Speech of Hon. John J. Ingalls, of Kansas, in the Senate of the United States, Friday, March 26, 1886.
The Senate having under consideration the resolutions reported by Mr. Edmunds from the Committee on the Judiciary, relative to the refusal of the Attorney-General to furnish copies of certain papers—
Mr. Ingalls said:
Mr. President: Contemporaneous construction of the Constitution, fortified by long usage and acquiescence, undisturbed for more than seventy-five years, has to my mind incontestably and impregnably established two fundamental propositions: first, that under the Constitution of the United States the power to appoint includes the power to remove, and that both these powers are vested in the President of the United States, subject only to the power of the Senate to negative in cases of appointment; and, second, that where the tenure of an office is not fixed by the Constitution it is held at the pleasure of the Executive.
I therefore take up this argument where the opposition leave it: I begin where they close. I concede all that they demand as to the constitutional power of the Executive upon the subject of appointments to office. If it shall appear that the report of the Committee on the Judiciary is inconsistent with these declarations, that the report and the resolutions to which we are now asked to give our assent in any manner impair or infringe upon, or are in derogation of these admitted high executive prerogatives, then I shall submit to condemnation, for my signature is appended to that report.
So far as I have been able to unravel and disentangle the complicated array of argument by which it has been attempted to destroy the force and effect of the report of the Committee on the Judiciary, I understand that the objections are practically four:
First, that by the action of the majority of the Senate an attempt is made to invade the prerogative of the president by demanding his reasons for the suspensions from office that he has made. To that I interpose upon the threshold and in the vestibule of this argument an absolute contradiction and denial.
The President of the United States in the message that he voluntarily, of his own motion, sent down to this body, starts out with an absolutely unfounded imputation upon the position of the majority. He says that the Senate has been from time to time, in various ways, through committees of the body and by personal importunity, appealing to the Executive to give his reasons for the suspension of officials that have been reported to this body with the designation of others to fill the places thus to be rendered vacant.
Sir, I deny it, and I now challenge from any supporter or adherent of the administration the exhibition of a word, or syllable, or justifiable inference upon which that allegation, so often repeated with so much variety of iteration, can be properly or justly founded.
The effort has been ingeniously made to shift the issue, to darken council by words without wisdom, and to make it appear that there has been a deliberate purpose and intention on the part of the Senate to interfere with the recognized prerogatives of the Executive by demanding his reasons for suspension; and unless I hear some Senator while this debate is now proceeding and while I invite the statement—unless I hear something said in support of that averment, which I deny, and which I affirm has been made for the purpose of clouding this controversy in popular estimation, I shall assume that my denial is not to be met.