6888. PRESIDENT, Reelection.—[further continued] .
The general voice * * *
has not authorized me to consider as a real
defect [in the new Constitution] what I
thought and still think one, the perpetual reeligibility
of the President. But three States
out of eleven, having declared against this,
we must suppose we are wrong, according to
the fundamental law of every society, the
lex majoris partis, to which we are bound to
submit. And should the majority change
their opinion, and become sensible that this
trait in their Constitution is wrong, I would
wish it to remain uncorrected, as long as we
can avail ourselves of the services of our
great leader, whose talents and whose weight
of character, I consider as peculiarly necessary
to get the government so under way, as
that it may afterwards be carried on by subordinate
characters.—
To David Humphreys. Washington ed. iii, 13.
Ford ed., v, 90.
(P.
1789)
See Constitution, (Federal)
