Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/44

34 theory; and, as the law creating the Bank of the United States provided that the public funds should be deposited in that institution, “unless the Secretary of the Treasury should otherwise order and direct,” and that, if he did otherwise order, he should promptly report the reasons to Congress, Clay concluded that the matter was left exclusively to the Secretary of the Treasury under the supervision of Congress; and that, if the President interfered with the Secretary's conception of his duty in the premises, it was an unwarranted interference with a department which the Constitution had placed under the special supervision of Congress, and therefore a revolutionary attempt to overthrow the constitutional system.

The answer suggesting itself was that, after all, the Constitution had intrusted the power of appointing the Secretary of the Treasury, not to Congress, but to the President; that the law, as construed, recognized the power of the President to remove that officer, giving the President in these respects the same power over the Secretary of the Treasury as over other officers of the government; that, therefore, the President, having the power to remove the Secretary of the Treasury for reasons of his own, was practically intrusted with a supervision over the official conduct of that officer, and that, in effectually exercising that supervision through the power of removal, Jackson had technically acted within his constitutional authority.

On the other hand, Congress, when making the