m office was not.
Was the tenure of office to be good behavior? Were the incumbents
removable, with or without cause? If the power of removal existed, did
it vest in the power that appointed, that is, in the President and
Senate conjointly, or in the President alone?

As the Constitution was silent, the question had to be settled on its
own merits. With all the arguments that could be urged, either on one
side or the other, we are familiar enough in our time, coming up as the
question so often does in changes in state constitutions and municipal
charters, and in the discussion of the necessity for civil service
reform. There is this essential difference, however, between now and
then: we know the mischiefs that come from the power of official
removal, which were then only dimly apprehended. The power of removal
from office belonged, Mr. Madison believed, rightfully to the chief
magistrate, and, if by some unhappy chance the wrong man should find his
way to that position and abuse the power intrusted to him, "the wanton
removal of meritorious officers would," he said, "subject the President
to impeachment and removal from his own high trust."

Lofty political principles like these may still be found in the
platforms of modern political parties,--

"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."

But Mr. Madison believed, at least, that he believed in them. There is
in politics as in religion an accepted doctrine of justification by
faith; and this, perhaps, sustained him when, twelve years later, as
Jefferson's secretary of state, he learned from his chief that, as
"Federalists seldom died and never resigned," party necessities must
find a way of supplementing the law of nature. Jefferson was a little
timid in applying the remedy, but Madison lived long enough to see
Jackson boldly remove, in the course of his administration, about two
thousand office-holders, whose places he wanted as rewards for his own
political followers. From that time to this, there has not been a
President who might not, if Madison's doctrine was sound, have been
impeached for a "wanton" abuse of power.

Though the Constitution had been adopted by the States, it was not
without objections by some of them. To meet these objections Mr. Madison
proposed twelve amendments declaratory of certain fundamental popular
rights, which, it was thought by many persons, were not sufficiently
guarded by the original articles. This, also, wa