control. While some
of them are entitled to Executive consideration, many of them are so
irrelevant or in the light of other facts so worthless, that they have
not been given the least weight in determining the question to which
they are supposed to relate." If such matter were to be considered
public records and subject to the inspection of the Senate, the
President would thereby incur "the risk of being charged with making a
suspension from office upon evidence which was not even considered."

Issue as to the status of such documents was joined by the President
in the sharpest possible way by the declaration: "I consider them in no
proper sense as upon the files of the department but as deposited there
for my convenience, remaining still completely under my control. I
suppose if I desired to take them into my custody I might do so
with entire propriety, and if I saw fit to destroy them no one could
complain."

Moreover, there were cases in which action was prompted by oral
communications which did not go on record in any form. As to this,
Cleveland observed, "It will not be denied, I suppose, that the
President may suspend a public officer in the entire absence of any
papers or documents to aid his official judgment and discretion; and
I am quite prepared to avow that the cases are not few in which
suspensions from office have depended more upon oral representations
made to me by citizens of known good repute and by members of the House
of Representatives and Senators of the United States than upon any
letters and documents presented for my examination." Nor were such
representations confined to members of his own party for, said he, "I
recall a few suspensions which bear the approval of individual members
identified politically with the majority in the Senate." The message
then reviewed the legislative history of the Tenure of Office Act and
questioned its constitutionality. The position which the President had
taken and would maintain was exactly defined by this vigorous statement
in his message:

"The requests and demands which by the score have for nearly three
months been presented to the different Departments of the government,
whatever may be their form, have but one complexion. They assume
the right of the Senate to sit in judgement upon the exercise of my
exclusive discretion and executive function, for which I am solely
responsible to the people from whom I have so lately received the sacred
trust of off