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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



officer irremovable at the pleasure of the Sen- 

 ate, as upon all principles it is agreed that but 

 for this clause he would have been. I think 

 that was admitted in the debates by gentlemen 

 on the other side. It would have been easy 

 for them to have said so ; and had it been in 

 their minds there can be but very little question 

 that they would have said so, as it appears to 

 me. 



"But what does 'President pro tempore'' 

 mean? It has never been held, that I know 

 of, until this discussion, that 'pro tempore' 1 

 means during the period of the absence of the 

 Vice-President or during the period that he is 

 exercising the functions of President of the 

 United States ; ' pro tempore ' does not mean 

 that, or it never did until now. It has always 

 been understood to mean and I believe there 

 is as little question about its uniformity of con- 

 struction as of any words that ever appear in 

 proceedings ' for the time being ; ' that is, the 

 instant, the present time, and not for any future 

 time, either to-morrow or next day. A presi- 

 dent or an officer, anything ' for the time being' 

 is for the present time, and to-morrow would 

 be another time ; and, but for the construction 

 that we have put upon this clause of the Con- 

 stitution, and which we have affirmed by the 

 resolutions we have already adopted, I should 

 have had no doubt that it would have been the 

 duty of the Senate every morning during the 

 absence of the Vice-President to elect a Presi- 

 dent pro tempore for that day. I should have 

 had no doubt about it at all ; but we have con- 

 strued by a long course of usage the duration 

 of the office of our President pro tempore not 

 to terminate with the particular day of our 

 session upon which he is called to the chair ; 

 and so we have affirmed it now to be our Jaw, 

 and I believe it to be. 



" I am fortified in this opinion completely by 

 the state of the English law upon the subject 

 at the time the Constitution was made, and, 

 indeed, ever since, until quite recently. Of 

 course everybody knows that the Senate was 

 constituted upon the model of the House of 

 Lords. Senators do not hold their offices for 

 life, as the Lords do, but they hold them in- 

 dependent of direct elections by the people. 

 They are selected by other bodies than the 

 people by the Legislatures of the States and 

 they have a limited term. Like the Lords, they 

 have regularly a Presiding Officer who is not 

 one of their body, but who is an independent 

 and external officer, if I may use that phrase. 

 The Lord Chancellor in England, or, if he be 

 dead, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, is the 

 regular Presiding Officer of the House of Lords, 

 not a member of the body, having no vote. In 

 the practice of the House of Lords and under 

 its immemorial proceedings, when the Lord 

 Chancellor was absent, just as we say ' when 

 the Vice-President is absent,' the Lords chose 

 a Speaker of the Lords pro tempore, the very 

 phrase being used in all the journals and pro- 

 ceedings, as well-known a parliamentary com- 



mon law in England as any other law that ex- 

 isted in England at the time our Constitution 

 was made. But you will find, when you look 

 at the journals of the Lords, that although their 

 standing order reads, as it appears in May's 

 book on parliamentary law 1 cannot find the 

 original order that they are to choose a 

 Speaker pro tempore 'during the vacancy,' 

 which is a much stronger term than simply 

 ' pro tempore ; ' yet every morning they choose 

 a fresh Speaker pro tempore, usually the same 

 gentleman, of course; but I am speaking of 

 the officer. He only holds by virtue of the 

 standing orders of the Lords from day to day, 

 and the first thing after prayers are said and 

 the House is counted, in the absence of the 

 Lord Chancellor, is to elect a Speaker pro 

 tempore, and he holds through that day. The 

 next day, the Chancellor not appearing, the 

 same ceremony is gone through with, until the 

 Lord Chancellor appears. 



"I say that the wise men who framed the 

 Constitution and who were modeling it in this 

 respect somewhat upon the methods and pro- 

 ceedings and characteristics of the government 

 with which they were most familiar, in pro- 

 viding for this President pro tempore of the 

 Senate in the absence of the Vice-President, 

 must have expected that those words would 

 have the same construction that they were 

 known to have by the immemorial practice 

 and common law of the House of Lords in 

 Great Britain. So then our historic knowledge, 

 as well as the words of the Constitution, clear- 

 ly proves to my mind that the President pro 

 tempore holds his office at the pleasure of this 

 body, and that every day, if we like, we may 

 select another officer, and but for our long 

 practice a very convenient one, too, indeed 

 I should have said, if the question were a new 

 one, that he would only hold his office from 

 day to day, without an order of the Senate, 

 which it would be perfectly competent to make, 

 of course, that he should hold for any definite 

 length of time or until the reappearance of the 

 regular Presiding Officer. 



' But certainly, Mr. President, whatever may 

 be said upon this topic, the Constitution does 

 not fix the term of the President pro tempore. 

 The most that can be said is that it leaves it 

 open to doubt and dispute. It does not define 

 how long he shall exercise the powers of that 

 office. Now, then, the law in this country is 

 perfectly well settled (and every lawyer, I sup- 

 pose, is familiar with it), decided by the Su- 

 preme Court of the United States more than 

 once, that where the Constitution does not fix 

 that is the language of the court the term 

 of an officer appointed tinder the Constitution, 

 he is removable at any time at the pleasure of 

 the appointing power. I am not now discuss- 

 ing the question of removals by the President, 

 whether with or without the consent of the 

 Senate. That is open to dispute, as we all un- 

 derstand. But as the Supreme Court say, in 

 the case of Hennen, in 13 Peters's Reports 



