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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



fore reporting such suspension to the Senate as above 

 provided, revoke the same, and reinstate such officer 

 m the performance of the duties of his office. 



SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That no person 

 shall hold, nor shall he receive, salary or compensa- 

 tion for performing the duties of more than one office 

 or place of trust or profit under the Constitution or 

 laws of the United States at the same time, whether 

 such office or place be civil, military, or naval ; and 

 any person holding any such office or place, who shall 

 accept or hold any other office or place of trust or 

 profit under the Constitution or laws of the United 

 States, shall be deemed to have vacated the office or 

 place which he held at the time of such acceptance. 



SKO. 4. And be it further enacted, That nothing in 

 the foregoing section shall be construed to prevent 

 such designations or appointments of officers to per- 

 form temporarily the duties of other officers as are 

 or may be authorized by law, nor to prevent such 

 appointments or designations to office or duty as are 

 required by law to be made from the Army or Navy. 



SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That the penalties 

 provided in the act to which this is an amendment 

 shall apply to violations of this act. 



Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, said: "I think it 

 right that, in a word or two, I should explain 

 the action of the committee, as it respects this 

 bill. The House bill proposes to sweep from 

 the statute-book the law of 1867 altogether, 

 and to restore, for all future time, so far as 

 legislation goes, to the President of the United 

 States, the power which, before that time, he 

 had exercised, of controlling the appointments 

 to all the offices of the United States, because, 

 under the previous practice, the President of 

 the United States, exercising the power of re- 

 movals during vacations, and filling vacancies 

 thus created by persons of his own selection, 

 without the consent of the Senate, had it in 

 hia power, and frequently exercised that power, 

 to hold persons in office whose nominations 

 were not acceptable to the Senate ; and it was 

 done in all cases where he desired some other 

 person to hold an office than the one to whose 

 appointment the Senate had consented. As 

 the Senate knows, and as the country knows, 

 in 1867, we undertook to reform this abuse, as 

 we thought it was, which had grown up in the 

 administration of the law, and provided the 

 Tenure-of-office Act of 1867. By that not only- 

 all the subordinate officers of the United States, 

 but the heads of Departments, were made the 

 officers of the law, and did not hold their places 

 at the will of the President. 



"The House of Representatives, as I have 

 said, now propose to sweep that all away, and 

 go back to the old system of things. The com- 

 mittee did not think that to be wise. Not legis- 

 lating for to-day or to-morrow, or the next 

 year, or the next four years, but legislating for 

 the country, and for the future as well as for 

 the present, they thought we ought to retain 

 the substantial principle on which the act of 

 1867 was founded, that of making the public 

 service of officers, who are exercising duties 

 imposed upon them by law, dependent upon 

 the law, according to the term that the law 

 gives to them, and dependent upon the will of 

 the Senate, advisory to the will of the Presi- 

 dent, in the selection of those agents. "We, 



therefore, have recommended that, instead of 

 repealing the act, it be so modified as to permit 

 the President of the United States to suspend 

 a civil officer whenever, in his judgment, the 

 public good shall require it, subject, in the end, 

 to the approval of the Senate, and to dispense 

 with the detail, which the existing law re- 

 quires, of his having specific evidence upon 

 which he is to act, and with his being obliged 

 to give specific reasons upon which we are to 

 act when he comes to report his action to the 

 next meeting of the Senate. That was a mere 

 matter of detail and discretion ; and, inasmuch 

 as, under the adverse circumstances during 

 which and under which this law has prevailed, 

 a construction is claimed to have obtained 

 which, it is said, ties up the hands of the Presi- 

 dent to specific evidence of a specific and for- 

 mal character although that, in my judgment, 

 is far from being the true and fair construction 

 of that law we were willing to so modify that 

 as to remove all possible objection on the 

 ground of detail. 



"Then a majority of the committee, one of 

 which, I am free to say, I was not, have thought 

 it fit that the heads of the Departments should 

 be restored to the will of the President alone, 

 so as to give him, for the future, practically the 

 choice, independent of the will of the Senate, 

 of the heads of Departments who are to ad- 

 minister the laws of the Government ; and we 

 have, therefore, proposed to insert, in the first 

 section of the bill, an exception which shall 

 exclude from the operation of the law these 

 heads of Departments. As I have said, that 

 does not meet my approval; but, under the 

 direction of the committee, I have reported it." 



Mr. Morton, of Indiana, said: "Mr. Presi- 

 dent, I am in favor of the total repeal of this 

 law. I believe it was a mistake in the begin- 

 ning. I do not believe that the country or the 

 Eepublican party ever derived any benefit from 

 it. On the contrary, I believe it has been the 

 means by which, to some extent, thieves have 

 been continued in office, and the responsibility 

 for continuing them in office has been, more 

 or less successfully, laid upon the Republican 

 party. 



" The amendment offered by the committee, 

 while it gives to the President the choice of 

 the members of his Cabinet, without the inter- 

 ference of the Senate to aid him in removals, 

 yet leaves the rest of the law in a worse form 

 than it was before. It provides that, as to all 

 other officers, the President cannot remove 

 them at pleasure, but, during the vacation of 

 Congress, he may suspend them, and appoint 

 some other persons to perform their, duties. 

 In twenty days after the beginning of the next 

 session, he is to report the suspension, and the 

 name of the person who has been appointed 

 to perform the duties, but he is not required to 

 give any reason for the suspension. If there 

 be reasons for the suspension, the Senate is left 

 to grope in the dark. Under the present law, 

 the President is required to give the reasons 



