Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/61

Rh to lack promptitude and vigour. And it may be conjectured that the alarms felt as to the danger from one man's predominance were largely allayed by the presence of George Washington. Even while the debates were proceeding, every one must have thought of him as the proper person to preside over the Union as he was then presiding over the Convention. The creation of the office would seem justified by the existence of a person exactly fitted to fill it, one whose established influence and ripe judgment would repair the faults then supposed to be characteristic of democracy, its impulsiveness, its want of respect for authority, its incapacity for pursuing a consistent line of action.

Hamilton felt so strongly the need for having a vigorous executive who could maintain a continuous policy, as to propose that the head of the state should be appointed for good behaviour, i.e. for life, subject to removal by impeachment. The proposal was defeated, though it received the support of persons so democratically-minded as Madison and Edmund Randolph; but nearly all sensible men, including many who thought better of democracy than Hamilton himself did, admitted that the risks of foreign war, risks infinitely more serious in the infancy of the Republic than they have subsequently proved, required the concentration of executive powers into a single hand. And the fact that in every one of their commonwealths there existed an officer in whom the State constitution vested executive authority, balancing him against the State legislature, made the establishment of a Federal chief magistrate seem the obvious course.

Assuming that there was to be such a magistrate, the statesmen of the Convention, like the solid practical men they were, did not try to construct him out of their own brains, but looked to some existing models. They therefore made an enlarged copy of the State Governor, or to put the same thing differently, a reduced and improved copy of the English king. He is George III. shorn of a part of his prerogative by the intervention of the Senate in treaties and appointments, of another part by the restriction of his action to Federal affairs, while his dignity as well as his influence are diminished by his holding office for four years instead of for life. His salary is too small to permit him