is responsible for its entire exercise; that among the duties imposed on him is that of “taking care that the laws be faithfully executed”; and that, “being thus made responsible for the entire action of the executive department, it is but reasonable that the power of appointing, overseeing, and controlling those who execute the laws, a power in its nature executive, should remain in his hands.  It is, therefore, not only his right, but the Constitution makes it his duty, to ’nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint,’ all ’officers of the United States whose appointments are not in the Constitution otherwise provided for,’ with a proviso that the appointment of inferior officers may be vested in the President alone, in the courts of justice, or in the heads of departments.”

The first proposition, then, which the Protest asserts, in regard to the President’s powers as executive magistrate, is, that, the general duty being imposed on him by the Constitution of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, he thereby becomes himself responsible for the conduct of every person employed in the government; “for the entire action,” as the paper expresses it, “of the executive department.”  This, Sir, is very dangerous logic.  I reject the inference altogether.  No such responsibility, nor any thing like it, follows from the general provision of the Constitution making it his duty to see the laws executed.  If it did, we should have, in fact, but one officer in the whole government.  The President would be everybody.  And the Protest assumes to the President this whole responsibility for every other officer, for the very purpose of making the President everybody, of annihilating every thing like independence, responsibility, or character, in all other public agents.  The whole responsibility is assumed, in order that it may be more plausibly argued that all officers of government are not agents of the law, but the President’s agents, and therefore responsible to him alone.  If he be responsible for the conduct of all officers, and they be responsible to him only, then it may be maintained that such officers are but his own agents, his substitutes, his deputies.  The first thing to be done, therefore, is to assume the responsibility for all; and this you will perceive, Sir, is done, in the fullest manner, in the passages which I have read.  Having thus assumed for the President the entire responsibility of the whole government, the Protest advances boldly to its conclusion, and claims, at once, absolute power over all individuals in office, as being merely the President’s agents.  This is the language:  “The whole executive power being vested in the President, who is responsible for its exercise, it is a necessary consequence that he should have a right to employ agents of his own choice to aid him in the performance of his duties, and to discharge them when he is no longer willing to be responsible for their acts.”