LECTURE XIII.

OF THE PRESIDENT.

THE title of the present lecture may conveniently be examined in the following order: 1. The unity of this department. 2. The qualifications required by the constitution for the office of President. 3. The mode of his appointment. 4. His duration. 5. His support. 6. His powers.

(1.) By the constitution, it is ordained that the executive power shall be vested in a President.a

The object of this department is the execution of the law; and good policy dictates that it should be organized in the mode best calculated to attain that end with precision and fidelity. (1) Consultation is necessary in the making of laws. The defect or grievance they are intended to remove must be distinctly perceived, and the operation of the remedy upon the interests, the morals and the opinion of the community, profoundly considered. A comprehensive knowledge of the great interests of the nation, in all their complicated relations and practical details, seems to be required in sound legislation; and it shows the necessity of a free, full and perfect representation of the people, in the body intrusted with the legislative power. But when laws are duly made and promulgated, they only remain to be executed. No discretion is submitted to the executive officer. It is not for him to deliberate and decide upon the wisdom or expediency of the law. What has been once declared to be law, under all the

Art. 2. sec. 1.

(1) The Executive branch of the Government of the United States is organized under six Departments, viz.: The State Department, the Treasury Department, the War Department, the Navy Department, the Post-Office Department, and the Department of the Interior; at the head of each of which there is a Secretary, appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; but subject to removal by the President alone. The Department of the Interior was created by an act of Congress, passed March 3, 1849. This Department has a general authority of supervision and appeal over the subjects of Patents, Public Lands and Mines, Indian Affairs, Pensions, Public Buildings, the Accounts of Marshall, Clerks and Public Offlcers, as well as over other minor subjects.

Unity of the executive

power.

cautious forms of deliberation prescribed by the constitution, ought to receive prompt obedience. The characteristi*272 cal qualities required in the *executive department

are promptitude, decision and force; and these qualities are most likely to exist when the executive authority is limited to a single person, moving by the unity of a single. will. Division, indecision and delay are exceedingly unfavourable to that steady and vigorous administration of the law, which is necessary to secure tranquillity at home, and command the confidence of foreign nations. Every government, ancient and modern, which has been constituted on different principles, and adopted a compound executive, has suffered the evils of it; and the public interest has been sacrificed, or it has languished under the inconveniences of an imbecile or irregular administration. In those states which have tried the project of executive councils, the weakness of them has been strongly felt and strikingly displayed; and in some instances in which they have been tried, (as in Pennsylvania and Georgia,) they were soon abandoned, and a single executive magistrate created, in accordance with the light afforded by their own experience, as well as by the institutions of their neighbours.

Unity increases not only the efficacy, but the responsibility of the executive power. Every act can be immediately traced and brought home to the proper agent. There can be no concealment of the real author, nor, generally, of the motives of public measures, when there are no associates to divide or to mask responsibility. There will be much less temptation to depart from duty, and much greater solicitude for reputation, when there are no partners to share the odium, or to communicate confidence by their example. The eyes of the people will be constantly directed to a single conspicuous object; and, for these reasons, De Lolmea considered it to be a sound axiom of policy, that the executive power was more easily confined when it was one. "If the execution of

the laws," he observes, "be intrusted to a number of *273 hands, the true cause of public evils is hidden. *Tyranny, in such states, does not always beat down the fences that are set around it, but it leaps over them. It

• Const. of England, p. 111.

mocks the efforts of the people, not because it is invincible, but because it is unknown." The justness of these reflections might be illustrated and confirmed, by a review of the proceedings of the former council of appointment in New-York, under the constitution of 1777. All efficient responsibility was there lost, by reason of the constant change of the members, and the difficulty of ascertaining the individual to whom the origin of a bad appointment was to be attributed.

(2.) The constitution requires that the President shall be a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and that he shall have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and shall have been fourteen years a resident within the United States. Considering the greatness of the trust, and that this department is the ultimately efficient executive power in government, these restrictions will not appear altogether useless or unimportant. As the President is required to be a native citizen of the United States, ambitious foreigners cannot intrigue for the office, and the qualifications of birth cuts off all those inducements from abroad to corruption, negotiation and war, which have frequently and fatally harassed the elective monarchies of Germany and Poland, as well as the Pontificate at Rome. The age of the President is sufficient to have formed his public and private character; and his previous domestic residence is intended to afford to his fellow-citizens the opportunity to attain a correct knowledge of his principles and capacity, and to have enabled him to acquire habits of attachment and obedience to the laws, and of devotion to the public welfare.

Qualifications for Pre

sident.

pointment.

(3.) The mode of his appointment presented one of the Mode of apmost difficult and momentous questions that occupied the deliberations of the assembly which framed the constitution; and if ever the tranquillity of this nation is to be disturbed, *and its liberties endangered, by a struggle *274 for power, it will be upon this very subject of the choice of a President. This is the question that is eventually to test the goodness and try the strength of the constitution; and if we shall be able, for half a century hereafter, to continue to elect the chief magistrate of the Union with discre

Art. 2. sec. 5.

tion, moderation and integrity, we shall undoubtedly stamp the highest value on our national character, and recommend our republican institutions, if not to the imitation, yet certainly to the esteem and admiration of the more enlightened part of mankind. The experience of ancient and modern Europe has been unfavourable to the practicability of a fair and peaceable popular election of the executive head of a great nation. It has been found impossible to guard the election from the mischiefs of foreign intrigue and domestic turbulence, from violence or corruption; and mankind have generally taken refuge from the evils of popular elections in hereditary executives, as being the least evil of the two. The most recent and remarkable change of this kind occurred in France, in 1804, when the legislative body changed their elective into an hereditary monarchy, on the avowed ground that the competition of popular elections led to corruption and violence. And it is a curious fact in European history, that on the first partition of Poland, in 1773, when the partitioning powers thought it expedient to foster and confirm all the defects of its wretched government, they sagaciously demanded of the Polish diet that the crown should continue elective.a This was done for the very purpose of keeping the door open ⚫ for foreign intrigue and influence. Mr. Paleyb condemns all elective monarchies, and he thinks nothing is gained by a popular choice, worth the dissensions, tumults and interruptions of regular industry, with which it is inseparably at

tended. I am not called upon to question the wisdom *275 *or policy of preferring hereditary to elective monar

chies among the great nations of Europe, where different orders and ranks of society are established, and large masses of property accumulated in the hands of single individuals, and where ignorance and poverty are widely diffused, and standing armies are necessary to preserve the stability of the government. The state of society and of property in this country, and our moral and political habits, have enabled us to adopt the republican principle, and to maintain it hitherto with illustrious success. It remains to be seen, whether the checks which the constitution has provided against the dan

Cox's Travels in Poland, Russia, &c., vol. i.

▷ Principles of Moral and Pol. Philosophy, 345.

gerous propensities of our system, will ultimately prove effectual. The election of a supreme executive magistrate for a whole nation, affects so many interests, addresses itself so strongly to popular passions, and holds out such powerful temptations to ambition, that it necessarily becomes a strong trial to public virtue, and even hazardous to the public tranquillity. The constitution, from an enlightened view of all the difficulties that attend the subject, has not thought it safe or prudent to refer the election of a President directly and immediately to the people; but it has confided the power to a small body of electors, appointed in each state, under the direction of the legislature; and to close the opportunity as much as possible against negotiation, intrigue and corruption, it has declared that congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall vote, and that the day of election shall be the same in every state.a This security has been still further extended by the act of congressb directing the electors to be appointed in each state within thirty-four days of the day of election.

The constitutione directs that the number of electors in each state shall be equal to the whole number of senators and representatives which the state is entitled to send to congress; and, according to the apportionment of congress *in 1832, the President was to be elected by a majori- *276 ty of 294 electors; and in 1844, the number of electors was reduced to 275.d And to prevent the person in office, at the time of the election, from having any improper influence on his re-election, by his ordinary agency in the government, it is provided, that no member of congress, nor any person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be an elector; and the constitution has in no other respects defined the qualifications of the electors. These

Art. 2. sec. 4. By the act of Congress of January 23d, 1845, c. 1, a uniform time for holding elections for electors of President and Vice-President in all the states was prescribed. It was to be on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November of the year in which they are to be appointed.

b Act of 1st March, 1792.

Art. 2. sec. 2, 3.

This arose from the enlargement of the ratio of representation from 47,700 to 70,680 persons, for a member of the House of Representatives; by which provision the number of the house was reduced from 242 to 223 members. Act of Congress

of June 25th, 1842, c. 47.

Art. 2. sec. 1.