The Judiciary Committee now proposed that instead of an absolute repeal, the Tenure-of-office Act "be, and the same is, hereby suspended until the next session of Congress." This was a lame and impotent conclusion, and did not commend the support or even the respect of the Senate.

Mr.Thurman, a member of the committee that reported it, made haste to announce that he had not approved it.

He treated the proposition for suspension as a practical confession that the Tenure-of-office Act "is to be enforced when it will have no practical effect, and is not to be enforced when it would have practical effect." The chief defenders of the proposition to suspend the Act were Mr.Trumbull, Mr.Edmunds, and Mr.
Schurz.

Mr.Edmunds, pressed by Mr.Grimes to furnish a good reason for suspending the Act, replied that "owing to the peculiar circumstances that have attended the last administration, it is desirable that there should be an immediate and general removal of the office-holders of the country as a rule; and as an agency of that removal, subject to our approval when we meet again in confirmation of their successors, these bad men being put out, we are willing to trust this Executive with that discretion." Coming from a senator of the United States, this declaration was regarded as extraordinary.

The "bad men" to whom Mr.Edmunds referred were the appointees of President Johnson, and every one of them had been confirmed by the Senate of the United States when the Republicans had more than two-thirds of the body.