1674. CONSTITUTION (The Federal), Disapproval of.—
How do you like our new
Constitution? I confess there are things in
it which stagger all my dispositions to subscribe
to what such an assembly has proposed.
The House of Federal representatives will
not be adequate to the management of affairs,
either foreign or federal. Their President
seems a bad edition of a Polish king.
He may be elected from four years to four
years for life. Reason and experience prove
to us that a chief magistrate, so continuable,
is an officer for life. When one or two generations
shall have proved that this is an office
for life, it becomes on every occasion worthy
of intrigue, of bribery, of force, and even of
foreign interference. It will be of great consequence
to France and England to have
America governed by a Galloman, or an
Angloman. Once in office, and possessing the
military force of the Union, without the aid
or check of a council, he would not be easily
dethroned even if the people could be induced
to withdraw their votes from him. I wish
that at the end of four years they had made
him forever ineligible a second time. Indeed,
I think all the good of this new Constitution
might have been couched in three or four new
articles, to be added to the good, old and
venerable fabric, which should have been
preserved even as a religious relique.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. ii, 316.
(P.
Nov. 13, 1787)
