Though
facts may not always correspond with this presumption, yet if it be, in
the main, just, it must destroy the supposition that the Senate, who
will merely sanction the choice of the Executive, should feel a bias,
towards the objects of that choice, strong enough to blind them to the
evidences of guilt so extraordinary, as to have induced the
representatives of the nation to become its accusers.
If any further arguments were necessary to evince the improbability of
such a bias, it might be found in the nature of the agency of the Senate
in the business of appointments. It will be the office of the President
to NOMINATE, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to APPOINT.
There will, of course, be no exertion of CHOICE on the part of the
Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to
make another; but they cannot themselves CHOOSE -- they can only ratify
or reject the choice of the President. They might even entertain a
preference to some other person, at the very moment they were assenting
to the one proposed, because there might be no positive ground of
opposition to him; and they could not be sure, if they withheld their
assent, that the subsequent nomination would fall upon their own
favorite, or upon any other person in their estimation more meritorious
than the one rejected.
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