FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution, Federalist #70

Should the Executive Branch consist of one vigorous person, or should there be a plural executive of some kind? Hamilton takes on the various aspects of the issue.

² There is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government.

³ The enlightened well wishers to this species of government must at least hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation, since they can never admit its truth without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles.

⁴ Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.

⁵ It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws, to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice, to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction and of anarchy.

⁶ Every man the least conversant in Roman story knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man under the formidable title of dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny and the sedition of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.

⁷ There can be no need, however, to multiply arguments or examples on this head.

⁹ A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution, and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be in practice a bad government.

¹⁰ Taking it for granted, therefore, that all men of sense will agree in the necessity of an energetic executive, it will only remain to inquire what are the ingredients which constitute this energy?

¹¹ How far can they be combined with those other ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense?

¹² And how far does this combination characterize the plan which has been reported by the convention?

¹⁵ Those politicians and statesmen who have been the most celebrated for the soundness of their principles and for the justice of their views have declared in favor of a single executive and a numerous legislature.

¹⁶ They have with great propriety considered energy as the most necessary qualification of the former, and have regarded this as most applicable to power in a single hand, while they have with equal propriety considered the latter as best adapted to deliberation and wisdom, and best calculated to conciliate the confidence of the people and to secure their privileges and interests.

¹⁸ Decision, activity, secrecy and despatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number, and in proportion as the number is increased, these qualities will be diminished.

¹⁹ This unity may 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, subject in whole or in part to the control and cooperation of others in the capacity of counselors to him.

²⁰ Of the first, the two consuls of Rome may serve as an example; of the last, we shall find examples in the constitutions of several of the states.

²¹ New York and New Jersey, if I recollect right, are the only states which have entrusted the executive authority wholly to single men.¹

²² Both these methods of destroying the unity of the executive have their partisans, but the votaries of an executive council are the most numerous.

²³ They are both liable, if not to equal, to similar objections and may in most lights be examined in conjunction.

²⁴ The experience of other nations will afford little instruction on this head.

²⁵ As far, however, as it teaches anything, it teaches us not to be enamored of plurality in the executive.

²⁶ We have seen that the Achaeans, on an experiment of two praetors, were induced to abolish one.

²⁷ The Roman history records many instances of mischiefs to the republic from the dissensions between the consuls, and between the military tribunes, who were at times substituted for the consuls.

²⁸ But it gives us no specimens of any peculiar advantages derived to the state from the circumstance of the plurality of those magistrates.

²⁹ That the dissensions between them were not more frequent or more fatal is a matter of astonishment until we advert to the singular position in which the republic was almost continually placed, and to the prudent policy pointed out by the circumstances of the state and pursued by the consuls of making a division of the government between them.

³⁰ The patricians engaged in a perpetual struggle with the plebeians for the preservation of their ancient authorities and dignities; the consuls, who were generally chosen out of the former body, were commonly united by the personal interest they had in the defense of the privileges of their order.

³¹ In addition to this motive of union, after the arms of the republic had considerably expanded the bounds of its empire, it became an established custom with the consuls to divide the administration between themselves by lot, one of them remaining at Rome to govern the city and its environs, the other taking the command in the more distant provinces.

³² This expedient must no doubt have had great influence in preventing those collisions and [rivalries] which might otherwise have embroiled the peace of the republic.

³³ But quitting the dim light of historical research, attaching ourselves purely to the dictates of reason and good sense, we shall discover much greater cause to reject than to approve the idea of plurality in the executive under any modification whatever.

³⁴ Wherever two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit, there is always danger of difference of opinion.

³⁵ If it be a public trust or office in which they are clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation and even animosity.

³⁶ From either and especially from all these causes, the most bitter dissensions are apt to spring.

³⁷ Whenever these happen, they lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans and operation of those whom they divide.

³⁸ If they should unfortunately assail the supreme executive magistracy of a country consisting of a plurality of persons, they might impede or frustrate the most important measures of the government in the most critical emergencies of the state.

³⁹ And what is still worse, they might split the community into the most violent and irreconcilable factions, adhering differently to the different individuals who composed the magistracy.

⁴⁰ Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

⁴¹ But if they have been consulted and have happened to disapprove, opposition then becomes in their estimation an indispensable duty of self love.

⁴² They seem to think themselves bound in honor and by all the motives of personal infallibility to defeat the success of what has been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments.

⁴³ Men of upright, benevolent tempers have too many opportunities of remarking with horror to what desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit and to the obstinacy of individuals who have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting to mankind.

⁴⁴ Perhaps the question now before the public may in its consequences afford melancholy proofs of the effects of this despicable frailty, or rather detestable vice in the human character.

⁴⁵ Upon the principles of a free government, inconveniences from the source just mentioned must necessarily be submitted to in the formation of the legislature, but it is unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to introduce them into the constitution of the executive.

⁴⁷ In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit.

⁴⁸ The differences of opinion and the jarring of parties in that department of the government, though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority.

⁵¹ But no favorable circumstances palliate or atone for the disadvantages of dissension in the executive department.

⁵⁴ They serve to embarrass and weaken the execution of the plan or measure to which they relate, from the first step to the final conclusion of it.

⁵⁵ They constantly counteract those qualities in the executive which are the most necessary ingredients in its composition, vigor and expedition, and this without any counterbalancing good.

⁵⁶ In the conduct of war, in which the energy of the executive is the bulwark of the national security, everything would be to be apprehended from its plurality.

⁵⁷ It must be confessed that these observations apply with principal weight to the first case supposed, that is, to a plurality of magistrates of equal dignity and authority, a scheme, the advocates for which are not likely to form a numerous sect, but they apply, though not with equal, yet with considerable weight, to the project of a council whose concurrence is made constitutionally necessary to the operations of the ostensible executive.

⁵⁸ An artful cabal in that council would be able to distract and to enervate the whole system of administration.

⁵⁹ If no such cabal should exist, the mere diversity of views and opinions would alone be sufficient to tincture the exercise of the executive authority with a spirit of habitual feebleness and dilatoriness.

⁶⁰ But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the executive, and which lies as much against the last as the first plan, is that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility.

⁶² The first is the more important of the two, especially in an elective office.

⁶³ 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.

⁶⁴ But the multiplication of the executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case.

⁶⁵ 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.

⁶⁶ 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.

⁶⁷ 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.

⁶⁸ “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.”

⁶⁹ These and similar pretexts are constantly at hand, whether true or false.

⁷⁰ And who is there that will either take the trouble or incur the odium of a strict scrutiny into the secret springs of the transaction?

⁷¹ 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?

⁷² 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.

⁷⁴ Some cases, indeed, have been so flagrant that all parties have agreed in the impropriety of the thing.

⁷⁵ 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.

⁷⁷ 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.

⁷⁸ In England, the King is a perpetual magistrate, and it is a maxim which has obtained for the sake of the public peace that he is unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred.

⁷⁹ 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.

⁸⁰ Without this, there would be no responsibility whatever in the executive department, an idea inadmissible in a free government.

⁸¹ But even there, the King is not bound by the resolutions of his council, though they are answerable for the advice they give.

⁸² 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.

⁸³ 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.

⁸⁴ 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.

⁸⁵ In the American Republic, it would serve to destroy, or would greatly diminish, the intended and necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself.

⁸⁶ 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.

⁸⁷ 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.

⁸⁹ 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.

⁹⁰ A little consideration will satisfy us that the species of security sought for in the multiplication of the executive is unattainable.

⁹¹ Numbers must be so great as to render combination difficult, or they are rather a source of danger than of security.

⁹² The united credit and influence of several individuals must be more formidable to liberty than the credit and influence of either of them separately.

⁹³ 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.

⁹⁴ The decemvirs of Rome, whose name denotes their number³, were more to be dreaded in their usurpation than any one of them would have been.

⁹⁵ 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.

⁹⁶ 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.

⁹⁷ 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.

⁹⁸ 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.

⁹⁹ 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.

[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.

Hamilton continues his examination of the broad design issues within the proposed government, specifically with respect to the placement of executive power. Here he is at least in part the dispassionate observer of the Constitutional Convention debates, reporting to the public the thought behind the structure of the government that was worked out therein. It is a tone reminiscent of his friend Madison: dry, academic, even pedantic at times.

That tone changes at 40, where Hamilton appears in his more familiar persona of a fervent controversialist. Perhaps he has recalled seething in frustrated impotence as the machinations of the anti-Federalists within his home state of New York negated his ability to cast a vote in that debate. He has, after all, attacked Governor Clinton unmistakably in the previous essay and will do so again in this one. He begins by reiterating his case for a strong executive.

That executive was built around two considerations: energy, and safety to the republic from that energy. For energy Hamilton considers four ingredients: unity, duration in office, adequate support and competent powers (13); for safety, a due dependence on the people for the holding of office, and a due responsibility for actions taken in office (14). It is by these criteria that he will consider the alternatives to a singular executive.

For there are alternatives to the placement of executive power within the confines of a single office. There is the Roman precedent for a dual executive, and within the existing state governments a precedent of a formal set of counselors in one form or another whose advice the chief executive is obligated to respect, if not to follow altogether (8, 20).

The Roman pattern consisted, before the Caesars, of a dual head of state in the consuls. Hamilton mentions in passing that the Achaeans did something similar; in previous essays the example of Sparta was invoked along these lines as well. What was lost was unity, according to Hamilton (22), and as a result, energy within the executive (56). He is careful to point out that this duality did not follow the major schism within Roman politics, that between patrician and pleb, as the consuls tended to be drawn from the former class, and what little unity they found between themselves was in the defense of that class (30). In time, however, the issue was addressed by one consul staying in Rome and the other, chosen by lot, traveling to govern the far-flung provinces. After Constantine that was to be a formal division of the empire itself. The issue of duality in the executive in Rome was addressed, according to Hamilton, first by avoiding and then by ending it.

More familiar to the American political environment is the pattern of attaching to the executive one form or another of advisory council – in only two of the existing state governments was a single executive the practice (21). This plan suffers, according to Hamilton, from deficiencies similar enough to those of dual executive to be criticized along the same lines (57). Unity, for example, is lost and with it the protection against the stresses of faction. Hamilton’s description of the process is very much a two-edged sword, applicable both to the deficiencies of executive councils and to the opponents of the Constitution as well.

⁴⁰ Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike...

⁴⁴ Perhaps the question now before the public may in its consequences afford melancholy proofs of the effects of this despicable frailty, or rather detestable vice in the human character.

The academic has disappeared, and the controversialist bares his fangs momentarily. The academic returns. Multiple viewpoints and contending factions have a perfectly useful place in government, Hamilton admits, but that is more properly confined to the Legislative branch, where “promptitide of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit” (47). Not so within the Executive, where resolution and celerity are at a premium, especially in the conduct of war (56). In the Executive an “artful cabal” might paralyze the government altogether (58).

From that first set of criteria Hamilton now turns to the second, that relating to safety of the republic from the executive, and its sub-criterion, responsibility. That is diffused by multiple holders according to Hamilton (64), both through the detection of the responsible parties and their ability to shift that responsibility to the point where none may be punishable for it. Again, the academic disappears for a moment.

⁷² 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.

⁷⁴ Some...so flagrant that all parties have agreed in the impropriety of the thing.

⁷⁵ 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...

The cynic might point out that identifying the sitting Governor of New York might be regarded as quite particular enough to suit Hamilton’s purposes, that worthy being a notable political rival and the author of his difficulties at the Constitutional Convention. No one, however, contended the accuracy of the non-particular accusation.

Hamilton dwells for a moment on the somewhat peculiar case of the King of England (78), contrasting it to that of the American government by virtue of that monarch’s essential un-assailability as opposed to the necessity of the President to be accountable to the people, the second of the two criteria in his analysis of “safety to the republic”.

The entire idea of an executive council, states Hamilton, is predicated on the general principle that “power [is] safer in the hands of a number of men than of a single man” (86). He simply does not believe that principle is applicable in the case of the executive (88), based on the principle of responsibility. In the case of Rome the usurpations of the decimvirs were abetted by their number (94), which served to help them deflect blame. For this reason, Hamilton concludes, the existence of an executive council offers more disadvantages than advantages.

I cannot imagine a multiple-member panel at the head of our Executive branch. I’m thinking of Reagan’s interaction with the Soviets and wondering how/if a panel could convey the same strength of message.

Every man the least conversant in Roman story knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man under the formidable title of dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny and the sedition of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.

Thanks for posting this....I had forgotten about this essay.

The above paragraph now leads me to the library to find some book to detail that history so I can become "least conversant." You have to know one foundation to understand the next.

I'm sure you know the story.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

An obvious current-events example of this principle is the Democratic Congressional members' opposition to the Obama-Republican tax deal.

Whoops. Didn't copy enough.

41 But if they have been consulted and have happened to disapprove, opposition then becomes in their estimation an indispensable duty of self love. 42 They seem to think themselves bound in honor and by all the motives of personal infallibility to defeat the success of what has been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments.

49 When a resolution too is once taken, the opposition must be at an end. 50 That resolution is a law, and resistance to it punishable.

Is resolution equivalent to legislation in this instance?

It [energy] is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws, to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice, to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction and of anarchy.

Except when the Executive wants to fundamentally transform the States that are united in the Constitution, and in opposition to his Oath and constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

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