Hamilton says that there is an idea, which is not without its champions, that the executive is inconsistent within a Republican government. He says the enlightened the people within the United States must at least hope that the idea does not have merit. Energy in the executive is the leading characteristic in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is no less essential to the steady administration of laws; to the protection of property; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction and of anarchy.
Hamilton says there is no need to multiply arguments or examples on this head. Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. Execution is another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it is in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
All sensible men will agree that it is necessary for an energetic executive, it only remains to inquire what are the it ingredients which constitute energy? How far can they be combined with those other ingredients which constitutes safety in Republican Senate? And how far does this combination characterize the plan which has been reported by the convention?
The ingredients which constitute energy in the executive are unity, duration, and adequate provisions for its support, and competent powers. The ingredients which constitutes safety in the Republican sense are a due dependence on the people, and due responsibility. The politicians and statesmen who have been the most celebrated for their principles and for the justness of their views have declared in favor of a single executive and numerous legislature. These men consider energy as the most necessary quality of the executive and have regarded this as most applicable to the power in a single hand while they have, with equal propriety, considered the legislature best adapted to deliberation and wisdom, and best tabulated to conciliate the confidence of the people and to secure their privileges and interests. That unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed. Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatched will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number; and in proportion as the number is increased these qualities will be diminished.
Unity may be destroyed in two ways: either by vesting power into our moral magistrate of equal dignity and authority, or by vesting it in one man, subject in whole or parts to the control and cooperation of others, and the capacity of counselors to him. The experience of other nations will afford little instruction on this matter. It teaches us not to be enamored with plurality in the executive. But gives us no specimens of any peculiar advantages derived to the state from the circumstance of the plurality of those magistrates.
Quitting the dim light of historical research and attaching ourselves purely to the dictates of reason and good sense, we shall discover a much greater cause to reject them than to approve of the idea of plurality in the executive. Whenever two or more persons or engage in any common enterprise or pursuit there is always danger of difference of opinion. If this happens in public office, there is danger of personal emulation and even animosity. When these happen, they lessen the respectability and weaken the authority and distract the plans and operations of those who may divide. They might impede or frustrate the most important measures of the government in the most critical emergencies of the state. What is still worse, they might split the community into the most violent and irreconcilable factions.
People often oppose things merely because they have no agency in planning it, or it may have been planned by those whom they dislike. However, if they have been consulted, and have happened to disapprove, the opposition then becomes, in their estimation, and indispensable duty of self love. They seem to think themselves bound to honor, and by all motives of personal infallibility to defeat the success of what has been decided contrary to what they would've liked. Men have too many opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what desperately this disposition is sometimes carried and how often the great interest of society are sacrificed for the vanity, the conceit, and the obstinacy of individuals who aren't smart enough to make their passions and caprices interesting to mankind.
The principle that a free government, inconveniences from the source just mentioned must necessarily be submitted to in the formation of the legislature because it is unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to introduce them into the Constitution of the executive. In the legislature, prompt decisions are often an evil rather than a benefit. Differences of opinion often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority. When the resolution is agreed upon the opposition must be at an end. The resolution is now a law and resistance to it is now punishable. This engine in the executive department serve to embarrass and weaken the execution of the plan or measure to which they relate from the first step to the final conclusion of it. They constantly counteract those qualities in the executive which are the most necessary ingredients in its composition – vigor and expedition. When conducting a war in which the energy of the executive it is paramount of the national security everything would be apprehended from its plurality.
Hamilton says the observations apply to the first case supported: a plural executive. One of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the executive is that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility. There are two kind of responsibility to censure and to punish. The first is the more important of the two especially in an elective office. Men in public office will more often act in a manner as to render them untrustworthy then in such a manner as to make them legally punished. The multiplication of the executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case. It becomes impossible amid multiple accusations to determine on whom blame or punishment should be placed. It is shifted from one executive to the other and the public is left in suspense about who really is to blame. The circumstances are sometimes so complicated when multiple actors are to blame that although we may see on the whole there has been mismanagement, yet it is impractical to pronounce who is responsible for the evil and therefore is truly chargeable.
It is evident from the considerations before us that a plurality of the executive tends to deprive the people of the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power. First, the restraints of public opinion lose their efficacy on account of the division of the attendant on measures among a number due to the uncertainty on whom it ought to fall. Second, the opportunity of discovering the misconduct of the person they trust in order to either remove them from office or to actually punish them.
In England, the King is the absolute master of his own conduct while he is in office and he may observe or disregard the counsel given to him at his sole discretion. However, every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in office. The idea of a counsel to the executive would generally obtained in the state constitutions because power is seen as safer in the hands of a number of men then in the single man. Hamilton says that executive power is more easily combined when it is in one person, and that it is far more safe to have one object for jealousy and watchfulness of the people.
When power is placed in the hands of so small a number of men it becomes more liable for abuse than if it was lies in the hands of one man who will be more narrowly watched and readily suspected. You cannot unite with so great a massive influence when you've associated with others. A counsel to the magistrate, who is himself responsible for what he does, is generally nothing better than a cloud upon his good intentions, and are often the instrument and accomplices of his bad intentions and are almost always a way to cover up his faults. Hamilton says that prior to the advent of the Constitution he rarely met with men, from any state, who did not admit that the unity of the executive was one of the best distinguishing features of our Constitution.
Hamilton talks about energy in the executive, and explains the ingredients that constitute energy. But what is energy exactly? I think the founding fathers would say it is having the power to do exactly what the Constitution gives the executive the power to do. However, energy in the executive now is much more than the founding fathers could have ever envisioned. In the modern presidency (starting with FDR and going forward) energy in the executive has transformed into power. We now call executive energy presidential power. When the depression strikes, the president suddenly has the power to regulate the banking system, agricultural, to put people to work for the federal government in an alphabet soup of programs, and expand the executive department. FDR anticipated that most of the power he cultivated during the Great Depression would be curtailed once the depression came to an end. However, the power that FDR expanded has become institutionalized because presidents like their power. I do not see presidential power being curtailed anytime soon.
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