FEDERALIST No. 72

The Same Subject Continued, and Re-Eligibility of the Executive

Considered

From the New York Packet.

Friday, March 21, 1788.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

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 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 directions 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 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 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 interests 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 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

fellowcitizens, 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 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; 2d, greater security to the people.

Unless the exclusion be perpetual, there will be no pretense 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 greater

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 pre-eminence

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 a 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.

PUBLIUS.