It will be the office of the president to nominate, and with the advice and consent of the senate to appoint. There will of course be no exertion of choice, on the part of the senate. They may defeat one choice of the executive, and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves choose-they can only ratify or reject the choice he may have made. They might even entertain a preference to some other person, at the very moment they were assenting to the one proposed; because there might be no positive ground of opposition to him; and they could not be sure, if they withheld their assent, that the subsequent nomination would fall upon their own favourite, or upon any other person in their estimation more meritorious than the one rejected. Thus it could hardly happen, that the majority of the senate would feel any other complacency towards the object of an appointment, than such as the appearances of merit might inspire, and proofs of the want of it destroy.

A fourth objection to the senate, in the capacity of a court of impeachments, is derived from their union with the executive in the power of making treaties. This, it has been said, would constitute the senators their own judges, in every case of a corrupt or perfidious execution of that trust. After having combined with the executive in betraying the interests of the nation in a ruinous treaty, what prospect, it is asked, would there be of their being made to suffer the punishment they would deserve, when they were themselves to decide upon the accusation brought against them for the treachery of which they had been guilty?

This objection has been circulated with more earnestness, and with a greater show of reason, than any other which has appeared against this part of the plan; and yet I am deceived, if it does not rest upon an erroneous foundation.

The security essentially intended by the constitution against corruption and treachery in the formation of treaties, is to be sought for in the numbers and characters of those who are to make them. The JOINT AGENCY of the chief magistrate of the union, and of two thirds of the members of a body selected by the collective wisdom of the legislatures of the several states, is designed to be the pledge for the fidelity of the national councils in this particular. The convention might with propriety have meditated the punishment of the executive, for a deviation from the instructions of the senate, or a want of integrity in the conduct of the negotiations committed to him: they might also have had in view the punishment of a few leading individuals in the senate, who should have prostituted their influence in that body, as the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption: but they could not, with more or with equal propriety, have contemplated the impeachment and punishment of two thirds of the senate, consenting to an improper treaty, than of a majority of that or of the other branch of the national legislature, consenting to a per

nicious or unconstitutional law: a principle which I believe has never been admitted into any government. How, in fact, could a majority of the house of representatives impeach themselves? Not better, it is evident, than two thirds of the senate might try themselves. And yet what reason is there, that a majority of the house of representatives, sacrificing the interests of the society by an unjust and tyrannical act of legislation, should escape with impunity, more than two thirds of the senate sacrificing the same interests in an injurious treaty with a foreign power? The truth is, that in all such cases, it is essential to the freedom, and to the necessary independence of the deliberations of the body, that the members of it should be exempt from punishment for acts done in a collective capacity; and the security to the society must depend on the care which is taken to confide the trust to proper hands, to make it their interest to execute it with fidelity, and to make it as difficult as possible for them to combine in any interest opposite to that of the public good.

So far as might concern the misbehaviour of the executive in perverting the instructions, or contravening the views of the senate, we need not be apprehensive of the want of a disposition in that body to punish the abuse of their confidence, or to vindicate their own authority. We may thus far count upon their pride, if not upon their virtue. And so far even as might concern the corruption of leading members, by whose arts and influence the majority may have been inveigled into measures odious to the community; if the proofs of that corruption should be satisfactory, the usual propensity of human nature will warrant us in concluding, that there would be commonly no defect of inclination in the body, to divert the public resentment from themselves, by a ready sacrifice of the authors of their mismanagement and disgrace. PUBLIUS.

No. LXVII.

BY ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

Concerning the constitution of the president: a gross attempt to misrepresent this part of the plan detected.

THE Constitution of the executive department of the proposed government, next claims our attention.

There is hardly any part of the system, the arrangement of which could have been attended with greater difficulty, and there is perhaps none which has been inveighed against with less candour, or criticised with less judgment.

Here the writers against the constitution seem to have taken

pains to signalize their talent of misrepresentation. Calculating upon the aversion of the people to monarchy, they have endeavoured to enlist all their jealousies and apprehensions in opposition to the intended president of the United States; not merely as the embryo, but as the full-grown progeny of that detested parent. To establish the pretended affinity, they have not scrupled to draw resources even from the regions of fiction. The authorities of a magistrate, in few instances greater, in some instances less, than those of a governor of New York, have been magnified into more than royal prerogatives. He has been decorated with attributes, superior in dignity and splendour to those of a king of Great Britain. He has been shown to us with the diadem sparkling on his brow, and the imperial purple flowing in his train. He has been seated on a throne surrounded with minions and mistresses; giving audience to the envoys of foreign potentates, in all the supercilious pomp of majesty. The images of Asiatic despotism and voluptuousness, have not been wanting to crown the exaggerated scene. We have been taught to tremble at the terrific visages of murdering janizaries; and to blush at the unveiled mysteries of a future seraglio.

Attempts extravagant as these to disfigure, or rather to metamorphose the object, render it necessary to take an accurate view of its real nature and form; in order to ascertain its true aspect and genuine appearance, to unmask the disingenuity, and to expose the fallacy of the counterfeit resemblances which have been so insidiously, as well as industriously, propagated.

In the execution of this task, there is no man who would not find it an arduous effort either to behold with moderation, or to treat with seriousness, the devices, not less weak than wicked, which have been contrived to pervert the public opinion in relation to the subject. They so far exceed the usual, though unjustifiable licenses of party artifice, that even in a disposition the most candid and tolerant, they must force the sentiments which favour an indulgent construction of the conduct of political adversaries, to give place to a voluntary and unreserved indignation. It is impossible not to bestow the imputation of deliberate imposture and deception upon the gross pretence of a similitude between a king of Great Britain, and a magistrate of the character marked out for that of the president of the United States. It is still more impossible to withhold that imputation, from the rash and barefaced expedients which have been employed to give success to the attempted imposition.

In one instance, which I cite as a sample of the general spirit, the temerity has proceeded so far as to ascribe to the president of the United States a power which, by the instrument reported, is expressly allotted to the executives of the in

dividual states. I mean the power of filling casual vacancies in the senate.

This bold experiment upon the discernment of his countrymen, has been hazarded by the writer who (whatever may be his real merit) has had no inconsiderable share in the applauses of his party; and who, upon this false and unfounded suggestion, has built a series of observations equally false and unfounded. Let him now be confronted with the evidence of the fact; and let him, if he be able, justify or extenuate the shameful outrage he has offered to the dictates of truth, and to the rules of fair dealing.

The second clause of the second section of the second article, empowers the president of the United States "to nom"inate, and by and with the advice and consent of the senate, "to appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, "judges of the supreme court, and all other officers of the Unit"ed States, whose appointments are not in the constitution "otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law.". Immediately after this clause follows another in these words: "The president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may "happen during the recess of the senate, by granting commis"sions which shall expire at the end of their next session." It is from this last provision, that the pretended power of the president to fill vacancies in the senate has been deduced. slight attention to the connexion of the clauses, and the obvious meaning of the terms, will satisfy us, that the deduction is not even colourable.

The first of these two clauses, it is clear, only provides a mode for appointing such officers, "whose appointments are "not otherwise provided for in the constitution, and which shall "be established by law;" of course it cannot extend to the appointment of senators; whose appointments are otherwise provided for in the constitution,† and who are established by the constitution, and will not require a future establishment by law. This position will hardly be contested.

The last of these two clauses, it is equally clear, cannot be understood to comprehend the power of filling vacancies in the senate, for the following reasons: First. The relation in which that clause stands to the other, which declares the general mode of appointing officers of the United States, denotes it to be nothing more than a supplement to the other; for the purpose of establishing an auxiliary method of appointment, in cases to which the general method was inadequate. The ordinary power of appointment is confided to the president and senate jointly, and can therefore only be exercised during the session of the sen

* See Cato No. 5.

+ Article 1, Sec. 3, Clause 1.

ate; but as it would have been improper to oblige this body to be continually in session for the appointment of officers; and as vacancies might happen in their recess, which it might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay, the succeeding clause is evidently intended to authorize the president, singly, to make temporary appointments" during the recess of the sen"ate, by granting commissions which should expire at the end "of their next session." Second. If this clause is to be considered as supplementary to the one which precedes, the vacancies of which it speaks must be construed to relate to the "of "ficers" described in the preceding one; and this, we have seen, excludes from its description the members of the senate. Third. The time within which the power is to operate, "during the "recess of the senate," and the duration of the appointments, "to the end of the next session" of that body, conspire to elucidate the sense of the provision, which, if it had been intended to comprehend senators, would naturally have referred the temporary power of filling vacancies to the recess of the state legislatures, who are to make the permanent appointments, and not to the recess of the national senate, who are to have no concern in those appointments; and would have extended the duration in office of the temporary senators to the next session of the legislature of the state, in whose representation the vacancies had happened, instead of making it to expire at the end of the ensuing session of the national senate. The circumstances of the body authorized to make the permanent appointments, would, of course, have governed the modification of a power which related to the temporary appointments; and as the national senate is the body, whose situation is alone contemplated in the clause upon which the suggestion under examination has been founded, the vacancies to which it alludes can only be deemed to respect those officers in whose appointment that body has a concurrent agency with the president. But lastly, the first and second clauses of the third section of the first article, obviate all possibility of doubt. The former provides, that "the senate "of the United States shall be composed of two senators from "each state, chosen by the legislature thereof for six years;" and the latter directs, that "if vacancies in that body should hap"pen by resignation or otherwise, during the recess of the leg "islature of ANY STATE, the executive THEREOF may make tem"porary appointments until the next meeting of the legislature, "which shall then fill such vacancies." Here is an express power given, in clear and unambiguous terms, to the state executives, to fill the casual vacancies in the senate, by temporary appointments; which not only invalidates the supposition, that the clause before considered could have been intended to confer that power upon the president of the United States; but proves that this supposition, destitute as it is even of the merit of plau