The President

The design of the executive branch in the proposed government comes next. Hardly any part of the system was harder to arrange than this one, and perhaps none has been attacked with less candor or judged with less care. Here the writers against the Constitution have worked to display their talent for misrepresentation.

Counting on the people’s hatred of monarchy, the Constitution’s opponents have tried to turn every fear and suspicion against the intended President, treating him not merely as the embryo but as the full-grown offspring of that detested parent, monarchy. To prove this supposed kinship, they have drawn even on pure fiction. The powers of this magistrate, which in few cases exceed and in some fall short of those of a governor of New York, have been inflated into more than royal prerogatives. They have dressed him in dignity and splendor beyond a king of Great Britain: shown him with a crown on his brow and imperial purple trailing behind him, seated on a throne surrounded by favorites and mistresses, receiving foreign envoys in the haughty pomp of majesty. They have nearly added the images of Asiatic despotism and indulgence to complete the exaggerated scene, teaching us to tremble at murdering guards and to blush at the hidden mysteries of a future harem.

Attempts this extravagant to disfigure, or rather to transform, the office make it necessary to examine its real nature and form. The point is both to establish its true appearance and to expose the falseness of the counterfeit resemblances that have been spread so cunningly and so industriously.

In carrying out this task, no one could easily view with calm or treat with seriousness the devices, as weak as they are wicked, contrived to corrupt public opinion on this subject. They so far exceed the usual, though still unjustifiable, license of party trickery that even the most generous and tolerant person must set aside any charitable reading of an opponent’s conduct and give way to plain indignation. One cannot help charging deliberate fraud and deception against the gross pretense of a likeness between a king of Great Britain and a magistrate of the kind marked out for the President; and still less can one withhold that charge from the reckless, barefaced means used to make the deception succeed.

Take one instance as a sample of the general spirit. The boldness has gone so far as to assign to the President a power that the proposed Constitution expressly grants to the executives of the individual States: the power of filling chance vacancies in the Senate. This bold gamble on his countrymen’s discernment was risked by a writer who, whatever his real merit, has won no small share of his party’s applause (see Cato, No. V); and on this false and groundless claim he has built a chain of observations equally false and groundless. Let him be confronted with the evidence and justify, if he can, the outrage he has offered to truth and fair dealing.

The relevant text is the second clause of the second section of the second article, which empowers the President “to nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not in the Constitution otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law.” Right after it comes another clause: “The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.” It is from this last provision that the alleged power to fill Senate vacancies has been deduced. A little attention to how the clauses connect, and to the plain meaning of the words, shows the deduction is not even plausible on its face.

The first of these two clauses, plainly, only provides a method for appointing officers “whose appointments are not otherwise provided for in the Constitution, and which shall be established by law.” It therefore cannot reach the appointment of senators, whose appointments are otherwise provided for in the Constitution and are established by the Constitution itself, requiring no future establishment by law. This point will hardly be disputed.

The last of the two clauses likewise cannot be read to include the power of filling Senate vacancies, for these reasons. First, its relation to the clause stating the general mode of appointing officers shows it to be merely a supplement, establishing a backup method of appointment for cases the general method could not cover. The ordinary power of appointment belongs to the President and Senate jointly, and so can be used only while the Senate is in session; but since it would have been improper to keep that body always in session, and since vacancies might arise during its recess that the public service needed filled at once, the following clause clearly authorizes the President, acting alone, to make temporary appointments “during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.”

Second, if this clause supplements the one before it, the “vacancies” it speaks of must refer to the “officers” described in that preceding clause, and we have already seen that members of the Senate are excluded from that description. Third, the timing fixed by the clause confirms its meaning. The power operates “during the recess of the Senate,” and the appointments last “to the end of the next session” of the Senate. Had it been meant to cover senators, it would naturally have tied the temporary power to the recess of the State legislatures, which make the permanent appointments, not to the recess of the national Senate, which has no part in them; and it would have extended the temporary senator’s term to the next session of that State’s legislature, rather than ending it at the close of the national Senate’s next session. The circumstances of the body that makes the permanent appointments would naturally have shaped a power over the temporary ones. Since only the national Senate’s situation is considered in this clause, the vacancies it mentions can refer only to officers in whose appointment the Senate shares a role with the President.

Finally, the first and second clauses of the third section of the first article not only remove all doubt but destroy the pretext entirely. The first provides that “the Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof for six years.” The second directs that “if vacancies in that body should happen by resignation or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall then fill such vacancies.” Here the power to fill chance Senate vacancies by temporary appointment is given, in clear and unambiguous terms, to the State executives. This not only refutes the supposition that the earlier clause could have meant to grant that power to the President, but proves the supposition, lacking even plausibility, must have arisen from an intent to deceive the people: too plain to be hidden by sophistry, too atrocious to be excused by hypocrisy.

I have taken pains to single out this instance of misrepresentation and to set it in a clear, strong light, as plain proof of the unwarrantable tactics used to prevent a fair and impartial judgment of the Constitution now before the people. Nor have I hesitated, in so flagrant a case, to write with a sharpness little in keeping with the general tone of these papers. I leave it to any candid and honest opponent of the proposed government to say whether language can supply terms harsh enough for so shameless an attempt to impose on the citizens of America.

The method for choosing the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the proposed system, of any importance, that has escaped harsh criticism, or that has won even the slightest approval from the plan’s opponents. The most plausible of these critics to appear in print has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is reasonably well guarded. I go somewhat further, and do not hesitate to affirm that, if the manner of it is not perfect, it is at least excellent; it combines, to a high degree, all the advantages one could wish to see united.

It was desirable that the will of the people should shape the choice of the person to whom so important a trust is committed. That aim is met by giving the right of choosing, not to any standing body, but to men chosen by the people for this special purpose and at this particular moment. It was equally desirable that the immediate election be made by men best able to weigh the qualities suited to the office, acting under conditions favorable to deliberation and to a sound combination of all the reasons that should govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass, will most likely possess the information and discernment such a complicated inquiry requires.

It was also especially desirable to give as little opening as possible to tumult and disorder. This danger was much to be feared in choosing a magistrate who would have so great a role in the administration of government as the President. But the precautions built into the proposed system promise an effective guard against this mischief. Choosing several men to form an intermediate body of electors is far less likely to convulse the community with violent or extraordinary movements than choosing one man who is himself the final object of public desire. And since the electors chosen in each State are to assemble and vote within their own State, this detached and divided arrangement exposes them far less to the heats and ferments they might otherwise pass on to the people than if they were all gathered at one time in one place.

Nothing was more to be wished than that every practicable obstacle should be set against cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These deadliest enemies of republican government might be expected to approach from more than one direction, but chiefly from the desire of foreign powers to gain an improper influence in our councils. How better could they gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention has guarded against all danger of this kind with the most careful and judicious attention. It has not made the appointment of the President depend on any preexisting body of men who might be tampered with beforehand to sell their votes; instead it has referred the choice, in the first instance, to an immediate act of the people of America, exercised in selecting persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.

The convention has also excluded from this trust all those whose situation might make them suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States can be among the electors. Thus, without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election at least begin the task free from any sinister bias. Their brief existence and their detached situation give good reason to expect they will remain so to the end. Corruption that must reach so large a number of men requires time as well as means; nor would it be easy to suddenly draw men dispersed across thirteen States into combinations founded on motives that, though not strictly corrupt, might still mislead them from their duty.

Another and no less important aim was that the Executive should depend for his continuance in office on no one but the people themselves. Otherwise he might be tempted to sacrifice his duty to please those whose favor was necessary to keep his office. This advantage is also secured by making his re-election depend on a special body of representatives, deputed by society for the single purpose of making this important choice.

All these advantages combine in the plan the convention devised: the people of each State choose a number of electors equal to that State’s senators and representatives in the national government; these electors assemble within their State and vote for some fit person as President. Their votes are then sent to the seat of the national government, and the person who has a majority of the whole number of votes becomes President. But because a majority might not always settle on one man, and because it would be unsafe to let less than a majority decide, it is provided that in such a case the House of Representatives shall choose, from the candidates with the five highest vote counts, the man it judges best qualified for the office.

This process gives a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to any man who is not, to a high degree, endowed with the necessary qualifications. Talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity may by themselves raise a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will take other talents, and a different kind of merit, to win the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so large a part of it as a successful candidate for the presidency would need. It is not too strong to say that there will be a constant probability of seeing the office filled by men preeminent for ability and virtue.

Those able to judge how large a share the executive in any government must necessarily have in good or ill administration will count this no small recommendation of the Constitution. We cannot accept the political heresy of the poet who says, “For forms of government let fools contest, that which is best administered is best.” Yet we may safely say that the true test of a good government is its fitness and tendency to produce a good administration.

The Vice-President is to be chosen in the same manner as the President, with this difference: the Senate does, in his case, what the House of Representatives does in the President’s. The choice of a distinct officer as Vice-President has been objected to as needless, if not harmful, and it has been argued that it would have been better to let the Senate elect such an officer from among its own members. But two considerations seem to justify the convention’s view. First, to keep the Senate always able to reach a definite decision, its presiding officer should have only a tie-breaking vote; to take a senator from his seat as senator and place him as President of the Senate would exchange, for his State, a constant vote for an occasional one.

The second consideration is that, since the Vice-President may at times stand in for the President in the supreme executive office, all the reasons that recommend the chosen mode of electing the President apply with great, if not equal, force to the manner of appointing the Vice-President. It is notable that here, as in most other instances, the objection raised would also lie against the constitution of this State. We have a Lieutenant-Governor, chosen by the people at large, who presides in the Senate and is the constitutional substitute for the Governor in the same kinds of emergencies that would call on the Vice-President to take up the President’s authority and duties.

I now trace the real character of the proposed Executive as the convention’s plan actually marks it out; this will throw into strong light how unfairly the office has been described. The first thing that strikes us is that the executive authority, with few exceptions, is to rest in a single magistrate. That alone supports almost no comparison: if it makes the President resemble the king of Great Britain, it equally makes him resemble the Grand Seignior, the khan of Tartary, the Man of the Seven Mountains, or the governor of New York.

This magistrate is to be elected for four years, and may be re-elected as often as the people think him worthy of their trust. On this point he is wholly unlike a British king, who holds the crown by inheritance as property passing to his heirs forever; he is closely like a governor of New York, who is elected for three years and is re-eligible without any limit or interruption. Since far less time is needed to build a dangerous influence within a single State than across the whole Union, a four-year term for the Chief Magistrate of the Union is less to be feared than a three-year term for the corresponding office in one State.

The President could be impeached, tried, and, on conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; afterward he would still face prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the British king, by contrast, is sacred and inviolable: no constitutional tribunal holds him to account, and no punishment can reach him without bringing on the crisis of a national revolution. In this matter of personal responsibility the President stands on no better footing than a governor of New York, and on worse footing than the governors of Maryland and Delaware.

The President may return a bill passed by both houses for reconsideration; if two thirds of both houses then approve it, it becomes law anyway. The British king, by contrast, holds an absolute negative over the acts of Parliament. That the crown has not used this power for a long time does not erase its existence; it has simply substituted influence for authority, gaining a majority in one house or the other rather than exerting a prerogative that could rarely be used without risking national agitation. The President’s qualified negative differs sharply from that absolute one, and matches exactly the revisionary authority of this State’s council of revision, of which the governor is one member. Here the President’s power exceeds the New York governor’s, since the President holds singly what the governor shares with the chancellor and judges; but it is precisely the same as the governor of Massachusetts, whose constitution on this article seems to be the model the convention copied.

The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and of the State militias when called into the actual service of the United States; to grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses, except in cases of impeachment; to recommend measures to Congress; to convene both houses or either of them on extraordinary occasions, and to adjourn them when they disagree on the time of adjournment; to take care that the laws are faithfully executed; and to commission all federal officers. In most of these particulars his power resembles equally that of the British king and that of the New York governor. The material differences are these. First, the President commands only the part of the national militia that the legislature actually calls into service, while the British king and the New York governor have at all times the entire command of all the militia within their jurisdictions; in this the President’s power is inferior to either. Second, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy his authority is nominally the same as the king’s but in substance far less, amounting only to supreme command and direction of the forces as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; the British king’s power extends to declaring war and to raising and regulating fleets and armies, all of which the Constitution gives to the legislature. The New York governor commands only that State’s militia and navy, yet several State constitutions expressly make their governors commanders-in-chief of both army and navy, and those of New Hampshire and Massachusetts may grant their governors larger powers here than a President could claim.

Third, the President’s pardon power reaches all cases except impeachment, while the New York governor may pardon even in cases of impeachment, except for treason and murder. Measured by political consequences, is the governor’s power here not the greater? Conspiracies and plots against the government, not yet matured into actual treason, could be shielded from all punishment by the pardon. A governor heading such a conspiracy could, until the design ripened into open hostility, guarantee his accomplices complete impunity; a President, though he may pardon treason prosecuted in the ordinary course of law, could shelter no offender at all from impeachment and conviction. The prospect of total indemnity for every preliminary step would tempt a man to undertake and persist in a scheme against public liberty far more than the bare prospect of escaping death and confiscation if an actual appeal to arms failed, especially since the President who might grant that exemption could himself be caught up in the consequences and so be unable to grant it. To weigh this, recall that the proposed Constitution limits treason to levying war against the United States and to adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort, and that New York’s laws confine it within similar bounds. Fourth, the President can adjourn the national legislature only in the single case of disagreement over the time of adjournment, whereas the British monarch may prorogue or even dissolve Parliament, and the New York governor may also prorogue this State’s legislature for a limited time, a power that in certain situations may serve very important purposes.

The President may make treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided two thirds of the senators present concur. The British king is the sole and absolute representative of the nation in all foreign dealings: of his own accord he can make treaties of peace, commerce, alliance, and every other kind. Some have insinuated that his treaty power is not conclusive, and that his agreements with foreign powers need Parliament’s revision and ratification; but this doctrine was never heard of until it was raised for this present argument. Every jurist of that kingdom, and everyone acquainted with its constitution, knows as settled fact that the prerogative of making treaties rests in the crown in its fullest extent, and that compacts entered into by royal authority have complete legal validity independent of any other sanction. Parliament does sometimes alter existing laws to conform them to a new treaty, which may have bred the notion that its cooperation is necessary to the treaty’s force; but that interposition arises from a different cause: the need to adjust an intricate system of revenue and commercial laws to the changes the treaty produces, so the machine does not fall into disorder. In this respect there is no comparison between the President’s intended power and the British king’s actual power: the king can do alone what the President can do only with a branch of the legislature. The federal Executive’s power here would, I admit, exceed that of any State Executive, but this follows naturally from the sovereign character of the treaty power; were the Confederacy dissolved, it would become a question whether the State Executives were not themselves solely invested with that delicate and important prerogative.

The President is also authorized to receive ambassadors and other public ministers. Though this has been a rich theme for declamation, it is more a matter of dignity than of authority; it will be without consequence in administering the government, and it was far more convenient to arrange it this way than to require convening the legislature, or one of its branches, on every arrival of a foreign minister, even one merely replacing a departed predecessor.

The President is to nominate, and with the Senate’s advice and consent to appoint, ambassadors and other public ministers, judges of the Supreme Court, and in general all federal officers established by law whose appointments the Constitution does not otherwise provide for. The British king is truly styled the fountain of honor: he not only fills all offices but can create them, can confer titles of nobility at pleasure, and disposes of an immense number of church appointments. The President’s power here is plainly far inferior to the king’s, and not even equal to the New York governor’s, if we read this State’s constitution by the practice that has grown up under it. With us the appointing power lies in a council of the governor and four senators chosen by the Assembly; the governor claims, and has often exercised, the right of nomination, and holds a casting vote in the appointment. I do not myself think the governor’s claim to a right of nomination well founded; but it is always justifiable to reason from the practice of a government until its propriety has been constitutionally questioned, and, setting this claim aside, the other considerations pursued to their consequences point to much the same conclusion. If the governor truly has the right of nominating, his authority here equals the President’s and exceeds it through the casting vote: in the national government a divided Senate makes no appointment, while in New York a divided council lets the governor turn the scale and confirm his own nominee.

Compare the publicity that must attend appointment by the President together with an entire branch of the legislature against the privacy of appointment by the New York governor, closeted in a secret room with at most four persons, and often only two; and consider how much easier it is to influence the small council of appointment than the far larger national Senate. We cannot then hesitate to conclude that in disposing of offices the power of this State’s chief magistrate is, in practice, much greater than that of the Chief Magistrate of the Union.

It thus appears that, except for the President’s shared authority over treaties, it would be hard to say whether the office would, on the whole, possess more or less power than the Governor of New York. And it appears still more clearly that there is no basis for the parallel attempted between the President and the king of Great Britain. To make the contrast sharper, it helps to gather the chief points of difference into one close group.

The President would be an officer elected by the people for four years; the British king is a perpetual and hereditary prince. The one would be liable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable. The one would have a qualified negative on the legislature’s acts; the other has an absolute negative. The one would command the nation’s military and naval forces; the other, besides this, can declare war and raise and regulate fleets and armies by his own authority. The one would share the treaty power with a branch of the legislature; the other is sole maker of treaties. The one would have a like shared authority in appointments; the other is the sole author of all appointments. The one can confer no privileges at all; the other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners, and can erect corporations with every right belonging to corporate bodies. The one can prescribe no rules about the nation’s commerce or currency; the other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, able to establish markets and fairs, regulate weights and measures, lay embargoes for a limited time, coin money, and authorize or prohibit foreign coin. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church. What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same answer owed to those who tell us that a government whose whole power rests in the elective and periodic servants of the people is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.

Some argue that a vigorous Executive is incompatible with the spirit of republican government. The enlightened well-wishers of such government must at least hope that claim is groundless, because to grant its truth is to condemn the very principles republicans hold. Energy in the Executive is a defining feature of good government. It is essential to defending the community against foreign attack; to administering the laws steadily; to protecting property against the irregular, high-handed combinations that sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; and to securing liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.

Anyone even slightly acquainted with Roman history knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, against the intrigues of ambitious men who aspired to tyranny, against the seditions of whole classes whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, and against foreign enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome. There is no need to multiply arguments or examples. A feeble Executive means a feeble execution of government; a feeble execution is only another phrase for a bad one; and a government badly executed, whatever its merits in theory, must in practice be a bad government.

Granting, then, that all sensible men agree an energetic Executive is necessary, three questions remain. What are the ingredients that produce this energy? How far can they be combined with the ingredients that produce safety in the republican sense? And how far does the plan reported by the convention reflect that combination? The ingredients of energy in the Executive are four: first, unity; second, duration; third, an adequate provision for its support; fourth, competent powers. The ingredients of safety in the republican sense are two: first, a due dependence on the people; second, a due responsibility.

The politicians and statesmen most celebrated for the soundness of their principles and the justice of their views have favored a single Executive and a numerous legislature. They have rightly considered energy the most necessary quality of the Executive, and judged it most attainable when power rests in a single hand. With equal good reason they have considered the legislature best adapted to deliberation and wisdom, and best calculated to conciliate the confidence of the people and to secure their privileges and interests.

That unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed. Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally mark the proceedings of one man far more than the proceedings of any larger number; and as the number grows, these qualities diminish. Unity can be destroyed in two ways: either by vesting the power in two or more magistrates of equal dignity and authority, or by vesting it ostensibly in one man who is subject, in whole or in part, to the control and cooperation of others acting as his counsellors. The two Consuls of Rome illustrate the first; several of the State constitutions illustrate the second. New York and New Jersey, if I recall correctly, are the only States that have entrusted the executive authority wholly to single men. Both methods of destroying unity have their partisans, but the advocates of an executive council are the more numerous. The two are open to similar, if not equal, objections and can mostly be examined together.

The experience of other nations teaches little here, but as far as it teaches anything, it warns us not to be enamored of plurality in the Executive. The Achaeans, after trying two Praetors, were led to abolish one. Roman history records many instances of harm to the republic from dissensions between the Consuls, and between the military Tribunes who at times replaced them, yet it gives no example of any peculiar advantage gained from their plurality. That the quarrels between them were not more frequent or more fatal is surprising, until we consider the singular position the republic was almost always in, and the prudent policy the Consuls adopted of dividing the government between themselves. The Consuls, generally chosen from the patricians, were usually united by their shared interest in defending the privileges of their order against the plebeians; and once the republic’s conquests had greatly enlarged its empire, it became the custom for the Consuls to divide the administration by lot, one remaining at Rome to govern the city, the other taking command in the distant provinces. That arrangement must have done much to prevent the collisions and rivalries that might otherwise have disturbed the peace of the republic.

Leaving the dim light of historical research and attaching ourselves to reason and good sense, we find far greater cause to reject than to approve plurality in the Executive, in any form whatever. Wherever two or more persons share a common enterprise, there is always danger of difference of opinion; and where it is a public office in which they hold equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal rivalry and even animosity. From such causes the most bitter dissensions are apt to spring. Whenever they arise, they lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans of those they divide. Should they afflict the supreme executive magistracy of a country composed of several persons, they might obstruct or frustrate the most important measures of government in the most critical emergencies of the state. Worse still, they might split the community into violent and irreconcilable factions, each attached to a different individual within the magistracy.

Men often oppose a measure merely because they had no hand in planning it, or because it was planned by those they dislike. But if they have been consulted and have happened to disapprove, opposition then becomes, in their own eyes, an indispensable duty of self-love. They feel bound in honor, and by every motive of personal infallibility, to defeat what has been resolved against their wishes. Men of upright and benevolent temper have too many occasions to observe, with horror, the desperate lengths to which this disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, the conceit, and the obstinacy of individuals who have enough standing to make their passions and caprices matter to others. Perhaps the very question now before the public may, in its consequences, give melancholy proof of the effects of this despicable frailty, or rather detestable vice, in human character.

Under the principles of free government, inconveniences of this kind must be accepted in forming the legislature; but it is needless, and therefore unwise, to introduce them into the Executive, where they may do the most harm. In the legislature, promptness of decision is more often an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion and the clashing of parties there, though they may sometimes obstruct sound plans, often promote deliberation and caution and serve to check excesses in the majority; and once a resolution is taken, opposition must end, for that resolution is a law and resistance to it punishable.

But no such favorable circumstances offset the disadvantages of dissension in the executive department. Here the harm is pure and unmixed; there is no point at which it ceases to operate. Dissension embarrasses and weakens the execution of the plan from the first step to the last, constantly counteracting the very qualities the Executive most needs, vigor and dispatch, and without any counterbalancing good. In the conduct of war, where the energy of the Executive is the bulwark of national security, everything would be to be feared from its plurality.

These observations bear with the greatest weight on the first case, a plurality of magistrates of equal dignity and authority, whose advocates are not likely to form a numerous sect. But they apply, though with less force, to the project of a council whose concurrence is made constitutionally necessary to the acts of the nominal Executive. A cunning cabal in such a council could distract and enervate the whole system of administration; and even if no such cabal existed, the mere diversity of views and opinions would be enough to tinge the exercise of executive authority with habitual feebleness and delay.

One of the weightiest objections to plurality in the Executive, which lies as much against the council as against the equal-magistrates plan, is that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility. Responsibility is of two kinds: to censure and to punishment. The first is the more important, especially in an elective office, since a man in public trust will far more often act so as to make himself unworthy of further trust than so as to expose himself to legal punishment. But multiplying the Executive makes detection harder in either case. Amid mutual accusations it often becomes impossible to determine on whom the blame or punishment of a harmful measure ought truly to fall. It is shifted from one to another with such dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that public opinion is left uncertain who the real author was. The circumstances behind a national misfortune are sometimes so complicated that, where many actors had different degrees and kinds of agency, we may clearly see there has been mismanagement and yet be unable to say to whose account the harm truly belongs.

“I was overruled by my council.” “The council was so divided that no better resolution could be obtained.” Such pretexts are always at hand, whether true or false. And who will take the trouble, or incur the odium, of a strict inquiry into the secret springs of the transaction? Even if some citizen were zealous enough to undertake the thankless task, where the parties have colluded it is easy to wrap the circumstances in so much ambiguity that no one can be sure what any of them actually did.

In the single instance where the governor of this State is coupled with a council, the appointment to offices, we have already seen the mischief of it. Scandalous appointments to important offices have been made, some so flagrant that all parties have agreed they were improper. When inquiry was made, the governor laid the blame on the members of the council, who in turn charged it to his nomination, while the people were left wholly unable to determine by whose influence their interests had been committed to hands so unqualified and so plainly improper. In tenderness to individuals I forbear to descend to particulars.

It is clear from all this that plurality in the Executive tends to deprive the people of the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power. The first is the restraint of public opinion, which loses its force both because the censure for bad measures is divided among several and because it is uncertain on whom it ought to fall. The second is the chance to discover, easily and clearly, the misconduct of those they trust, so as either to remove them from office or, where the case admits, to punish them.

In England the king is a perpetual magistrate, and it is a maxim adopted for the sake of public peace that he is unaccountable for his administration and his person sacred. Nothing, therefore, could be wiser in that kingdom than to attach to the king a constitutional council answerable to the nation for the advice it gives; without it there would be no responsibility at all in the executive department, an idea inadmissible in a free government. Yet even there the king is not bound by his council’s resolutions, though they are answerable for their advice. He remains the absolute master of his own conduct in office and may follow or disregard their counsel as he pleases.

But in a republic, where every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his conduct in office, the reason that justifies a council under the British Constitution not only ceases to apply but turns against the institution. In the British monarchy the council substitutes for the responsibility forbidden to the chief magistrate, serving in some degree as a hostage to national justice for his good behavior. In the American republic, a council would instead destroy, or greatly diminish, the intended and necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself.

The idea of an executive council, so common in the State constitutions, comes from that maxim of republican jealousy which holds power safer in the hands of a number of men than of a single man. Even if that maxim were granted to apply here, the advantage on that side would not outweigh the many disadvantages on the other. But I do not think the rule applies to the executive power at all. I agree with a writer whom the celebrated Junius calls “deep, solid, and ingenious,” that the executive power is more easily confined when it is one; that it is far safer to have a single object for the people’s jealousy and watchfulness; and, in short, that all multiplication of the Executive is dangerous rather than friendly to liberty.

A little reflection shows that the security sought through multiplying the Executive cannot in fact be obtained. The numbers must be so great as to make combination difficult, or they are a source of danger rather than security. The combined credit and influence of several men is more formidable to liberty than the influence of any one of them alone. When power is placed in the hands of so few that their interests and views can be easily united in a common design by an artful leader, it becomes more liable to abuse, and more dangerous when abused, than if it rested in one man, who, being alone, is more closely watched and more readily suspected, and who cannot gather so great a mass of influence as when joined with others. The Decemvirs of Rome, whose very name records their number, were more to be dreaded in their usurpation than any one of them would have been.

No one would propose an Executive much more numerous than that body; from six to a dozen have been suggested for a council. Even the larger of those numbers is not too great for easy combination, and from such a combination America would have more to fear than from the ambition of any single individual. A council to a magistrate who is himself responsible for his acts is generally no better than a clog upon his good intentions, often an instrument and accomplice of his bad ones, and almost always a cloak for his faults.

I forbear to dwell on the matter of expense, though it is plain that a council large enough to serve its supposed purpose would burden the public with salaries for members drawn from their homes to reside at the seat of government, an item too serious to incur for an object of doubtful use. I will add only that, before the Constitution appeared, I rarely met an intelligent man from any of the States who did not admit, as the lesson of experience, that the unity of this State’s executive was one of the best distinguishing features of our constitution.

A long term in office is the second thing the Executive needs to act with energy. This matters in two ways: it strengthens the personal firmness of the chief magistrate in using his constitutional powers, and it lends stability to the system of administration set up under his leadership. As to the first, the longer the term, the greater the chance of securing this important advantage. It is a general truth about human nature that a man cares about what he holds in proportion to how firm or precarious his hold on it is; he attaches less to what he keeps by a brief or uncertain title than to what he enjoys by a lasting or secure one, and so will risk more for the latter than for the former.

This applies to a political privilege, honor, or trust no less than to ordinary property. A chief magistrate who knows that in a very short time he must give up his office will feel too little stake in it to risk any serious blame or trouble by exercising his powers independently, or by standing against the passing ill-humors that may prevail in part of the society or in a dominant faction of the legislature. And if the case is only that he might keep the office through a new election, and he wants to keep it, his hopes joining his fears would work even more strongly to corrupt his integrity or weaken his courage. Either way, feebleness and irresolution become the marks of the office.

Some would treat the servile pliancy of an Executive to whatever current prevails, in the community or the legislature, as its best recommendation. But such men hold crude notions both about why government was instituted and about the true means of promoting the public happiness. The republican principle requires that the deliberate sense of the community govern the conduct of those entrusted with managing its affairs; it does not require unqualified compliance with every sudden gust of passion, or with every fleeting impulse the people may take from men who flatter their prejudices in order to betray their interests.

It is a fair observation that the people commonly intend the public good, and this is often true even of their errors. But their own good sense would scorn the flatterer who pretended that they always reason rightly about the means of achieving it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; the wonder is that they err as seldom as they do, beset as they continually are by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, and the desperate, and by the tricks of men who hold their confidence more than they deserve it, or who seek to hold it rather than to deserve it. When occasions arise in which the people’s interests are at odds with their inclinations, it is the duty of those appointed to guard those interests to resist the temporary delusion, so as to give the people time for cooler and more settled reflection. Cases could be cited in which such conduct saved the people from very ruinous consequences of their own mistakes, and earned lasting gratitude for the men who had the courage and magnanimity to serve them at the risk of their displeasure.

However much one might be inclined to demand boundless compliance from the Executive toward the inclinations of the people, there is no good ground for demanding the same compliance toward the humors of the legislature. The legislature may sometimes stand opposed to the people, and at other times the people may be wholly neutral. In either case, it is certainly desirable that the Executive be placed to dare to act on his own judgment with vigor and decision.

The same rule that shows the propriety of dividing power among the branches also teaches that the division must be arranged so as to make each branch independent of the others. What is the point of separating the executive or the judiciary from the legislature if both are so framed as to be at the absolute mercy of the legislature? Such a separation would be merely nominal, unable to produce the ends for which it was created. It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another to be dependent on the legislative body: the first agrees with the fundamental principles of good government, the second violates them and, whatever the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands.

The tendency of the legislative authority to absorb every other power has been fully shown by examples in earlier papers. In purely republican governments this tendency is almost irresistible. The people’s representatives in a popular assembly sometimes fancy that they are the people themselves, and show strong impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter, as if the executive or judiciary exercising its rights were a breach of legislative privilege and an outrage to legislative dignity. They often appear ready to exert an imperious control over the other departments; and because they usually have the people on their side, they act with such momentum that it becomes very difficult for the others to maintain the balance of the Constitution.

It may be asked how the shortness of a term can affect the Executive’s independence from the legislature, unless one branch held the power to appoint or remove the other. One answer follows from the principle already noted: a man takes only a slender interest in a short-lived advantage, and has little reason to expose himself to any real inconvenience or hazard for its sake. Another answer, perhaps more obvious though no more conclusive, comes from the legislature’s influence over the people, which it might use to block the re-election of a man who, by uprightly resisting some sinister project of that body, had made himself the object of its resentment.

It may also be asked whether a term of four years would serve the purpose intended, and, if not, whether a shorter term, recommended at least by greater security against ambitious designs, would for that reason be preferable to a longer one that was still too short to inspire the firmness and independence sought in the magistrate.

It cannot be claimed that a four-year term, or any fixed term, would fully serve the end intended; but it would contribute toward it in a degree that would materially shape the spirit and character of the government. Between the start and the end of such a period there would always be a considerable interval in which the prospect of annihilation lay remote enough not to improperly affect a man of tolerable fortitude, and in which he could reasonably expect time enough, before that moment arrived, to make the community see the propriety of the measures he chose to pursue.

Though it is likely that, as he neared the moment when a new election would register the public’s judgment of his conduct, his confidence and with it his firmness would decline, both would still draw support from the chances his earlier service had given him to establish himself in the esteem and good will of his constituents. He could then take risks safely in proportion to the proofs he had given of his wisdom and integrity, and to the claim he had earned to the respect and attachment of his fellow citizens.

So, on the one hand, a four-year term will strengthen the firmness of the Executive enough to make it a very valuable ingredient in the design; on the other, it is not enough to justify any alarm for the public liberty. Consider the British House of Commons: from the feeblest beginnings, from the mere power of agreeing or disagreeing to a new tax, it has by rapid strides reduced the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges of the nobility within limits it judged compatible with a free government, while raising itself to the rank of a coequal branch of the legislature.

That same body has in one instance abolished both the royalty and the aristocracy and overturned all the ancient establishments, in Church as well as State; and on a recent occasion it made the monarch tremble at an innovation it attempted. If so much can be feared from it, what is to be feared from an elected magistrate holding office for four years, with the confined powers of a President of the United States? Only, perhaps, that he might prove unequal to the task the Constitution assigns him. I add only this: if his term is so short as to leave doubt of his firmness, that doubt cannot be squared with a jealous fear of his encroachments.

The administration of government, taken broadly, covers everything the body politic does, whether legislative, executive, or judicial; but in its most usual and most precise sense it is limited to executive details, and falls especially within the province of the executive department. Conducting foreign negotiations, drafting plans of finance, paying out public money in line with the legislature’s appropriations, organizing the army and navy, directing the operations of war: these and similar matters are what we most properly mean by the administration of government. The people who directly manage these matters should be regarded as the assistants or deputies of the chief magistrate; for that reason they should hold their offices by his appointment, or at least his nomination, and should answer to his oversight.

This view shows us at once how closely the duration of the executive in office is tied to the stability of administration. A successor often treats reversing and undoing what a predecessor did as the best proof he can give of his own capacity and worth. Where the change of office came from public choice, the new man is warranted in supposing that his predecessor was dismissed out of dislike for his measures, and that the less he resembles him, the more he will win the favor of his constituents. These motives, joined with the pull of personal loyalties and attachments, would lead every new President to replace the men in the lower offices; and together these causes could not fail to produce a disgraceful and ruinous instability in the administration.

To a fixed term of considerable length I join the question of re-eligibility, the chance to be re-elected. A term of considerable length is needed to give the officer himself the inclination and resolve to play his part well, and to give the community time to watch where his measures tend and form a tested judgment of their merits. Re-eligibility is needed so that the people, when they have reason to approve his conduct, may keep him in his place, prolonging the use of his talents and virtues and securing for the government the advantage of permanence in a wise system of administration.

Nothing seems more plausible at first glance, yet proves more ill-founded on close inspection, than a scheme that some respectable advocates have urged: keeping the chief magistrate in office for a set time and then shutting him out, either for a limited period or forever. This exclusion, whether temporary or permanent, would have nearly the same effects, and those effects would for the most part be harmful rather than beneficial.

One ill effect of exclusion would be to weaken the inducements to good behavior. Few men feel as much zeal in performing a duty when they know the advantages tied to the office must be given up at a fixed date, as they do when they may still hope to earn their continuance by merit. This holds so long as we admit that the desire of reward is one of the strongest spurs to human conduct, and that the best security for fidelity is to make a man’s interest coincide with his duty. Even the love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds, would be turned against great public undertakings: a man who might plan some large and demanding enterprise requiring years to mature would be deterred from it once he foresaw that he must leave the scene before finishing the work, handing both the work and his reputation to successors who might be unequal or unfriendly to the task. The most we could expect from most men in that position is the negative merit of doing no harm, rather than the positive merit of doing good.

Another ill effect of exclusion would be the temptation to sordid aims, to embezzlement, and in some cases to usurpation. A greedy man who happened to hold the office, looking ahead to the day when he must surrender its rewards, would feel a pull, hard for such a man to resist, to make the most of the opportunity while it lasted; he might not scruple to use the most corrupt means to make the harvest abundant precisely because it would be brief. The same man, with a different prospect before him, might content himself with the regular benefits of his place and might even be unwilling to risk the consequences of abusing it. His avarice might be a guard upon his avarice. Add to this that the same man might be vain or ambitious as well as greedy. If he could expect to prolong his honors by good conduct, he might hesitate to sacrifice his taste for them to his taste for gain. But faced with an unavoidable end to his tenure, his greed would likely win out over his caution, his vanity, or his ambition.

An ambitious man, too, once seated at the summit of his country’s honors and looking ahead to the moment when he must descend from that height forever, would reflect that no exertion of merit could save him from the unwelcome reversal. Such a man, in such a situation, would be far more violently tempted to seize a favorable moment to prolong his power at any personal risk than he would be if he had the chance of securing the same end simply by doing his duty.

Would it serve the peace of the community or the stability of the government to have half a dozen men who had once risen to the supreme magistracy now wandering among the people like discontented ghosts, sighing for a place they are destined never to hold again?

A third ill effect of exclusion would be to deprive the community of the benefit of the experience the chief magistrate has gained in office. That experience is the parent of wisdom is a saying whose truth the wisest and the simplest alike recognize. What quality is more desirable or essential in the governors of nations, and where more so than in the first magistrate of a nation? Can it be wise to place this desirable and essential quality under the ban of the Constitution, declaring that the moment a man acquires it he must abandon the very station in which it was gained and to which it is suited? Yet that is exactly what every rule does that bars men, after a course of service has fitted them to serve better, from continuing in their country’s service by the choice of their fellow citizens.

A fourth ill effect of exclusion would be to banish men from offices in which, during certain emergencies of the state, their presence might matter most to the public interest or safety. There is no nation that has not at some point felt an absolute need for the services of particular men in particular situations; it may not be too strong to say, a need bearing on its very political survival. How unwise, then, is any self-denying rule that forbids a nation from using its own citizens in the way best suited to its circumstances. Even setting aside whether any one man is indispensable, it is plain that changing the chief magistrate at the outbreak of a war, or in any similar crisis, even for another of equal merit, would always harm the community, since it would substitute inexperience for experience and tend to unsettle and set adrift the already settled course of the administration.

A fifth ill effect of exclusion would be that it would act as a constitutional ban on stability in the administration. By forcing a change of men in the first office of the nation, it would force a change of measures, for we cannot generally expect that the men will change while the measures stay uniform; the opposite is the usual course of things. We need not fear too much stability so long as the people even have the option of changing; nor should we want to forbid the people from keeping their confidence where they think it safely placed, and where, by their own constancy, they may avoid the fatal troubles of wavering councils and a shifting policy.

These are some of the disadvantages that would follow from the principle of exclusion. They apply most forcibly to a perpetual exclusion; but since even a partial exclusion would always make a man’s return remote and uncertain, the observations made apply nearly as fully to the one case as to the other.

What advantages are promised to offset these disadvantages? They are said to be: 1st, greater independence in the magistrate; 2nd, greater security to the people. Unless the exclusion is perpetual, there is no ground even to claim the first advantage. But even then, may he have no aim beyond his present station to which he might sacrifice his independence? Has he no connections, no friends, for whom he might sacrifice it? Might he not be less willing to make personal enemies by firm conduct once he knows a time is fast approaching when he not only may but must be exposed to their resentment, on equal or even inferior footing? It is not easy to decide whether such an arrangement would promote his independence or impair it.

As to the second supposed advantage, there is even more reason for doubt. If the exclusion were perpetual, a man of irregular ambition, the only kind there could ever be reason to fear, would yield with infinite reluctance to the necessity of leaving forever a post in which his passion for power and pre-eminence had grown into a habit. And if he had been lucky or skillful enough to win the people’s good will, he might lead them to view as an odious and unjustifiable restraint on themselves a provision meant to bar them from giving fresh proof of their attachment to a favorite. One can imagine circumstances in which this resentment of the people, joining the thwarted ambition of such a favorite, might pose a greater danger to liberty than could ever reasonably be feared from the chance of a man being kept in office by the voluntary votes of the community exercising a constitutional privilege.

There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people from keeping in office men who, in their own judgment, have earned their approval and confidence. The advantages of doing so are at best speculative and doubtful, and they are outweighed by disadvantages far more certain and decisive.