he
Constitution distinctly defining the persons who shall discharge the
duties of President of the United States in the event of a vacancy in
that office by the death, resignation, or removal of both the President
and Vice-President. It is clear that this should be fixed by the
Constitution, and not be left to repealable enactments of doubtful
constitutionality. It occurs to me that in the event of a vacancy in the
office of President by the death, resignation, disability, or removal of
both the President and Vice-President the duties of the office should
devolve upon an officer of the executive department of the Government,
rather than one connected with the legislative or judicial departments.
The objections to designating either the President _pro tempore_ of
the Senate or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, especially
in the event of a vacancy produced by removal, are so obvious and so
unanswerable that they need not be stated in detail. It is enough
to state that they are both interested in producing a vacancy, and,
according to the provisions of the Constitution, are members of the
tribunal by whose decree a vacancy may be produced.

Under such circumstances the impropriety of designating either
of these officers to succeed the President so removed is palpable.
The framers of the Constitution, when they referred to Congress the
settlement of the succession to the office of President in the event of
a vacancy in the offices of both President and Vice-President, did not,
in my opinion, contemplate the designation of any other than an officer
of the executive department, on whom, in such a contingency, the powers
and duties of the President should devolve. Until recently the
contingency has been remote, and serious attention has not been called
to the manifest incongruity between the provisions of the Constitution
on this subject and the act of Congress of 1792. Having, however, been
brought almost face to face with this important question, it seems an
eminently proper time for us to make the legislation conform to the
language, intent, and theory of the Constitution, and thus place the
executive department beyond the reach of usurpation, and remove from the
legislative and judicial departments every temptation to combine for the
absorption of all the powers of government.

It has occurred to me that in the event of such a vacancy the duties of
President would devolve most appropriately upon some one of the head