1787 Federalist 72 · Founding Made Plain

11787 Federalist No. 72

2The Same Subject Continued,

3and Re-Eligibility of the Executive Considered

4From the New York Packet.

5Friday, March 21, 1788.

6HAMILTON

7To the People of the State of New York:

8THE administration of government, in its largest sense,

9 comprehends all the operations of the body politic,

10 whether legislative, executive, or judiciary;

11 but in its most usual,

12 and perhaps its most precise signification.

13 it is limited to executive details,

14 and falls peculiarly within the province

15 of the executive department.

16The actual conduct of foreign negotiations,

17 the preparatory plans of finance,

18 the application and disbursement of the public moneys

19 in conformity to the general appropriations

20 of the legislature,

21 the arrangement of the army and navy,

22 the directions of the operations of war,

23 these, and other matters of a like nature,

24 constitute what seems to be

25 most properly understood

26 by the administration of government.

27The persons, therefore,

28 to whose immediate management

29 these different matters are committed,

30 ought to be considered

31 as the assistants or deputies

32 of the chief magistrate,

33 and on this account,

34 they ought to derive their offices

35 from his appointment,

36 at least from his nomination,

37 and ought to be subject to his superintendence.

38This view of the subject will at once suggest to us

39 the intimate connection

40 between the duration of the executive magistrate

41 in office

42 and the stability of the system of administration.

43To reverse and undo what has been done by a predecessor,

44 is very often considered by a successor

45 as the best proof he can give

46 of his own capacity and desert;

47 and in addition to this propensity,

48 where the alteration has been

49 the result of public choice,

50 the person substituted is warranted in supposing

51 that the dismission of his predecessor

52 has proceeded from a dislike to his measures;

53 and that the less he resembles him,

54 the more he will recommend himself

55 to the favor of his constituents.

56These considerations,

57 and the influence of personal confidences

58 and attachments,

59 would be likely to induce every new President

60 to promote a change of men

61 to fill the subordinate stations;

62 and these causes together could not fail

63 to occasion a disgraceful and ruinous mutability

64 in the administration of the government.

65With a positive duration of considerable extent,

66 I connect the circumstance of re-eligibility.

67The first is necessary

68 to give to the officer himself

69 the inclination and the resolution

70 to act his part well,

71 and to the community time and leisure

72 to observe the tendency of his measures,

73 and thence to form an experimental estimate

74 of their merits.

75The last is necessary to enable the people,

76 when they see reason to approve of his conduct,

77 to continue him in his station,

78 in order to prolong the utility

79 of his talents and virtues,

80 and to secure to the government

81 the advantage of permanency

82 in a wise system of administration.

83Nothing appears more plausible at first sight,

84 nor more ill-founded upon close inspection,

85 than a scheme which in relation to the present point

86 has had some respectable advocates,

87 I mean that of continuing the chief magistrate

88 in office for a certain time,

89 and then excluding him from it,

90 either for a limited period or forever after.

91This exclusion, whether temporary or perpetual,

92 would have nearly the same effects,

93 and these effects would be for the most part

94 rather pernicious than salutary.

95One ill effect of the exclusion

96 would be a diminution of the inducements

97 to good behavior.

98There are few men who would not feel much less zeal

99 in the discharge of a duty

100 when they were conscious

101 that the advantages of the station

102 with which it was connected

103 must be relinquished at a determinate period,

104 than when they were permitted to entertain a hope

105 of OBTAINING, by MERITING, a continuance of them.

106This position will not be disputed

107 so long as it is admitted

108 that the desire of reward

109 is one of the strongest incentives

110 of human conduct;

111 or that the best security

112 for the fidelity of mankind

113 is to make their interests coincide

114 with their duty.

115Even the love of fame,

116 the ruling passion of the noblest minds,

117 which would prompt a man to plan and undertake

118 extensive and arduous enterprises

119 for the public benefit,

120 requiring considerable time

121 to mature and perfect them,

122 if he could flatter himself with the prospect

123 of being allowed to finish what he had begun,

124 would, on the contrary, deter him from the undertaking,

125 when he foresaw that he must quit the scene

126 before he could accomplish the work,

127 and must commit that,

128 together with his own reputation,

129 to hands which might be unequal

130 or unfriendly to the task.

131The most to be expected from the generality of men,

132 in such a situation,

133 is the negative merit of not doing harm,

134 instead of the positive merit of doing good.

135Another ill effect of the exclusion

136 would be the temptation to sordid views,

137 to peculation,

138 and, in some instances, to usurpation.

139An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office,

140 looking forward to a time

141 when he must at all events yield up

142 the emoluments he enjoyed,

143 would feel a propensity,

144 not easy to be resisted by such a man,

145 to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed

146 while it lasted,

147 and might not scruple to have recourse

148 to the most corrupt expedients

149 to make the harvest as abundant

150 as it was transitory;

151 though the same man, probably,

152 with a different prospect before him,

153 might content himself

154 with the regular perquisites of his situation,

155 and might even be unwilling

156 to risk the consequences of an abuse

157 of his opportunities.

158His avarice might be a guard upon his avarice.

159Add to this that the same man

160 might be vain or ambitious, as well as avaricious.

161And if he could expect to prolong his honors

162 by his good conduct,

163 he might hesitate to sacrifice his appetite for them

164 to his appetite for gain.

165But with the prospect before him

166 of approaching an inevitable annihilation,

167 his avarice would be likely to get the victory

168 over his caution, his vanity, or his ambition.

169An ambitious man, too,

170 when he found himself seated

171 on the summit of his country's honors,

172 when he looked forward to the time

173 at which he must descend

174 from the exalted eminence for ever,

175 and reflected that no exertion of merit on his part

176 could save him from the unwelcome reverse;

177 such a man, in such a situation,

178 would be much more violently tempted

179 to embrace a favorable conjuncture

180 for attempting the prolongation of his power,

181 at every personal hazard,

182 than if he had the probability

183 of answering the same end by doing his duty.

184Would it promote the peace of the community,

185 or the stability of the government

186 to have half a dozen men

187 who had had credit enough

188 to be raised to the seat of the supreme magistracy,

189 wandering among the people

190 like discontented ghosts,

191 and sighing for a place

192 which they were destined never more to possess?

193A third ill effect of the exclusion would be,

194 the depriving the community of the advantage

195 of the experience gained by the chief magistrate

196 in the exercise of his office.

197That experience is the parent of wisdom,

198 is an adage the truth of which is recognized

199 by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.

200What more desirable or more essential

201 than this quality in the governors of nations?

202Where more desirable or more essential

203 than in the first magistrate of a nation?

204Can it be wise to put this desirable and essential quality

205 under the ban of the Constitution,

206 and to declare that the moment it is acquired,

207 its possessor shall be compelled

208 to abandon the station in which it was acquired,

209 and to which it is adapted?

210This, nevertheless, is the precise import

211 of all those regulations

212 which exclude men from serving their country,

213 by the choice of their fellowcitizens,

214 after they have by a course of service

215 fitted themselves for doing it

216 with a greater degree of utility.

217A fourth ill effect of the exclusion would be

218 the banishing men from stations in which,

219 in certain emergencies of the state,

220 their presence might be of the greatest moment

221 to the public interest or safety.

222There is no nation which has not,

223 at one period or another,

224 experienced an absolute necessity

225 of the services of particular men

226 in particular situations;

227 perhaps it would not be too strong to say,

228 to the preservation of its political existence.

229How unwise, therefore,

230 must be every such self-denying ordinance

231 as serves to prohibit a nation

232 from making use of its own citizens

233 in the manner best suited

234 to its exigencies and circumstances!

235Without supposing the personal essentiality of the man,

236 it is evident that a change of the chief magistrate,

237 at the breaking out of a war,

238 or at any similar crisis,

239 for another, even of equal merit,

240 would at all times be detrimental to the community,

241 inasmuch as it would substitute

242 inexperience to experience,

243 and would tend to unhinge and set afloat

244 the already settled train of the administration.

245A fifth ill effect of the exclusion would be,

246 that it would operate as a constitutional interdiction

247 of stability in the administration.

248By NECESSITATING a change of men,

249 in the first office of the nation,

250 it would necessitate a mutability of measures.

251It is not generally to be expected,

252 that men will vary and measures remain uniform.

253The contrary is the usual course of things.

254And we need not be apprehensive

255 that there will be too much stability,

256 while there is even the option of changing;

257 nor need we desire to prohibit the people

258 from continuing their confidence

259 where they think it may be safely placed,

260 and where, by constancy on their part,

261 they may obviate the fatal inconveniences

262 of fluctuating councils and a variable policy.

263These are some of the disadvantages

264 which would flow from the principle of exclusion.

265They apply most forcibly

266 to the scheme of a perpetual exclusion;

267 but when we consider

268 that even a partial exclusion

269 would always render the readmission of the person

270 a remote and precarious object,

271 the observations which have been made

272 will apply nearly as fully

273 to one case as to the other.

274What are the advantages promised

275 to counterbalance these disadvantages?

276They are represented to be:

277 1st, greater independence in the magistrate;

278 2d, greater security to the people.

279Unless the exclusion be perpetual,

280 there will be no pretense to infer the first advantage.

281But even in that case,

282 may he have no object beyond his present station,

283 to which he may sacrifice his independence?

284May he have no connections, no friends,

285 for whom he may sacrifice it?

286May he not be less willing by a firm conduct,

287 to make personal enemies,

288 when he acts under the impression

289 that a time is fast approaching,

290 on the arrival of which he not only MAY, but MUST,

291 be exposed to their resentments,

292 upon an equal, perhaps upon an inferior, footing?

293It is not an easy point to determine

294 whether his independence would be most promoted

295 or impaired by such an arrangement.

296As to the second supposed advantage,

297 there is still greater reason

298 to entertain doubts concerning it.

299If the exclusion were to be perpetual,

300 a man of irregular ambition,

301 of whom alone there could be reason

302 in any case to entertain apprehension,

303 would, with infinite reluctance,

304 yield to the necessity of taking his leave forever

305 of a post in which his passion for power

306 and pre-eminence had acquired the force of habit.

307And if he had been fortunate or adroit enough

308 to conciliate the good-will of the people,

309 he might induce them to consider

310 as a very odious and unjustifiable restraint

311 upon themselves,

312 a provision which was calculated to debar them

313 of the right of giving a fresh proof

314 of their attachment to a favorite.

315There may be conceived circumstances

316 in which this disgust of the people,

317 seconding the thwarted ambition of such a favorite,

318 might occasion greater danger to liberty,

319 than could ever reasonably be dreaded

320 from the possibility of a perpetuation in office,

321 by the voluntary suffrages of the community,

322 exercising a constitutional privilege.

323There is an excess of refinement

324 in the idea of disabling the people

325 to continue in office men

326 who had entitled themselves, in their opinion,

327 to approbation and confidence;

328 the advantages of which

329 are at best speculative and equivocal,

330 and are overbalanced by disadvantages

331 far more certain and decisive.

332PUBLIUS.