194 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



repealed, and, in lieu of said repealed sections, the 

 following are hereby enacted : 



That every person holding any civil office, to which, 

 ho has been or hereafter may be appointed, by and 

 with the advice and consent of the Senate, and who 

 shall have become duly qualified to act therein, shall 

 be entitled to hold such office during the term for 

 which he shall have been appointed, unless sooner 

 removed, by and with the advice and consent of the 

 Senate, or by the appointment, with the like advice 

 and consent, of a successor in his place, except as 

 herein otherwise provided. 



And be it further enacted, That, during any recess 

 of the Senate, the President is hereby empowered, m 

 his discretion, to suspend any civil officer appointed 

 by and with the advice and consent ol the benate, 

 except judges of the United States courts, until the 

 end of the next session of the Senate, and to desig- 

 nate some suitable person, subject to be removed, m 

 his discretion, by the designation of another to per- 

 form the duties of such suspended officer in. the mean 

 time ; and such person so designated shall take the 

 oaths and give the bonds required by law to be taken 

 and given oy the suspended officer; and shall, during 

 the time he performs his duties, be entitled to the sal- 

 ary and emoluments of such office, no part of which 

 shall belong to the officer suspended ; and it shall be 

 the duty of the President, within thirty days after the 

 commencement of each session of the Senate (except 

 for any office which, in his opinion, ought not to be 

 filled), to nominate persons to fill all vacancies in 

 office which existed at the meeting of the Senate, 

 whether temporarily filled or not, and also in the 

 place of all officers suspended ; and if the Senate, 

 during such session, shall refuse to advise and con- 

 officer, and shall also refuse by vote to assent to his 

 suspension, then, and not otherwise, such officer, at 

 the end of the session, shall be entitled to resume 

 the possession of the office from which he was sus- 

 pended, and afterward to discharge its duties and 

 receive its emoluments, as though no such suspen- 

 sion had taken place. 



The motion to amend was agreed to by the 

 following vote : 



YEAS Messrs. Abbott, Anthony, Boreman, Brown- 

 low, Buckingham,Carpenter, Cattell, Chandler,Conk- 

 ling, Cragin, Drake, Edmunds, Ferry, Gilbert, Ham- 

 lin, Harlan, Harris, Howard, Kellogg, Morrill, Os- 

 born, Patterson, Pratt, Ramsey, Rice, Sawyer, Schurz, 

 Scott, Spencer, Stewart, Sumner, Tipton, Trumbull, 

 Willey, Williams, Wilson, and Yates 37. 



NAYS Messrs. Bayard, Casserly, Davis, Fessen- 

 den, Fowler, Grimes, McCreery, McDonald, Norton, 

 Ross, Sprague, Stockton, Thurman, Vickers, and 

 Warner 15. 



ABSENT Messrs. Cameron, Cole, Corbett, Fenton, 

 Howe, Morton, Nye, Pomeroy, Pool, Robertson, 

 Saulsbury, Sherman, and Thayer 13. 



Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois, said: "The bill 

 was intended, by the committee who reported 

 it, to remove out of the way of the Executive 

 any embarrassments which it was supposed 

 that the tenure-of-office law interposed to thie 

 carrying out of the policy indicated by him of 

 a reform in the civil service of the country, to 

 leave him at liberty to select competent and 

 efficient officers to discharge the duties im- 

 posed upon them hy law, and, at the same time, 

 to preserve the principle underlying this law, 

 and which is believed, by many Senators, to 

 be a constitutional principle. The hill, as it is 

 reported to the Senate, strikes out from the 

 original tenure-of-office law all those features 

 which prescribed the causes for which persons 



in office could be suspended, and required the 

 President to communicate to the Senate, at its 

 next meeting after the suspension of the officer, 

 the name of the officer suspended, together 

 with the evidence upon which he was sus- 

 pended, and the reasons for the suspension. 

 This feature of the Tenure-of-office Act was 

 admitted on all hands to be difficult of execu- 

 tion. It was objected to strongly in the Sen- 

 ate, as putting the President in the position of 

 a prosecutor, requiring him to make out a case 

 against an officer before he could be displaced. 



" The bill, as reported, authorizes the Presi- 

 dent to suspend, in his discretion, any civil 

 officer, during the recess of the Senate, and to 

 substitute in his place some person to perform 

 the duties, who will receive the emoluments 

 for the time being, until the end of the next 

 session of the Senate. In the mean time it is 

 made the duty of the President, within thirty 

 days after the reassembling of the Senate, to 

 communicate to that body a nomination of 

 some person to fill the office from which the 

 officer has been suspended. If the Senate ad- 

 vise and consent to that nomination, that is 

 the end of the matter, and another officer is 

 substituted in lieu of the one who has been 

 suspended. If the person nominated is not 

 satisfactory to the Senate, and it refuses to 

 give its advice and consent to the first person 

 nominated, the President may nominate some 

 other person, and may continue to make nomi- 

 nations during the whole session of the Senate ; 

 but, if none of the nominations sent in by the 

 President are confirmed by the Senate, and if 

 the Senate, in addition, shall by vote declare 

 that they disagree to the suspension of the 

 officer, then the bill provides that the sus- 

 pended officer, at the end of the session, shall 

 resume his office, and afterward receive the 

 emoluments and perform the duties. 



" It was said by the Senator from Indiana 

 (Mr. Morton) that there was nothing to pre- 

 vent the President again suspending the re- 

 stored officer after the close of the session. It 

 is true that the bill does not provide that the 

 President shall not do this; but has not the 

 Senator from Indiana sufficient confidence in 

 the President to believe that he will carry out 

 the spirit and intention of the law? And 

 would it not be trifling with the legislation of 

 the country, trifling with that oath which the 

 President takes to see that the laws are faith- 

 fully executed, if, the moment that, by the exe- 

 cution of the law, an officer was restored to his 

 former position, he should again suspend him ? 

 This would be trifling with the statute ; and I 

 have altogether too much confidence in the 

 President of the United States to think, for a 

 moment, that he would do, or attempt to do, 

 any such thing. That is not a fair interpreta- 

 tion to be put upon the bill. The presumption 

 is that, when the Senate had distinctly refused 

 to confirm an officer appointed in lieu of a sus- 

 pended officer, and had also, by its vote, de- 

 clared that that officer ought not to have been 



