The error of this argument, if I may venture to call it so, considering who used it,[1] lies in this.  It supposes the power of removal to be held by the President under the general grant of executive power.  Now, it is certain that the power of appointment is not held under that general grant, because it is particularly provided for, and is conferred, in express terms, on the President and Senate.  If, therefore, the power of removal be a natural appendage to the power of appointment, then it is not conferred by the general words granting executive power to the President, but is conferred by the special clause which gives the appointing power to the President and Senate.  So that the spirit of the very rule on which the argument of 1789, as I have stated it, relies, appears to me to produce a directly opposite result; for, if exceptions to a general rule are to be taken strictly, when expressed, it is still more clear, when they are not expressed at all, that they are not to be implied except on evident and clear grounds; and as the general power of appointment is confessedly given to the President and Senate, no exception is to be implied in favor of one part of that general power, namely, the removing part, unless for some obvious and irresistible reason.  In other words, this argument which I am answering is not sound in its premises, and therefore not sound in its conclusion, if the grant of the power of appointment does naturally include also the power of removal, when this last power is not otherwise expressly provided for; because, if the power of removal belongs to the power of appointment, or necessarily follows it, then it has gone with it into the hands of the President and Senate; and the President does not hold it alone, as an implication or inference from the grant to him of general executive powers.

The true application of that rule of construction, thus relied on, would present the argument, I think, in this form:  “The appointing power is vested in the President and Senate; this is the general rule of the Constitution.  The removing power is part of the appointing power; it cannot be separated from the rest, but by supposing that an exception was intended; but all exceptions to general rules are to be taken strictly, even when expressed; and, for a much stronger reason, they are not to be implied, when not expressed, unless inevitable necessity of construction requires it.”

On the whole, Sir, with the diffidence which becomes one who is reviewing the opinions of some of the ablest and wisest men of the age, I must still express my own conviction, that the decision of Congress in 1789, which separated the power of removal from the power of appointment, was founded on an erroneous construction of the Constitution, and that it has led to great inconsistencies, as well as to great abuses, in the subsequent, and especially in the more recent, history of the government.