veto the law.

I do not know when a sense of public duty is more imperative upon a head
of Department than upon such an occasion as this. He acts then under the
gravest obligations of law, for when he is called upon by the President
for advice it is the Constitution which speaks to him. All his other
duties are left by the Constitution to be regulated by statute, but this
duty was deemed so momentous that it is imposed by the Constitution
itself.

After all this I was not prepared for the ground taken by Mr. Stanton in
his note of August 12. I was not prepared to find him compelled by a new
and indefinite sense of public duty, under "the Constitution," to assume
the vindication of a law which, under the solemn obligations of public
duty imposed by the Constitution itself, he advised me was a violation
of that Constitution. I make great allowance for a change of opinion,
but such a change as this hardly falls within the limits of greatest
indulgence.

Where our opinions take the shape of advice, and influence the action
of others, the utmost stretch of charity will scarcely justify us in
repudiatin