The argument may be strengthened by various illustrations.  The Constitution declares that Congress may vest the appointment of inferior officers in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments; and Congress has passed various acts providing for appointments, according to this regulation of the Constitution.  Thus the Supreme Court, and other courts of the United States, have authority to appoint their clerks; heads of departments also appoint their own clerks, according to statute provisions; and it has never been doubted that these courts, and these heads of departments, may remove their clerks at pleasure, although nothing is said in the laws respecting such power of removal.  Now, it is evident that neither the courts nor the heads of departments acquire the right of removal under a general grant of executive power, for none such is made to them; nor upon the ground of any general injunction to see the laws executed, for no such general injunction is addressed to them.  They nevertheless hold the power of removal, as all admit, and they must hold it, therefore, simply as incident to, or belonging to, the power of appointment.  There is no other clause under which they can possibly claim it.

Again, let us suppose that the Constitution had given to the President the power of appointment, without consulting the Senate.  Suppose it had said, “The President shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States.”  If the Constitution had stood thus, the President would unquestionably have possessed the power of removal, where the tenure of office was not fixed; and no man, I imagine, would in that case have looked for the removing power either in that clause which says the executive authority shall be vested in the President, or in that other clause which makes it his duty to see the laws faithfully executed.  Everybody would have said, “The President possesses an uncontrolled power of appointment, and that necessarily carries with it an uncontrolled power of removal, unless some permanent tenure be given to the office by the Constitution, or by law.”

And now, Sir, let me state, and examine, the main argument, on which the decision of 1789 appears to rest it.

The most plausible reasoning brought forward on that occasion may be fairly stated thus:  “The executive power is vested in the President; this is the general rule of the Constitution.  The association of the Senate with the President in exercising a particular function belonging to the executive power, is an exception to this general rule, and exceptions to general rules are to be taken strictly; therefore, though the Senate partakes of the appointing power, by express provision, yet, as nothing is said of its participation in the removing power, such participation is to be excluded.”