The course of experience recommends . . . . that the provision for the station of Attorney-General, whose residence at the seat of Government, official connections with it, and the management of the public business before the judiciary preclude an extensive participation in professional emoluments, be made more adequate to his services and his relinquishments, and that, with a view to his reasonable accommodation and to a proper depository of his official opinions and proceedings, there be included in the provision the usual appurtenances to a public office. . .[1]
Such reflections coming from one of the leaders in the Philadelphia Convention, who had since had much experience in administrative work, were not easily overlooked by several of his successors in the presidency. John Quincy Adams, Jackson and Polk all harked back to Madison's suggestion as to the position of the attorney-general.
The salary of the attorney-general, starting at fifteen hundred dollars in 1789, was doubled ten years later. But Congress thereafter was slow in increasing it. And it was not until 1853 that the salary was placed on a par with that of the secretaries and of the postmaster-general. By the appropriation act of that year—so far, at any rate, as salaries could mark unity and equality of office—the five secretaries, along with the postmaster-general and the attorney-general, stood together and in equal rank.[2]
In 1814 an attempt was made to enact a residence requirement. In January of that year a resolution was introduced into the House for the express purpose of inquiring into the expediency of "making it the duty of the Attorney-General of the United States to keep his office at the seat of Government during the session of Congress. . ."[3] Apparently the House regarded the attorney-general as the proper officer to aid it at times in respect to doubtful points of law. Following this resolution, a bill was prepared, presented and, after sundry altera-
