The President considers the right of removal as a fixed, vested, constitutional right, which Congress cannot limit, control, or qualify, until the Constitution shall be altered.  This, Sir, is doctrine which I am not prepared to admit.  I shall not now discuss the question, whether the law may not place the tenure of office beyond the reach of executive pleasure; but I wish merely to draw the attention of the Senate to the fact, that any such power in Congress is denied by the principles and by the words of the Protest.  According to that paper, we live under a constitution by the provisions of which the public treasures are, necessarily and unavoidably, always under executive control; and as the executive may remove all officers, and appoint others, at least temporarily, without the concurrence of the Senate, he may hold those treasures, in the hands of persons appointed by himself alone, in defiance of any law which Congress has passed or can pass.  It is to be seen, Sir, how far such claims of power will receive the approbation of the country.  It is to be seen whether a construction will be readily adopted which thus places the public purse out of the guardianship of the immediate representatives of the people.

But, Sir, there is, in this paper, something even yet more strange than these extraordinary claims of power.  There is a strong disposition, running through the whole Protest, to represent the executive department of this government as the peculiar protector of the public liberty, the chief security on which the people are to rely against the encroachment of other branches of the government.  Nothing can be more manifest than this purpose.  To this end, the Protest spreads out the President’s official oath, reciting all its words in a formal quotation; and yet the oath of members of Congress is exactly equivalent.  The President is to swear that he will “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”; and members of Congress are to swear that they will “support the Constitution.”  There are more words in one oath than the other, but the sense is precisely the same.  Why, then, this reference to his official oath, and this ostentatious quotation of it?  Would the writer of the Protest argue that the oath itself is any grant of power; or that, because the President is to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,” he is therefore to use what means he pleases for such preservation, protection, and defence, or any means except those which the Constitution and laws have specifically given him?  Such an argument would be absurd; but if the oath be not cited for this preposterous purpose, with what design is it thus displayed on the face of the Protest, unless it be to support the general idea that the maintenance of the Constitution and the preservation of the public liberties are especially confided to the safe discretion, the sure moderation, the paternal guardianship, of executive power?  The oath of the President contains three words, all