CHAPTER XVI. 1829-1830. POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE-NULLIFICATION THE ZWC SPEECHES ON FOOT'S RESOLUTION-REPLY TO HAYNE. T the first session of the Twenty-first Congress, one of the subjects that earliest demanded Mr. Webster's anxious consideration was the President's supposed power to remove the incumbents in public office without consulting the Senate. The inauguration of General Jackson had been followed by a sweeping change in the executive offices, not only in all the departments at Washington, but throughout the country. The state of things thus produced at the capitol was entirely without precedent; for, while it had always been understood, since the origin of the Government, that, with every change of the person of the President, the new Executive was at liberty to select new heads of the principal departments, because those officers form what is by usage called the "Cabinet," it had never been customary to regard the subordinate places as a fund for the reward of personal partisans, or to remove faithful and competent public servants merely because their political opinions did not coincide with those of the successful party. The wise forbearance that had been exercised by most of our former Presidents had left in the several subordinate stations a body of trained and experienced men, who possessed the knowledge of official business essential to the successful working of any government, and who were, in general, men of unexceptionable characters. This degree of permanency of official life in Washington formerly had an important influence on the prosperity and growth of the city; for men who felt that they were secure in their places so long as they properly discharged their duties to the Government, could afford to seek permanent homes for their families where their salaries were earned. All this was suddenly changed; and it was changed with a disregard of the claims of meritorious public servants, and with the employment of excuses to effect their removal from office, on which all candid men, of whatever political connection, must now look back with regret and disapprobation, as a course alike unworthy of those who then assumed the administration of the Government, and injurious to the future welfare of the country. In multitudes of cases it was not pretended that there was any other cause for the removals than the demands of party. It was a very common occurrence for a secretary, at the head of one of the departments, to inform a subordinate that no complaint could be made of the manner in which he had discharged his duties, but that the place was wanted for a political or personal friend; and, where this kind of frankness was not used, the private and trivial and casual conversation of some inferior clerk, involving an alleged disrespect toward the new President, and often reported anonymously, was duly laid before the Cabinet, and gravely acted upon.' In the course of the first two years of General Jackson's first presidency he made two thousand removals from office. The influence of this new method of administration on the material prosperity of the city of Washington was the least of the evils that attended it. The opponents of President Jackson's government saw in it a long train of public mischiefs; and scarcely any wise man will now question that they were right. But whether this credit will be generally conceded to them or I state these miserable facts, withholding names and particulars, on the authority of a letter, written to Mr. Webster by a private citizen of Washington, in no way connected with the Government. It bears date in May, 1829; so soon had the "reform" done its work. The writer describes a total suspension in the business of erecting private houses, and observes: "Confidence in the stability of office is so much shaken, that the clerks and other officers of the Govern ment will hereafter consider themselves as only visitors among us, and not make any investment in real estate. We already realize the influence of this feeling. I could not have believed that your predictions were so correct, and that your foresight was so extensive as I now find it to have been." But it is scarcely necessary for me to quote private testimony to that which has long been historical and notorious. not, they considered it their duty to subject to close public scrutiny the question whether the President possesses, under the Constitution, power to remove a subordinate civil officer without assigning a cause to the Senate, and without taking its assent. It must be regarded as a strong proof of Mr. Webster's fairness of mind, and of his unwillingness to assert an extreme principle for party objects, that, in the midst of such a state of things as had been produced by the course of General Jackson's Administration, he approached this question with very great deliberation, and, finally, formed opinions concerning it contrary to his original views. If the question, in 1830, had been entirely new, he would have held that the power of removal, as a distinct power, and as residing in the President alone, does not exist. This was his own opinion, as it was also that of Chancellor Kent, apart from the construction that had been put upon the Constitution by some precedents, by a declaratory resolution of Congress, in 1789, and by an acquiescence of half a century. It is true that Mr. Webster might have argued down the precedents, which were not numerous, and not of great force; while the cases before him were enormous in number, and flagrantly unjust; some of them comprehending men of entire fitness and capacity, who, to official merit, added the strongest of claims upon the country for Revolutionary services. He might have contended that the congressional construction of the Constitution, by the First Congress, besides being wrong in the abstract, had been given when no such sweeping and irresponsible power, as was now exercised, had ever been claimed for the President; and he might have urged that the public acquiescence had never related to any but extreme cases of public exigency, arising from incapacity or misconduct. But it was not his habit to be ingenious in considering how the Constitution ought to be construed. He felt bound to remember that the Constitution expressly provides for the action of the Senate only when an appointment is to be made; and although it may fairly be argued that this power of appointment determines the pleasure of the appointment when all else is silent, and, consequently, that the President alone cannot terminate an appointment, and call upon the Senate to confirm a new nominee without making the cause of the removal of the old incumbent a part of the question of such new appointment; yet, that this course of reasoning, although strictly logical, was too abstract to countervail what had occurred since the Constitution went into operation. He therefore, in what he said in the Senate in 1830, and ever afterward, refrained from denying the President's power to remove from office without the consent of the Senate; and maintained that the abuses of this power were mischiefs to be corrected by public sentiment; or, in a case of extreme corruption, by the power of impeachment. This was the view of Mr. Madison, who held that the President's power exists in cases of clear and absolute necessity, but that its exercise in any other case is an abuse.' 1 The most plausible ground on which to vindicate the political application of the too famous maxim, that "to the victors belong the spoils," is this-Parties are organized in free and elective governments, in order to give effect in administration to certain political opinions, which those who lead in political action sincerely hold to be essential to the public interest, which is a much larger object than the individual interest of any office-holder. The public patronage is a powerful means of influencing men to labor for the success of certain political opinions; and, if the power to use it for this purpose exists in the constitutional arrangements of official power, such use is legitimate, because the patronage, in the hands of those who use it, is an instrument for the promotion of the public good according to the judgment of those who have the official right to shape the measures of Government. Without considering how far this reasoning borrows aid from the maxim that the end justifies the means-a rule that is wholly unprincipled, and generally productive of mischief when it is resorted to-it is clear that it overlooks some very important things which are true, and assumes some things which are not true. In the first place, it makes no account of the direct tendency of such a principle of action to render the political principles of parties matters of subordinate, and the enjoyment of public patronage a matter of primary, concern with the electors. We know, as a mat ter of fact, that candidates have been elected who would not have succeeded, and that parties have triumphed whose principles would not have received the sanction of the people, if this kind of corruption had been kept out of our elections. We know this, because we know that there have been successful candidates who were without superior merit, and successful parties whose principles and measures were unworthy of popular support, and have proved to be mischievous. In the next place, this reasoning disregards the fact that the offices of a great government will be less well filled when they are made a reward for the party services of the most active and energetic politicians; for the simple reason that this class of men will rarely embrace the most competent of those who may desire public office as a means of livelihood. In the third place, frequent and periodical changes in all the administrative offices of a great govern ment deprive it of the strength that is derived from accumulated official experience and knowledge, and render any proper system of promotion impracti cable. Finally, a general degradation of the tone of political discussion and action is sure to take place under a government in which the public patronage is thus used. All these evils our experience has proved; and when they are connected, as they are, both as cause and effect, with the system of nominat ing candidates for the chief executive office by party conventions, on the prin But a far deeper question-one that concerned the particular interests of no party, and that involved, in truth, the continued existence of the Government-soon but not unexpectedly claimed of Mr. Webster services of a very peculiar character. It may be justly said of General Jackson, that if he was not the only man in the country who, in the executive office, could have met the crisis of 1830-33 as it required to be met, yet that it was fortunate for the country that a person of his inflexible firmness and perfect courage was then in the office of President; and it should for similar reasons be said of Mr. Webster, that he was better fitted than any other man in the Union to encounter in debate the new doctrines that now threatened the overthrow of the Constitution, and that it was, therefore, as fortunate that he was still a member of the Senate as it was that General Jackson was President. If he had not been there, it can scarcely be imagined that the hands of the Executive could have been strengthened by the public refutation of a heresy which threatened a direct obstruction to the laws of the United States; a refutation that was the necessary forerunner to executive action, in a Government largely dependent upon popular opinion and inevitably influenced by it. It is difficult to account for the origin and growth of what were called the doctrines of nullification, which originated in South Carolina, without touching upon the peculiar mental characteristics of one of her statesmen, who was their reputed author, and who, by his great abilities, the purity of his personal character, and the persuasiveness of his address, exercised a vast influence over many of the public men of his time. ciple of availability, it is impossible to no one would be hardy enough to justify this use of the public money. How, then, is the practice any more to be justified which makes use of the whole body of existing and necessary offices as a fund for the reward of partisan services on a change of parties? As a general rule, it may be quite right for an administration, in case of a vacancy, to prefer a political supporter to a political opponent. But this is a very different proceeding from the creation of thousands of vacancies, in order to bring the infiuence of public station and of the public money to bear on future elections. |