more a matter of dignity than of authority. It is a circumstance
which will be without consequence in the administration of the
government; and it was far more convenient that it should be arranged
in this manner, than that there should be a necessity of convening the
legislature, or one of its branches, upon every arrival of a foreign
minister, though it were merely to take the place of a departed
predecessor.

The President is to nominate, and, with the advice and consent of the
Senate, to appoint ambassadors and other public ministers, judges of
the Supreme Court, and in general all officers of the United States
established by law, and whose appointments are not otherwise provided
for by the Constitution. The king of Great Britain is emphatically and
truly styled the fountain of honor. He not only appoints to all offices,
but can create offices. He can confer titles of nobility at pleasure;
and has the disposal of an immense number of church preferments. There
is evidently a great inferiority in the power of the President, in this
particular, to that of the British king; nor is it equal to that of
the governor of New York, if we are to interpret the meaning of the
constitution of the State by the practice which has obtained under it.
The power of appointment is with us lodged in a council, composed of
the governor and four members of the Senate, chosen by the Assembly. The
governor claims, and has frequently exercised, the right of nomination,
and is entitled to a casting vote in the appointment. If he really has
the right of nominating, his authority is in this respect equal to that
of the President, and exceeds it in the article of the casting vote. In
the national government, if the Senate should be divided, no appointment
could be made; in the government of New York, if the council should
be divided, the governor can turn the scale, and confirm his own
nomination.(3) If we compare the publicity which must necessarily attend
the mode of appointment by the President and an entire branch of the
national legislature, with the privacy in the mode of appointment by the
governor of New York, closeted in a secret apartment with at most
four, and frequently with only two persons; and if we at the same time
consider how much more easy it must be to influence the small number of
which a council of appointment consists, than the considerable number of
which the national Senate would consist, we cannot hesitate to pronounce