Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/409

 CH. XXXVII.] He has then acted on the advice and consent of the senate to his own nomination. The time for deliberation has then passed. He has decided. His judgment, on the advice and consent of the senate concurring with his nomination, has been made, and the officer is appointed. This appointment is evidenced by an open, unequivocal act; and being the last act required from the person making it, necessarily excludes the idea of its being, so far as respects the appointment, an inchoate and incomplete transaction. Some point of time must be taken, when the power of the executive over an officer, not removable at his will, must cease. That point of time must be, when the constitutional powder of appointment has been exercised. And this power has been exercised, when the last act, required from the person possessing the powder, has been performed. This last act is the signature of the commission. This idea seems to have prevailed with the legislature, when the act passed, converting the department of foreign affairs into the department of state. By that act it is enacted, that the secretary of state shall keep the seal of the United States, "and shall make out and record, and shall affix the said seal to all civil commissions to officers of the United States, to be appointed by the president:" "Provided, that the said seal shall not be affixed to any commission, before the same shall have been signed by the president of the United States; nor to any other instrument or act, without the special warrant of the president therefor." The signature is a warrant for affixing the great seal to the commission; and the great seal is only to be affixed to an instrument, which is complete. It attests, by an act supposed to be of public notoriety, the verity of the presidential signature. It is never to be affixed, till the commission 51