al senators were very pointed on
this question.

--Mr. Edmunds said it was "right and just that the Chief Executive of
the Nation in selecting these named Secretaries, who, by law and by
the practice of the country, and officers analogous to whom, by the
practice of all other countries, are the confidential advisers of the
Executive respecting the administration of all his Departments, should
be persons who are personally agreeable to him and in whom he can
place entire confidence and reliance; and whenever it should seem to
him that the state of relations between him and any of them had become
so as to render this relation of confidence and trust and personal
esteem inharmonious, he should in such case be allowed to dispense
with the services of that officer in vacation and have some other
person act in his stead."

--Mr. Williams of Oregon sustained the position of Mr. Edmunds, but
added: "I do not regard the exception as of any great practical
consequence, because I suppose if the President and any head of
Department should disagree so as to make their relations unpleasant,
and the President should signify a desire that that head of Department
should retire from the Cabinet, that would follow without any positive
act of removal on the part of the President. . . . It has seemed to me
that if we revolutionize the practice of the Government in all other
respects, we might let this power remain in the hands of the President
of the United States; that we should not strip him of this power,
which is one that it seems to me is necessary and reasonable that he
should exercise."

--Mr. Fessenden said: "A man who is the head of a Department naturally
wants the control of that Department. He wants to control all his
subordinates. . . . In my judgment, in order to the good and proper
administration of all the Departments, it is necessary that that
power should exist in the head of it, and quite as necessary that the
power should exist in the President with reference to the few men who
are placed about him to share his counsel and to be his friends and
agents."

--Mr. Sherman said: "If a Cabinet officer should attempt to hold his
office for a moment beyond the time when he retains the entire
confidence of the President, I would not vote to retain him, nor would
I compel the President to have about him in these high positions a man
whom he did not entirely trust both personally and politically. It
would be unwise to requir