Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/342

adjacent territory for health, or for pleasure, or a commorancy there for a single day, would amount to a disqualification. Under such a construction a military or civil officer, who should have been in Canada during the late war on public business, would have lost his eligibility. The true sense of residence in the constitution is fixed domicile, or being out of the United States, and settled abroad for the purpose of general inhabitancy, animo manendi, and not for a mere temporary and fugitive purpose, in transitu.

§ 1474. The next clause is,

In case of the removal of the president from office, or his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the vice-president. And the congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability of the president and vice-president, declaring what officer shall then act as president; and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a president shall be elected.

§ 1475. The original scheme of the constitution did not embrace (as has been already stated) the appointment of any vice-president, and in case of the death, resignation, or disability of the president, the president of the senate was to perform the duties of his office.^[1] The appointment of a vice-president was carried by a vote of ten states to one.^[2] Congress, in pursuance of the power here given, have provided, that in case of the removal, death, resignation, or inability of the president and vice-president, the president of the senate pro tempore, and in case there shall be no president, then the speaker of the house of representatives for the

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1. Journal of Convention, p. 225, 226.
2. Id. 324, 333, 337.