public Ministers, Judges of the Supreme Court, and in general all officers of the United States established by law, and whose appointments are not otherwise provided for by the Constitution. The King of Great Britain is emphatically and truly styled the fountain of honor. He not only appoints to all offices, but can create offices. He can confer titles of nobility at pleasure; and has the disposal of an immense number of Church preferments. There is evidently a great inferiority in the power of the President, in this particular, to that of the British King; nor is it equal to that of the Governor of New York, if we are to interpret the meaning of the Constitution of the State by the practice which has obtained under it. The power of appointment is with us lodged in a Council, composed of the Governor and four members of the Senate, chosen by the Assembly. The governor claims, and has frequently exercised the right of nomination, and is entitled to a casting vote in the appointment. If he really has the right of nominating, his authority is in this respect equal to that of the President, and exceeds it in the article of the casting vote. In the National Government, if the Senate should be divided, no appointment could be made; in the Government of New York, if the Council should be divided, the Governor can turn the scale, and confirm his own nomination.[1] If we compare the publicity which must necessarily attend the mode of appointment by the President and an entire branch of the National Legislature, with the privacy in the mode of appointment by the Governor of New York, closeted in a secret apartment with at most four, and frequently with only two persons; and if we
- ↑ Candor, however, demands an acknowledgment, that I do not think the claim of the Governor to a right of nomination well founded. Yet it is always justifiable to reason from the practice of a Government, till its propriety has been constitutionally questioned. And independent of this claim, when we take into view the other considerations, and pursue them through all their consequences, we shall be inclined to draw much the same conclusion.—Publius.
