Posted on 12/16/2010 7:28:50 AM PST by Publius
Hamilton takes a look at the attributes of the Executive and the optimum length for his term of office.
1 To the People of the State of New York:
2 Duration in office has been mentioned as the second requisite to the energy of the Executive authority.
3 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.
4 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.
5 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.
6 This remark is not less applicable to a political privilege or honor or trust than to any article of ordinary property.
7 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.
8 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.
9 In either case, feebleness and irresolution must be the characteristics of the station.
10 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.
11 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.
12 The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they entrust 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.
13 It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the public good.
14 This often applies to their very errors.
15 But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it.
16 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.
17 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.
18 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.
19 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.
20 The latter may sometimes stand in opposition to the former, and at other times the people may be entirely neutral.
21 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.
22 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.
23 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?
24 Such a separation must be merely nominal and incapable of producing the ends for which it was established.
25 It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another to be dependent on the Legislative body.
26 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.
27 The tendency of the Legislative authority to absorb every other has been fully displayed and illustrated by examples in some preceding numbers.
28 In governments purely republican, this tendency is almost irresistible.
29 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.
30 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.
31 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.
32 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.
33 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 reelection of a man who, by an upright resistance to any sinister project of that body, should have made himself obnoxious to its resentment.
34 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.
35 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.
36 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.
37 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 goodwill of his constituents.
38 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.
39 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.
40 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* 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?
41 What but that he might be unequal to the task which the Constitution assigns him?
42 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.
[*] 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.
Hamilton’s Critique
Hamilton returns to the criteria laid out in the previous essay on the attributes of the office of Chief Executive. The first of these regards energy in office; the second, responsibility to the people, and it is the former that Hamilton chooses to address at this time.
His case for the duration of the President in office – four years per elected term – revolves around the energy that tenure in office affords the occupant.
5 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.
At the extremes it is easy to validate Hamilton’s case: clearly a President only in office for six months will be less inclined to push a long-term program than one in office for six years. At those ends of the continuum other factors come into play. At one end, there is the ferocity to which one is tempted to resort for the short-term acquisition of that sort of power and the prospect of only a very limited time within which to work; at the other end, there is a tenure in office so long that the occupant can no longer muster the requisite energy from sheer exhaustion, both of drive and of creative ideas. It is demonstrably not a linear function, and in the case that Hamilton’s makes, tenure in office is directly related to energy in the Executive and begins to fail at either end.
It is in the middle that the bounds of this discussion reside: a term of four years renewable by re-election with no limits. For Hamilton, the one-time advocate of a lifetime Presidency, four-year terms with unlimited repetition must have seemed as much of a check on executive power as the system would tolerate. His former commander George Washington disagreed, however, and proved how easily the power of example could overcome theoretical soundness by simply retiring from office after two terms, an example persuasive and powerful enough not to need formal codification until 1951 in the form of the 22nd Amendment. Edmund Burke would shortly point out the tendency of government to acquire traditional forms whose advantages were not always evident in their intentions. France was about to discard those forms in violence just as quickly as America was to acquire them in peace.
All that lay in an immediate future that Hamilton was only to glimpse before his death. His fear was not, however, along the lines of an overly powerful Presidency but an overly weak one (9), and his intention was to build an office powerful enough to remain independent of the Legislative and capable of acting as a check on the latter’s power, and capable of acting in a similar regard with respect to the people themselves.
12 The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they entrust the management of their affairs, but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion…
Those swings of passion, and their effect on the stability of government, were what prompted Burke to write his “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, a document which itself represented a swing of politics sufficient to dismay Burke’s friend Thomas Paine into penning his own epochal reply in “The Rights of Man”. There was, and remains, little in the way of a clear-cut line between the people and the mob, but it did not need to await the Burke-Paine dialectic to be appreciated. Here Hamilton is attempting to allow for it within the Executive, and his words indicated that the issue was as much a challenge in America as in France
16 They [the people] 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...
It is, as Hamilton has stated earlier, the hope of a republican form of government to save the people from the abuses of demagoguery inherent in democracy. In the Executive will be its expression. But why should it be quite so independent of the Legislative, which by design reflects the changing political preferences of the people? There are two reasons, says Hamilton: first, because the separation of powers is well-grounded enough in theory to try to protect (22); second, because of a historical tendency of the Legislative to overcome that separation of powers when offered the opportunity (27).
Uppermost in Hamilton’s mind is the example of the British House of Commons, which filled the latter half of the preceding century with its own bloody struggle for supremacy over Crown and Lords, decapitating the unfortunate Charles I in the former case and steadily disempowering the Lords through legislation in the latter (40). As the foremost example of representative government in the world to date, its experience in the matter was not to be lightly disregarded.
Four years per term, then, was a deliberate attempt to compromise. A President able to resist the momentary passions of the mob was, in the end, to be checked by the voters, albeit indirectly, but the period of four years might afford him the time necessary to make his case before the public (36). It was not, in fact, a Presidency whose strength alarmed Hamilton so much as the opposite prospect.
41 What but that he might be unequal to the task which the Constitution assigns him?
What, indeed? The consequences of a President too weak or incompetent to rise to the demands of office were very much on Hamilton’s mind. How to deal with that will be a topic for later consideration.
Discussion Topics
Earlier threads:
FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution
5 Oct 1787, Centinel #1
6 Oct 1787, James Wilson’s Speech at the State House
8 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #1
9 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #2
18 Oct 1787, Brutus #1
22 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #1
27 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #2
27 Oct 1787, Federalist #1
31 Oct 1787, Federalist #2
3 Nov 1787, Federalist #3
5 Nov 1787, John DeWitt #3
7 Nov 1787, Federalist #4
10 Nov 1787, Federalist #5
14 Nov 1787, Federalist #6
15 Nov 1787, Federalist #7
20 Nov 1787, Federalist #8
21 Nov 1787, Federalist #9
23 Nov 1787, Federalist #10
24 Nov 1787, Federalist #11
27 Nov 1787, Federalist #12
27 Nov 1787, Cato #5
28 Nov 1787, Federalist #13
29 Nov 1787, Brutus #4
30 Nov 1787, Federalist #14
1 Dec 1787, Federalist #15
4 Dec 1787, Federalist #16
5 Dec 1787, Federalist #17
7 Dec 1787, Federalist #18
8 Dec 1787, Federalist #19
11 Dec 1787, Federalist #20
12 Dec 1787, Federalist #21
14 Dec 1787, Federalist #22
18 Dec 1787, Federalist #23
18 Dec 1787, Address of the Pennsylvania Minority
19 Dec 1787, Federalist #24
21 Dec 1787, Federalist #25
22 Dec 1787, Federalist #26
25 Dec 1787, Federalist #27
26 Dec 1787, Federalist #28
27 Dec 1787, Brutus #6
28 Dec 1787, Federalist #30
1 Jan 1788, Federalist #31
3 Jan 1788, Federalist #32
3 Jan 1788, Federalist #33
3 Jan 1788, Cato #7
4 Jan 1788, Federalist #34
5 Jan 1788, Federalist #35
8 Jan 1788, Federalist #36
10 Jan 1788, Federalist #29
11 Jan 1788, Federalist #37
15 Jan 1788, Federalist #38
16 Jan 1788, Federalist #39
18 Jan 1788, Federalist #40
19 Jan 1788, Federalist #41
22 Jan 1788, Federalist #42
23 Jan 1788, Federalist #43
24 Jan 1788, Brutus #10
25 Jan 1788, Federalist #44
26 Jan 1788, Federalist #45
29 Jan 1788, Federalist #46
31 Jan 1788, Brutus #11
1 Feb 1788, Federalist #47
1 Feb 1788, Federalist #48
5 Feb 1788, Federalist #49
5 Feb 1788, Federalist #50
7 Feb 1788, Brutus #12, Part 1
8 Feb 1788, Federalist #51
8 Feb 1788, Federalist #52
12 Feb 1788, Federalist #53
12 Feb 1788, Federalist #54
14 Feb 1788, Brutus #12, Part 2
15 Feb 1788, Federalist #55
19 Feb 1788, Federalist #56
19 Feb 1788, Federalist #57
20 Feb 1788, Federalist #58
22 Feb 1788, Federalist #59
26 Feb 1788, Federalist #60
26 Feb 1788, Federalist #61
27 Feb 1788, Federalist #62
1 Mar 1788, Federalist #63
7 Mar 1788, Federalist #64
7 Mar 1788, Federalist #65
11 Mar 1788, Federalist #66
11 Mar 1788, Federalist #67
14 Mar 1788, Federalist #68
14 Mar 1788, Federalist #69
15 Mar 1788, Federalist #70
BTTT. Must Read.
This is truly a case of arranging deck chairs.
My grandma Elsie taught me that there's nothing new under the sun and I think that's about right. Human nature hasn't changed much at all in a few centuries. Competencies have changed, and manners, but not basic nature.
We have to pass that bill so we can see what is in it.
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