>FEDERALIST No. 71 (Hamilton)                                  .



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

 innovation1 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.





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