building, because the latter had not a porch to it; or because some of the rooms might be a little larger or smaller, or the ceiling a little higher or lower than his fancy would have planned them.

But, waiving illustrations of this sort, is it not manifest that most of the capital objections urged against the new system lie with tenfold weight against the existing Confederation? Is an indefinite power to raise money dangerous in the hands of a Federal Government? The present Congress can make requisitions to any amount they please; and the States are constitutionally bound to furnish them. They can emit bills of credit as long as they will pay for the paper; they can borrow both abroad and at home, as long as a shilling will be lent. Is an indefinite power to raise troops dangerous? The Confederation gives to Congress that power also: and they have already begun to make use of it. Is it improper and unsafe to intermix the different powers of government in the same body of men? Congress-a single body of men-are the sole depository of all the Federal powers. Is it particularly dangerous to give the keys of the treasury and the command of the army into the same hands? The Confederation places them both in the hands of Congress. Is a Bill of Rights essential to liberty? The Confederation has no Bill of Rights. Is it an objection against the new Constitution that it empowers the Senate, with the concurrence of the Executive, to make treaties which are to be the laws of the land? The existing Congress, without any such control, can make treaties which they themselves have declared, and most of the States have recognized, to be the supreme law of the land. Is the importation of slaves permitted by the new Constitution for twenty years? By the old it is permitted forever.

I shall be told that however dangerous this mixture of powers may be in theory, it is rendered harmless by the dependence of Congress on the States for the means of carrying them into practice; that, however large the mass of powers may be, it is in fact a lifeless mass. Then I say, in the first place, that the Confederation is chargeable with the still greater folly of declaring certain powers in the Federal Government to be absolutely

necessary, and at the same time rendering them absolutely nugatory; and, in the next place, that if the union is to continue, and no better government be substituted, effective power must either be granted to or assumed by the existing Congress; in either of which events the contrast just stated will hold good. But this is not all. Out of this lifeless mass has already grown an excrescental power which tends to realize all the dangers that can be apprehended from a defective construction of the supreme government of the union.

Congress have undertaken to form new States; to erect temporary governments; to appoint officers for them; and to prescribe the conditions on which such States shall be admitted into the Confederacy. All this has been done, and done without the least color of constitutional authority. Yet no blame has been whispered; no alarm has been sounded. A great and independent fund of revenue [the public lands] is passing into the hands of a single body of men, who can raise troops to an indefinite number, and appropriate money to their support. for an indefinite period of time. And yet there are men who have not only been silent spectators of this prospect, but who are advocates for the system which exhibits it; and at the same time urge against the new system the objections which we have heard. Would they not act with more consistency in urging the establishment of the latter, as no less necessary to guard the union against the future powers and resources of a body constructed like the existing Congress, than to save it from the dangers threatened by the present impotency of that assembly?

I mean not by anything here said to throw censure on the measures which have been pursued by Congress. I am sensible that they could not have done otherwise. The public interest, the necessity of the case, imposed upon them the task of overleaping their constitutional limits. But is not the fact an alarming proof of the danger resulting from a government which does not possess regular powers commensurate to its objects? if dissolution, or usurpation, is the dreadful dilemma to which it is constitutionally exposed.- The Federalist, No. 38.-MADISON,

PRESIDENTIAL RE-ELIGIBILITY.

With a positive duration of considerable extent, I connect the circumstance of re-eligibility. The first is necessary to give 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 the 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 administration.

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 for ever 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.

Óne 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 advantage 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. interest coincide with duty. Even the love of famethe 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 and 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 advantages which he enjoyed, would feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make the best use of his opportunities while they 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 person probably, with a different prospect before him, might content himself with the regular emoluments of his station, 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. 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.

But

An ambitious man, too, finding himself seated on the summit of his country's honors, looking forward to the time at which he must descend from the exalted eminence forever, and reflecting that no exertion of merit on his part could save him from the unwelcome reverse, 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 VOL. X.-2

stability of the government, to have half a dozen men who had credit enough to raise themselves 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 of 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 than 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 of 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 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.