9. CHAPTER IX
OF A PRESIDENT WITH REGAL POWERS
Still monarchy it seems has one refuge left. "We will not,"
say some men, "have an hereditary monarchy, we acknowledge that to be
an enormous injustice. We are not contented with an elective monarchy, we
are not contented with a limited one. We admit the office however reduced,
if the tenure be for life, to be an intolerable grievance. But why not have
kings, as we have magistrates and legislative assemblies, renewable by frequent
elections? We may then change the holder of the office as often as we please."
Let us not be seduced by a mere plausibility of phrase, nor employ words
without having reflected on their meaning. What are we to understand by the
appellation a king? If the office have any meaning, it seems reasonable that
the man who holds it should possess the privilege, either of appointing to
certain employments at his own discretion, or of remitting the decrees of
criminal justice, or of convoking and dismissing popular assemblies, or of
affixing and refusing his sanction to the decrees of those assemblies. Most
of these privileges may claim a respectable authority in the powers delegated
to their president by the United States of America.
Let us however bring these ideas to the touchstone of reason. Nothing
can appear more adventurous than the reposing, unless in cases of absolute
necessity, the decision of any affair of importance to the public in the
breast of one man. But this necessity will scarcely be alleged in any of
the articles just enumerated. What advantage does one man possess over a
society or council of men in any of these respects? The disadvantages under
which he labours are obvious. He is more easily corrupted, and more easily
misled. He cannot possess so many advantages for obtaining accurate information.
He is abundantly more liable to the attacks of passion and caprice, of unfounded
antipathy to one man and partiality to another, of uncharitable censure or
blind idolatry. He cannot be always upon his guard; there will be moments
in which the most exemplary vigilance is liable to surprise. Meanwhile, we
are placing the subject in much too favourable a light. We are supposing
his intentions to be upright and just; but the contrary of this will be more
frequently the truth. Where powers, beyond the capacity of human nature,
are entrusted, vices, the disgrace of human nature, will be engendered. Add
to this, that the same reasons, which prove that government, wherever it
exists, should be directed by the sense of the people at large, equally prove
that, wherever public officers are necessary, the sense of the whole, or
of a body of men most nearly approaching in spirit to the whole, ought to
decide on their pretensions.
These objections are applicable to the most innocent of the privileges
above enumerated, that of appointing to the exercise of certain employments.
The case will be still worse if we consider the other privileges. We shall
have occasion hereafter to examine the propriety of pardoning offences, considered
independently of the persons in whom that power is vested: but, in the meantime,
can anything be more intolerable, than for an individual to be authorised,
without assigning a reason, or assigning a reason upon which no one is allowed
to pronounce, to supersede the grave decisions of a court of justice, founded
upon a careful and public examination of evidence? Can any thing be more
unjust, than for an individual to assume the function of informing a nation,
when they are to deliberate, and when they are to cease from deliberation?
The remaining privilege is of too iniquitous a nature to be an object
of much terror. It is not in the compass of credibility to conceive, that
any people would remain quiet spectators, while the sense of one man was,
openly and undisguisedly, set against the sense of the national representative
in frequent assembly, and suffered to overpower it. Two or three direct instances
of the exercise of this negative, could not fail to annihilate it. Accordingly,
wherever it is supposed to exist, we find it softened and nourished by the
genial dew of pecuniary corruption; either rendered unnecessary beforehand,
by a sinister application to the frailty of individual members, or disarmed
and made palatable in the sequel, by a copious effusion of venal emollients.
If it can in any case be endured, it must be in countries where the degenerate
representative no longer possesses the sympathy of the public, and the haughty
president is made sacred by the blood of an exalted ancestry which flows
through his veins, or the holy oil which the representatives of the Most
High have poured on his head. A common mortal, periodically selected by his
fellow-citizens to watch over their interests, can never be supposed to possess
this stupendous virtue.
If there be any truth in these reasonings, it inevitably follows that
there are no important functions of general superintendence, which can justly
be delegated to a single individual. If the office of a president be necessary,
either in a deliberative assembly, or an administrative council, supposing
such a council to exist, his employment will have relation to the order of
their proceedings, and by no means consist in the arbitrary preferring and
carrying into effect, his private decision. A king, if unvarying usage can
give meaning to a word, describes a man, upon whose single discretion some
part of the public interest is made to depend. What use can there be for
such a man in an unperverted and well ordered state? With respect to its
internal affairs, certainly none. How far the office can be of advantage,
in our transactions with foreign governments, we shall hereafter have occasion
to decide.
Let us beware, by an unjustifiable perversion of terms, of confounding
the common understanding of mankind. A king is the well known and standing
appellation for an office, which, if there be any truth in the arguments
of the preceding chapters, has been the bane and the grave of human virtue.
Why endeavour to purify and exorcize what is entitled only to execration?
Why not suffer the term to be as well understood, and as cordially detested,
as the once honourable appellation of tyrant afterwards was among the Greeks?
Why not suffer it to rest a perpetual monument of the folly, the cowardice
and misery of our species?
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In proceeding, from the examination of monarchical, to that of aristocratical
government, it is impossible not to remark, that there are several disadvantages
common to both. One of these is the creation of a separate interest. The
benefit of the governed is made to lie on one side, and the benefit of the
governors on the other. It is to no purpose to say that individual interest,
accurately understood, will always be found to coincide with general, if
it appear in practice, that the opinions and errors of mankind are perpetually
separating them, and placing them in opposition to each other. The more the
governors are fixed in a sphere distinct and distant from the governed, the
more will this error be cherished. Theory, in order to produce an adequate
effect upon the mind, should be favoured, not counteracted, by practice.
What principle in human nature is more universally confessed, than self-love,
that is, than a propensity to think individually of a private interest, to
discriminate and divide objects, which the laws of the universe have indissolubly
united? None, unless it be the esprit de corps, the tendency of bodies of
men to aggrandize themselves, a spirit, which, though less ardent than self
love, is still more vigilant, and not exposed to the accidents of sleep,
indisposition and mortality. Thus it appears that, of all impulses to a narrow,
self-interested conduct, those afforded by monarchy and aristocracy are the
greatest.
Nor must we be too hasty and undistinguishing in applying the principle
that individual interest, accurately understood, will always be found to
coincide with general. Relatively to individuals considered as men, it is,
for the most part, certainly true; relatively to individuals considered as
lords and kings, it is false. The man will perhaps be served, by the sacrifice
of all his little peculium to the public interest, but the king will be annihilated.
The first sacrifice that justice demands, at the hand of monarchy and aristocracy,
is that of their immunities and prerogatives. Public interest dictates the
unlimited dissemination of truth, and the impartial administration of justice.
Kings and lords subsist only under favour of error and oppression. They will
therefore resist the progress of knowledge and illumination; the moment the
deceit is dispelled, their occupation is gone.
In thus concluding however, we are taking for granted, that aristocracy
will be found an arbitrary and pernicious institution, as monarchy has already
appeared to be. It is time that we should enquire in what degree this is
actually the case.