Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/387

1787.] intrigue would be avoided in the first instance, and the dependence would be diminished. This was not, he said, a digested idea, and might be liable to strong objections.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. Of all possible modes of appointment, that by the legislature is the worst. If the legislature is to appoint, and to impeach, or to influence the impeachment, the executive will be the mere creature of it. He had been opposed to the impeachment, but was now convinced that impeachments must be provided for, if the appointment was to be of any duration. No man would say, that an executive known to be in the pay of an enemy should not be removable in some way or other. He had been charged, heretofore, (by Col. Mason,) with inconsistency in pleading for confidence in the legislature on some occasions, and urging a distrust on others. The charge was not well founded. The legislature is worthy of unbounded confidence in some respects, and liable to equal distrust in others. When their interest coincides precisely with that of their constituents, as happens in many of their acts, no abuse of trust is to be apprehended. When a strong personal interest happens to be opposed to the general interest, the legislature cannot be too much distrusted. In all public bodies there are two parties. The executive will necessarily be more connected with one than with the other. There will be a personal interest, therefore, in one of the parties to oppose, as well as in the other to support, him. Much had been said of the intrigues that will be practised by the executive to get into office. Nothing had been said, on the other side, of the intrigues to get him out of office. Some leader of a party will always covet his seat, will perplex his administration, will cabal with the legislature, till he succeeds in supplanting him. This was the way in which the king of England was got out—he meant the real king, the minister. This was the way in which Pitt (Lord Chatham) forced himself into place. Fox was for pushing the matter still farther. If he had carried his India bill, which he was very near doing, he would have made the minister the king in form, almost, as well as in substance. Our president will be the British minister; yet we are about to make him appointable by the legislature. Something has been said of the danger of monarchy. If a good government should not now be formed, if a good organization of the executive should not be provided, he doubted whether we should not have something worse than a limited monarchy. In order to get rid of the dependence of the executive on the legislature, the expedient of making him ineligible a second time had been devised. This was as much as to say, we should give him the benefit of experience, and then deprive ourselves of the use of it. But, make him ineligible a second time, and prolong his duration even to fifteen years,—will he, by any wonderful interposition of Providence at that period, cease to be a man? No; he will be unwilling to quit his exaltation; the road to his object through the Constitution will be shut; he will be in possession of the 4631