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 in 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 direction 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 adminstration.
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 interest 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?
A third ill effect of the exclusion would be, the depriving the
community of the advantage of the experience gained by the chief
magistrate in the exercise of his office. That experience is the
parent of wisdom, is an adage the truth of which is recognized by
the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind. What more desirable
or more essential than this quality in the governors of nations?
Where more desirable or more essential that in the first magistrate
of a nation? Can it be wise to put this desirable and essential
quality under the ban of the Constitution, and to declare that the
moment it is acquired, its possessor shall be compelled to abandon
the station in which it was acquired, and to which it is adapted?
This, nevertheless, is the precise import of all those regulations
which exclude men from serving their country, by the choice of their
fellow-citizens, after they have by a course of service fitted
themselves for doing it with a greater degree of utility.
A fourth ill effect of the exclusion would be the banishing men from
stations in which, in certain emergencies of the state, their
presence might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or
safety. There is no nation which has not, at one period or another,
experienced an absolute necessity of the services of particular men
in particular situations; perhaps it would not be too strong to say,
to the preservation of its political existence. How unwise,
therefore, must be every such self-denying ordinance as serves to
prohibit a nation from making use its own citizens in the manner
best suited to its exigencies and circumstances! Without supposing
the personal essentiality of the man, it is evident that a change of
the chief magistrate, at the breaking out of a war, or at any
similar crisis, for another, even of equal merit, would at all times
be detrimental to the community, inasmuch as it would substitute
inexperience to experience, and would tend to unhinge and set afloat
the already settled train of the administration.
A fifth ill effect of the exclusion would be, that it would operate
as a constitutional interdiction of stability in the administration.
By necessitating a change of men, in the first office of the nation,
it would necessitate a mutability of measures. It is not generally
to be expected, that men will vary and measures remain uniform. The
contrary is the usual course of things. And we need not be
apprehensive that there will be too much stability, while there is
even the option of changing; nor need we desire to prohibit the
people from continuing their confidence where they think it may be
safely placed, and where, by constancy on their part, they may
obviate the fatal inconveniences of fluctuating councils and a
variable policy.
These are some of the disadvantages which would flow from the
principle of exclusion. They apply most forcibly to the scheme of a
perpetual exclusion; but when we consider that even a partial
exclusion would always render the readmission of the person a remote
and precarious object, the observations which have been made will
apply nearly as fully to one case as to the other.
What are the advantages promised to counterbalance these
disadvantages? They are represented to be: 1st, greater independence
in the magistrate; 2nd, greater security to the people. Unless the
exclusion be perpetual, there will be no pretence to infer the first
advantage. But even in that case, may he have no object beyond his
present station, to which he may sacrifice his independence? May he
have no connections, no friends, for whom he may sacrifice it? May
he not be less willing, by a firm conduct, to make personal enemies,
when he acts under the impression that a time is fast approaching,
on the arrival of which he not only MAY, but MUST, be exposed to
their resentments, upon an equal, perhaps upon an inferior, footing?
It is not an easy point to determine whether his independence would
be most promoted or impaired by such an arrangement.
As to the second supposed advantage, there is still great reason to
entertain doubts concerning it. If the exclusion were to be
perpetual, a man of irregular ambition, of whom alone there could be
reason in any case to entertain apprehension, would, with infinite
reluctance, yield to the necessity of taking his leave forever of a
post in which his passion for power and preeminence had acquired the
force of habit. And if he had been fortunate or adroit enough to
conciliate the good-will of the people, he might induce them to
consider as a very odious and unjustifiable restraint upon
themselves, a provision which was calculated to debar them of the
right of giving a fresh proof of their attachment to a favorite.
There may be conceived circumstances in which this disgust of the
people, seconding the thwarted ambition of such a favorite, might
occasion greater danger to liberty, than could ever reasonably be
dreaded from the possibility of perpetuation in office, by the
voluntary suffrages of the community, exercising a constitutional
privilege.
There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people
to continue in office men who had entitled themselves, in their
opinion, to approbation and confidence; the advantages of which are
at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by
disadvantages far more certain and decisive.
Signed "PUBLIUS"
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