consent of the Senate to
appointments was an insufficient check if the President were allowed to
remove at his own will and pleasure. He was answered by his own party
colleagues and committee associates, Hoar and Evarts. Senator Hoar went
so far as to say that in his opinion there was not a single person in
this country, in Congress or out of Congress, with the exception of the
Senator from Vermont, who did not believe that a necessary step towards
reform "must be to impose the responsibility of the Civil Service
upon the Executive." Senator Evarts argued that the existing law was
incompatible with executive responsibility, for "it placed the Executive
power in a strait-jacket." He then pointed out that the President had
not the legal right to remove a member of his own Cabinet and asked, "Is
not the President imprisoned if his Cabinet are to be his masters by
the will of the Senate?" The debate was almost wholly confined to the
Republican side of the Senate, for only one Democrat took any part in
it. Senator Edmunds was the sole spokesman on his side, but he fought
hard against defeat and delivered several elaborate arguments of the
"check and balance" type. When the final vote took place, only three
Republicans actually voted for the repealing bill, but there were
absentees whose votes would have been cast the same way had they been
needed to pass the bill.*

* The bill was passed by thirty yeas and twenty-two nays, and
among the nays were several Senators who while members of the House had
voted for repeal. The repeal bill passed the House by a vote of 172 to
67, and became law on March 3, 1887

President Cleveland had achieved a brilliant victory. In the joust
between him and Edmunds, in lists of his adversary's own contriving,
he had held victoriously to his course while his opponent had been
unhorsed. The granite composure of Senator Edmunds' habitual mien did
not permit any sign of disturbance to break through, but his position in
the Senate was never again what it had been, and eventually he resigned
his seat before the expiration of his term. He retired from public life
in 1891, at the age of sixty-three.

From the standpoint of the public welfare, it is to be noted that
the issue turned on the maintenance of privilege rather than on the
discharge of responsibility. President Cleveland contended that he was
not responsible to the Senate but to the people for the way in which he
exercised his trust