Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/420

404 improve a patrimony, and therefore has no occasion for complete power over the officers of the government. If he has such power, it can only be made useful to him by being the means of procuring him a reelection, but can never be useful to the people by inducing him to appoint good officers or remove bad ones. It appears to me that such unbounded power vitiates the principles of the Constitution; and the officers, instead of being the machinery of the government, moving in regular order prescribed by the legislature, will be the mere puppets of the President, to be employed or thrown aside as useless lumber, according to his prevailing fancy.

If gentlemen will take this step, they must take another, and secure the public good by making it the interest of the President to consult it; they must elect him for life, or, what will be more consistent still, they must make his office hereditary. Then gentlemen may say, with some degree of truth, that he ought to have the power of removal, to secure in his hands a balance in the government. But if gentlemen are willing to remain where they are, and abide by the Constitution, regarding its true principles, they will not contend that there is a necessity, or even a propriety, in vesting this power in the President alone.

Gentlemen tell us they are willing to consider this as a constitutional question; and yet the bill show^ that they consider the Constitution silent, for the clause grants the power in express terms: this also implies that the legislature have a right to interfere with the executive power contrary to their avowed principles. If the legislature has not the power of removal, they cannot confer it upon others; if they have it, it is a legislative power, and they have no right to transfer the exercise of it to any other body; so, view this question in whatever point of light you please, it is clear the words ought to be struck out.

The call for the question being now very general, it was put—Shall the words "to be removable by the President" be struck out?

It was determined in the negative; being yeas 20, nays 34.



, August 13, 1789.

Mr. GERRY. The Constitution of the United States was proposed by a Convention met at Philadelphia; but with all its importance, it did not possess as high authority as the President, Senate, and House of Representatives of the Union; for that Convention was not convened in consequence of any express will of the people, but an implied one, through their members in the state legislatures. The Constitution derived no authority from the first Convention; it was concurred in by conventions of the people, and that concurrence armed it with power, and invested it with dignity. Now, the Congress of the United States are expressly authorized, by the sovereign and uncontrollable voice of the people, to propose amendments whenever two thirds of both houses shall think fit. Now, if this is the fact, the propositions of amendment will be found to originate with a higher authority than the original system. The conventions of the states respectively have agreed, for the people, that the state legislatures shall be authorized to decide upon these amendments in the manner of a convention. If these acts of the state legislatures are not good, because they are not specifically instructed by their constituents, neither were the acts calling the first and subsequent conventions.

Mr. AMES. It is not necessary to increase the representation, in order 