Antifederalist No. 69 

THE CHARACTER OF THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE 

by Richard Henry Lee 


     The great object is, in a republican government, to guard 
effectually against perpetuating any portion of power, great or 
small, in the same man or family.  This perpetuation of power is 
totally uncongenial to the true spirit of republican governments.  
On the one hand the first executive magistrate ought to remain in 
office so long as to avoid instability in the execution of the 
laws; on the other, not so long as to enable ]him to take any 
measures to establish himself.  The convention, it seems, first 
agreed that the president should be chosen for seven years, and 
never after to be eligible.  Whether seven years is a period too 
long or not, is rather a matter of opinion; but clear it is, that 
this mode is infinitely preferable to the one finally adopted.  
When a man shall get the chair, who may be reelected from time to 
time, for life, his greatest object will be to keep it; to gain 
friends and votes, at any rate; to associate some favorite son 
with himself, to take office after him.  Whenever he shall have 
any prospect of continuing the office in himself and family, he 
will spare no artifice, no address, and no exertions, to increase 
the powers and importance of it. The servile supporters of his 
wishes will be placed in all offices, and tools constantly 
employed to aid his views and sound his praise.  A man so 
situated will have no permanent interest in the government to 
lose, by contests and convulsions in the state; but always much 
to gain, and frequently the seducing and flattering hope of 
succeeding.  If we reason at all on the subject, we must 
irresistibly conclude that this will be the case with nine tenths 
of the presidents.  We may have, for the first president, and 
perhaps, one in a century or two afterwards (if the government 
should withstand the attacks of others) a great and good man, 
governed by superior motives; but these are not events to be 
calculated upon in the present state of human nature. A man 
chosen to this important office for a limited period and always 
afterwards rendered, by the constitution, ineligible, will be 
governed by very different considerations.  He can have no 
rational hopes or expectations of retaining his office after the 
expiration of a known limited time, or of continuing the office 
in his family, as by the constitution there must be a constant 
transfer of it from one man to another, and consequently from one 
family to another.  No man will wish to be a mere cypher at the 
bead of the government.  The great object of each president then 
will be to render his government a glorious period in the annals 
of his country.  When a man constitutionally retires from office, 
he retires without pain; he is sensible he retires because the 
laws direct it, and not from the success of his rivals, nor with 
that public disapprobation which being left out, when eligible, 
implies.  It is said that a man knowing that at a given period he 
must quit his office, will unjustly attempt to take from the 
public, and lay in store the means of support and splendor in his 
retirement.  There can, I think, be but very little in this 
observation.  The same constitution that makes a man eligible for 
a given period only, ought to make no man eligible till he arrive 
to the age of forty or forty-five years.  If he be a man of 
fortune, be will retire with dignity to his estate; if not, he 
may, like the Roman consuls, and other eminent characters in 
republics, find an honorable support and employment in some 
respectable office.  A man who must, at all events, thus leave 
his office, will have but few or no temptations to fill its 
dependent offices with his tools, or any particular set of men; 
whereas the man constantly looking forward to his future 
elections, and perhaps, to the aggrandizement of his family, will 
have every inducement before him to fill all places with his own 
props and dependents.  As to public monies, the president need 
handle none of them, and he may always rigidly be made to account 
for every shilling he shall receive. 
     On the whole, it would be, in my opinion, almost as well to 
create a limited monarchy at once, and give some family permanent 
power and interest in the community, and let it have something 
valuable to itself to lose in convulsions in the state, and in 
attempts of usurpation, as to make a first magistrate eligible 
for life, and to create hopes and expectations in him and his 
family of obtaining what they have not.  In the latter case, we 
actually tempt them to disturb the state, to foment struggles and 
contests, by laying before them the flattering prospect of 
gaining much without risking anything. 
     The constitution provides only that the president shall hold 
his office during the term of four years; that, at most, only 
implies, that one shall be chosen every fourth year.  It also 
provides that in case of the removal, death, resignation, or 
inability, both of the president and vice-president, congress may 
declare what officer shall act as president; and that such 
officers shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, 
or a president shall be elected. It also provides that congress 
may determine the time of choosing electors, and the day on which 
they shall give their votes.  Considering these clauses together, 
I submit this question-whether in case of a vacancy in the office 
of president, by the removal, death, resignation, or inability of 
the president and vice president, and congress should declare 
that a certain officer, as secretary of foreign affairs, for 
instance, shall act as president, and suffer such officer to 
continue several years, or even for his life, to act as 
president, by omitting to appoint the time for choosing electors 
of another president, it would be any breach of the constitution?  
There appears to me to be an intended provision for supplying the 
office of president-not only for any remaining portion of the 
four years, but in cases of emergency-until another president 
shall be elected. . . . [But] we do not know that it is 
impossible; we do not know that it is improbable, in case a 
popular officer should thus be declared the acting president, 
that he might continue for life, and without any violent act, but 
merely by neglects and delays on the part of congress. . . 
                                THE FEDERAL FARMER