Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/395

 CH. XXXVII.] to a great extent, under this clause, in favour of the executive department. The president is by law invested, either solely, or with the senate, with the appointment of all military and naval officers, and of the most important civil officers, and especially of those connected with the administration of justice, the collection of the revenue, and the supplies and expenditures of the nation. The courts of the Union possess the narrow prerogative of appointing their own clerk, and reporter, without any farther patronage. The heads of department are, in like manner, generally entitled to the appointment of the clerks in their respective offices. But the great anomaly in the system is the enormous patronage of the postmaster general, who is invested with the sole and exclusive authority to appoint, and remove all deputy post-masters; and whose power and influence have thus, by slow degrees, accumulated, until it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that it rivals, if it does not exceed, in value and extent, that of the president himself. How long a power so vast, and so accumulating, shall remain without any check on the part of any other branch of the government, is a question for statesmen, and not for jurists. But it cannot be disguised, that it will be idle to impose constitutional restraints upon high executive appointments, if this power, which pervades every village of the republic, and exerts an irresistible, though silent, influence in the direct shape of office, or in the no less inviting form of lucrative contracts, is suffered to remain without scrutiny or rebuke. It furnishes no argument against the interposition of a check, which shall require the advice and consent of the senate to appointments, that the power has not hitherto been abused. In its own nature, the post-office establishment is susceptible of