nduct of men,
in whose official creation they had participated. The principle of this
objection would condemn a practice, which is to be seen in all the State
governments, if not in all the governments with which we are acquainted:
I mean that of rendering those who hold offices during pleasure,
dependent on the pleasure of those who appoint them. With equal
plausibility might it be alleged in this case, that the favoritism of
the latter would always be an asylum for the misbehavior of the former.
But that practice, in contradiction to this principle, proceeds upon
the presumption, that the responsibility of those who appoint, for the
fitness and competency of the persons on whom they bestow their choice,
and the interest they will have in the respectable and prosperous
administration of affairs, will inspire a sufficient disposition to
dismiss from a share in it all such who, by their conduct, shall have
proved themselves unworthy of the confidence reposed in them. Though
facts may not always correspond with this presumption, yet if it be,
in the main, just, it must destroy the supposition that the Senate, who
will merely sanction the choice of the Executive, should feel a bias,
towards the objects of that choice, strong enough to blind them to
the evidences of guilt so extraordinary, as to have induced the
representatives of the nation to become its accusers.

If any further arguments were necessary to evince the improbability of
such a bias, it might be found in the nature of the agency of the Senate
in the business of appointments. It will be the office of the President
to NOMINATE, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to APPOINT.
There will, of course, be no exertion of CHOICE on the part of the
Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to
make another; but they cannot themselves CHOOSE--they can only ratify
or reject the choice of the President. They might even entertain a
preference to some other person, at the very moment they were assenting
to the one proposed, because there might be no positive ground of
opposition to him; and they could not be sure, if they withheld their
assent, that the subsequent nomination would fall upon their own
favorite, or upon any other person in their estimation more meritorious
than the one rejected. Thus it could hardly happen, that the majority
of the Senate would feel any other complacency towards the object of an
appointment than such as th