Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/298

 290 maxim of republican jealousy, which considers power as safer in the hands of a number of men, than of a single man. It is a misapplication of a known rule, that in the multitude of counsel there is safety. If it were even admitted, that the maxim is justly applicable to the executive magistracy, there are disadvantages on the other side, which greatly overbalance it. But in truth, all multiplication of the executive is rather dangerous, than friendly to liberty; and it is more safe to have a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people, than many. It is in the highest degree probable, that the peculiar situation, in which the American states were placed antecedently to the revolution, with colonial governors placed over them by the crown, and irresponsible to themselves, gave a sanction to the opinion of the value of an executive council, and of the dangers of a single magistrate, wholly disproportionate to its importance, and inconsistent with the permanent safety and dignity of an elective republic.

§ 1423. Upon the question, whether the executive should be composed of a single person, we have already seen, that there was, at first, a division of opinion in the convention, which framed the constitution, seven states voting in the affirmative, and three in the negative; ultimately, however, the vote was unanimous in its favour. But the project of an executive council was not so easily dismissed. It was renewed at different periods in various forms; and seems to have been finally, though