the Constitution devolves, as head of the
executive department, the duty to see that the laws are faithfully
executed; but as he can not execute them in person, he is allowed to
select his agents, and is made responsible for their acts within just
limits. So complete is this presumed delegation of authority in the
relation of a head of Department to the President that the Supreme Court
of the United States have decided that an order made by a head of
Department is presumed to be made by the President himself.

The principal, upon whom such responsibility is placed for the acts
of a subordinate, ought to be left as free as possible in the matter
of selection and of dismissal. To hold him to responsibility for an
officer beyond his control; to leave the question of the fitness of
such an agent to be decided _for_ him and not _by_ him; to allow such
a subordinate, when the President, moved by "public considerations of
a high character," requests his resignation, to assume for himself an
equal right to act upon his own views of "public considerations" and to
make his own conclusions paramount to those of the President--to allow
all this is to reverse the just order of administration and to place
the subordinate above the superior.

There are, however, other relations between the President and
a head of Department beyond these defined legal relations, which
necessarily attend them, though not expressed. Chief among these is
mutual confidence. This relation is so delicate that it is sometimes
hard to say when or how it ceases. A single flagrant act may end
it at once, and then there is no difficulty. But confidence may be
just as effectually destroyed by a series of causes too subtle for
demonstration. As it is a plant of slow growth, so, too, it may be
slow in decay. Such has been the process here. I will not pretend to say
what acts or omissions have broken up this relation. They are hardly
susceptible of statement, and still less of formal proof. Nevertheless,
no one can read the correspondence of the 5th of August without being
convinced that this relation was effectually gone on both sides, and
that while the President was unwilling to allow Mr. Stanton to remain
in his Administration, Mr. Stanton was equally unwilling to allow the
President to carry on his Administration without his presence.

In the great debate which took place in the House of Representatives
in 1789, in the first organization of the principal Depar