is the more important of the two, especially in an elective office.
Man, in public trust, will much oftener act in such a manner as to
render him unworthy of being any longer trusted, than in such a manner
as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment. But the multiplication of
the Executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case. It
often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on
whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of
pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to
another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances,
that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author. The
circumstances which may have led to any national miscarriage or
misfortune are sometimes so complicated that, where there are a number
of actors who may have had different degrees and kinds of agency,
though we may clearly see upon the whole that there has been
mismanagement, yet it may be impracticable to pronounce to whose
account the evil which may have been incurred is truly chargeable.
“I was overruled by my council. The council were so divided in their
opinions that it was impossible to obtain any better resolution on the
point.” These and similar pretexts are constantly at hand, whether true
or false. And who is there that will either take the trouble or incur
the odium, of a strict scrunity into the secret springs of the
transaction? Should there be found a citizen zealous enough to
undertake the unpromising task, if there happen to be collusion between
the parties concerned, how easy it is to clothe the circumstances with
so much ambiguity, as to render it uncertain what was the precise
conduct of any of those parties?
In the single instance in which the governor of this State is coupled
with a council that is, in the appointment to offices, we have seen the
mischiefs of it in the view now under consideration. Scandalous
appointments to important offices have been made. Some cases, indeed,
have been so flagrant that ALL PARTIES have agreed in the impropriety
of the thing. When inquiry has been made, the blame has been laid by
the governor on the members of the council, who, on their part, have
charged it upon his nomination; while the people remain altogether at a
loss to determine, by whose influence their interests have been
committed to hands so unqualified and so manifestly improper. In
tenderness to individuals, I forbear to descend to particulars.
It is evident from these considerations, that the plurality of the
Executive tends to deprive the people of the two greatest securities
they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power, first,
the restraints of public opinion, which lose their efficacy, as well on
account of the division of the censure attendant on bad measures among
a number, as on account of the uncertainty on whom it ought to fall;
and, secondly, the opportunity of discovering with facility and
clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust, in order either to
their removal from office or to their actual punishment in cases which
admit of it.
In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate; and it is a maxim which
has obtained for the sake of the pub lic peace, that he is
unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred. Nothing,
therefore, can be wiser in that kingdom, than to annex to the king a
constitutional council, who may be responsible to the nation for the
advice they give. Without this, there would be no responsibility
whatever in the executive department an idea inadmissible in a free
government. But even there the king is not bound by the resolutions of
his council, though they are answerable for the advice they give. He is
the absolute master of his own conduct in the exercise of his office,
and may observe or disregard the counsel given to him at his sole
discretion.
But in a republic, where every magistrate ought to be personally
responsible for his behavior in office the reason which in the British
Constitution dictates the propriety of a council, not only ceases to
apply, but turns against the institution. In the monarchy of Great
Britain, it furnishes a substitute for the prohibited responsibility of
the chief magistrate, which serves in some degree as a hostage to the
national justice for his good behavior. In the American republic, it
would serve to destroy, or would greatly diminish, the intended and
necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself.
The idea of a council to the Executive, which has so generally obtained
in the State constitutions, has been derived from that maxim of
republican jealousy which considers power as safer in the hands of a
number of men than of a single man. If the maxim should be admitted to
be applicable to the case, I should contend that the advantage on that
side would not counterbalance the numerous disadvantages on the
opposite side. But I do not think the rule at all applicable to the
executive power. I clearly concur in opinion, in this particular, with
a writer whom the celebrated Junius pronounces to be “deep, solid, and
ingenious,” that “the executive power is more easily confined when it
is ONE”;[2] that it is far more safe there should be a single object
for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people; and, in a word, that
all multiplication of the Executive is rather dangerous than friendly
to liberty.
A little consideration will satisfy us, that the species of security
sought for in the multiplication of the Executive, is nattainable.
Numbers must be so great as to render combination difficult, or they
are rather a source of danger than of security. The united credit and
influence of several individuals must be more formidable to liberty,
than the credit and influence of either of them separately. When power,
therefore, is placed in the hands of so small a number of men, as to
admit of their interests and views being easily combined in a common
enterprise, by an artful leader, it becomes more liable to abuse, and
more dangerous when abused, than if it be lodged in the hands of one
man; who, from the very circumstance of his being alone, will be more
narrowly watched and more readily suspected, and who cannot unite so
great a mass of influence as when he is associated with others. The
Decemvirs of Rome, whose name denotes their number,[3] were more to be
dreaded in their usurpation than any ONE of them would have been. No
person would think of proposing an Executive much more numerous than
that body; from six to a dozen have been suggested for the number of
the council. The extreme of these numbers, is not too great for an 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 what he does, are generally
nothing better than a clog upon his good intentions, are often the
instruments and accomplices of his bad and are almost always a cloak to
his faults.
I forbear to dwell upon the subject of expense; though it be evident
that if the council should be numerous enough to answer the principal
end aimed at by the institution, the salaries of the members, who must
be drawn from their homes to reside at the seat of government, would
form an item in the catalogue of public expenditures too serious to be
incurred for an object of equivocal utility. I will only add that,
prior to the appearance of the Constitution, I rarely met with an
intelligent man from any of the States, who did not admit, as the
result of experience, that the UNITY of the executive of this State was
one of the best of the distinguishing features of our constitution.
PUBLIUS.
[1] New York has no council except for the single purpose of
appointing to offices; New Jersey has a council whom the governor may
consult. But I think, from the terms of the constitution, their
resolutions do not bind him.
[2] De Lolme.
[3] Ten.
THE FEDERALIST.
No. LXXI.
The Duration in Office of the Executive
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, March 18, 1788.
HAMILTON
To the People of the State of New York:
Duration in office has been mentioned as the second requisite to the
energy of the Executive authority. This has relation to two objects: to
the personal firmness of the executive magistrate, in the employment of
his constitutional powers; and to the stability of the system of
administration which may have been adopted under his auspices. With
regard to the first, it must be evident, that the longer the duration
in office, the greater will be the probability of obtaining so
important an advantage. It is a general principle of human nature, that
a man will be interested in whatever he possesses, in proportion to the
firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it; will be
less attached to what he holds by a momentary or uncertain title, than
to what he enjoys by a durable or certain title; and, of course, will
be willing to risk more for the sake of the one, than for the sake of
the other. This remark is not less applicable to a political privilege,
or honor, or trust, than to any article of ordinary property. The
inference from it is, that a man acting in the capacity of chief
magistrate, under a consciousness that in a very short time he MUST lay
down his office, will be apt to feel himself too little interested in
it to hazard any material censure or perplexity, from the independent
exertion of his powers, or from encountering the ill-humors, however
transient, which may happen to prevail, either in a considerable part
of the society itself, or even in a predominant faction in the
legislative body. If the case should only be, that he MIGHT lay it
down, unless continued by a new choice, and if he should be desirous of
being continued, his wishes, conspiring with his fears, would tend
still more powerfully to corrupt his integrity, or debase his
fortitude. In either case, feebleness and irresolution must be the
characteristics of the station.
There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of
the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in
the legislature, as its best recommendation. But such men entertain
very crude notions, as well of the purposes for which government was
instituted, as of the true means by which the public happiness may be
promoted. The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of
the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust
the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified
complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient
impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter
their prejudices to betray their interests. It is a just observation,
that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to
their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who
should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of
promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and
the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they
continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the
snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the
artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve
it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When
occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are
at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom
they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to
withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and
opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be
cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very
fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting
monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity
enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.
But however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded
complaisance in the Executive to the inclinations of the people, we can
with no propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the
legislature. The latter may sometimes stand in opposition to the
former, and at other times the people may be entirely neutral. In
either supposition, it is certainly desirable that the Executive should
be in a situation to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and
decision.
The same rule which teaches the propriety of a partition between the
various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition
ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other.
To what purpose separate the executive or the judiciary from the
legislative, if both the executive and the judiciary are so constituted
as to be at the absolute devotion of the legislative? Such a separation
must be merely nominal, and incapable of producing the ends for which
it was established. It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and
another to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports
with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government;
and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in
the same hands. The tendency of the legislative authority to absorb
every other, has been fully displayed and illustrated by examples in
some preceding numbers. In governments purely republican, this tendency
is almost irresistible. The representatives of the people, in a popular
assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves,
and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign
of opposition from any other quarter; as if the exercise of its rights,
by either the executive or judiciary, were a breach of their privilege
and an outrage to their dignity. They often appear disposed to exert an
imperious control over the other departments; and as they commonly have
the people on their side, they always act with such momentum as to make
it very difficult for the other members of the government to maintain
the balance of the Constitution.
It may perhaps be asked, how the shortness of the duration in office
can affect the independence of the Executive on the legislature, unless
the one were possessed of the power of appointing or displacing the
other. One answer to this inquiry may be drawn from the principle
already remarked that is, from the slender interest a man is apt to
take in a short-lived advantage, and the little inducement it affords
him to expose himself, on account of it, to any considerable
inconvenience or hazard. Another answer, perhaps more obvious, though
not more conclusive, will result from the consideration of the
influence of the legislative body over the people; which might be
employed to prevent the re-election of a man who, by an upright
resistance to any sinister project of that body, should have made
himself obnoxious to its resentment.
It may be asked also, whether a duration of four years would answer the
end proposed; and if it would not, whether a less period, which would
at least be recommended by greater security against ambitious designs,
would not, for that reason, be preferable to a longer period, which
was, at the same time, too short for the purpose of inspiring the
desired firmness and independence of the magistrate.
It cannot be affirmed, that a duration of four years, or any other
limited duration, would completely answer the end proposed; but it
would contribute towards it in a degree which would have a material
influence upon the spirit and character of the government. Between the
commencement and termination of such a period, there would always be a
considerable interval, in which the prospect of annihilation would be
sufficiently remote, not to have an improper effect upon the conduct of
a man indued with a tolerable portion of fortitude; and in which he
might reasonably promise himself, that there would be time enough
before it arrived, to make the community sensible of the propriety of
the measures he might incline to pursue. Though it be probable that, as
he approached the moment when the public were, by a new election, to
signify their sense of his conduct, his confidence, and with it his
firmness, would decline; yet both the one and the other would derive
support from the opportunities which his previous continuance in the
station had afforded him, of establishing himself in the esteem and
good-will of his constituents. He might, then, hazard with safety, in
proportion to the proofs he had given of his wisdom and integrity, and
to the title he had acquired to the respect and attachment of his
fellow-citizens. As, on the one hand, a duration of four years will
contribute to the firmness of the Executive in a sufficient degree to
render it a very valuable ingredient in the composition; so, on the
other, it is not enough to justify any alarm for the public liberty. If
a British House of Commons, from the most feeble beginnings, FROM THE
MERE POWER OF ASSENTING OR DISAGREEING TO THE IMPOSITION OF A NEW TAX,
have, by rapid strides, reduced the prerogatives of the crown and the
privileges of the nobility within the limits they conceived to be
compatible with the principles of a free government, while they raised
themselves to the rank and consequence of a coequal branch of the
legislature; if they have been able, in one instance, to abolish both
the royalty and the aristocracy, and to overturn all the ancient
establishments, as well in the Church as State; if they have been able,
on a recent occasion, to make the monarch tremble at the prospect of an
innovation[1] attempted by them, what would be to be feared from an
elective magistrate of four years’ duration, with the confined
authorities of a President of the United States? What, but that he
might be unequal to the task which the Constitution assigns him? I
shall only add, that if his duration be such as to leave a doubt of his
firmness, that doubt is inconsistent with a jealousy of his
encroachments.
PUBLIUS.
[1] This was the case with respect to Mr. Fox’s India bill, which was
carried in the House of Commons, and rejected in the House of Lords,
to the entire satisfaction, as it is said, of the people.
THE FEDERALIST.
No. LXXII.
The Same Subject Continued, and Re-Eligibility of the Executive
Considered
From the New York Packet.
Friday, March 21, 1788.
HAMILTON
To the People of the State of New York:
The administration of government, in its largest sense, comprehends all
the operations of the body politic, whether legislative, executive, or
judiciary; but in its most usual, and perhaps its most precise
signification. It is limited to executive details, and falls peculiarly
within the province of the executive department. The actual conduct of
foreign negotiations, the preparatory plans of finance, the application
and disbursement of the public moneys in conformity to the general
appropriations of the legislature, the arrangement of the army and
navy, the directions of the operations of war, these, and other matters
of a like nature, constitute what seems to be most properly understood
by the administration of government. The persons, therefore, to whose
immediate management these different matters are committed, ought to be
considered as the assistants or deputies of the chief magistrate, and
on this account, they ought to derive their offices from his
appointment, at least from his nomination, and ought to be subject to
his superintendence. This view of the subject will at once suggest to
us the intimate connection between the duration of the executive
magistrate in office and the stability of the system of administration.
To reverse and undo what has been done by a predecessor, is very often
considered by a successor as the best proof he can give of his own
capacity and desert; and in addition to this propensity, where the
alteration has been the result of public choice, the person substituted
is warranted in supposing that the dismission of his predecessor has
proceeded from a dislike to his measures; and that the less he
resembles him, the more he will recommend himself to the favor of his
constituents. These considerations, and the influence of personal
confidences and attachments, would be likely to induce every new
President to promote a change of men to fill the subordinate stations;
and these causes together could not fail to occasion a disgraceful and
ruinous mutability in the administration of the government.
With a positive duration of considerable extent, I connect the
circumstance of re-eligibility. The first is necessary to give to the
officer himself the inclination and the resolution to act his part
well, and to the community time and leisure to observe the tendency of
his measures, and thence to form an experimental estimate of their
merits. The last is necessary to enable the people, when they see
reason to approve of his conduct, to continue him in his station, in
order to prolong the utility of his talents and virtues, and to secure
to the government the advantage of permanency in a wise system of
administration.
Nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded
upon close inspection, than a scheme which in relation to the present
point has had some respectable advocates, I mean that of continuing the
chief magistrate in office for a certain time, and then excluding him
from it, either for a limited period or forever after. This exclusion,
whether temporary or perpetual, would have nearly the same effects, and
these effects would be for the most part rather pernicious than
salutary.
One ill effect of the exclusion would be a diminution of the
inducements to good behavior. There are few men who would not feel much
less zeal in the discharge of a duty when they were conscious that the
advantages of the station with which it was connected must be
relinquished at a determinate period, than when they were permitted to
entertain a hope of OBTAINING, by MERITING, a continuance of them. This
position will not be disputed so long as it is admitted that the desire
of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct; or that
the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their
interests coincide with their duty. Even the love of fame, the ruling
passion of the noblest minds, which would prompt a man to plan and
undertake extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit,
requiring considerable time to mature and perfect them, if he could
flatter himself with the prospect of being allowed to finish what he
had begun, would, on the contrary, deter him from the undertaking, when
he foresaw that he must quit the scene before he could accomplish the
work, and must commit that, together with his own reputation, to hands
which might be unequal or unfriendly to the task. The most to be
expected from the generality of men, in such a situation, is the
negative merit of not doing harm, instead of the positive merit of
doing good.
Another ill effect of the exclusion would be the temptation to sordid
views, to peculation, and, in some instances, to usurpation. An
avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to
a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments he enjoyed,
would feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make
the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might
not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the
harvest as abundant as it was transitory; though the same man,
probably, with a different prospect before him, might content himself
with the regular perquisites of his situation, and might even be
unwilling to risk the consequences of an abuse of his opportunities.
His avarice might be a guard upon his avarice. Add to this that the
same man might be vain or ambitious, as well as avaricious. And if he
could expect to prolong his honors by his good conduct, he might
hesitate to sacrifice his appetite for them to his appetite for gain.
But with the prospect before him of approaching an inevitable
annihilation, his avarice would be likely to get the victory over his
caution, his vanity, or his ambition.
An ambitious man, too, when he found himself seated on the summit of
his country’s honors, when he looked forward to the time at which he
must descend from the exalted eminence for ever, and reflected that no
exertion of merit on his part could save him from the unwelcome
reverse; such a man, in such a situation, would be much more violently
tempted to embrace a favorable conjuncture for attempting the
prolongation of his power, at every personal hazard, than if he had the
probability of answering the same end by doing his duty.
Would it promote the peace of the community, or the stability of the
government to have half a dozen men who had had credit enough to be
raised to the seat of the supreme magistracy, wandering among the
people like discontented ghosts, and sighing for a place which they
were destined never more to possess?