Periodical Appeals to the People Considered



From the New York Packet. Tuesday, February 5, 1788.



HAMILTON OR MADISON





To the People of the State of New York:



It may be contended, perhaps, that instead of OCCASIONAL appeals to the

people, which are liable to the objections urged against them,

PERIODICAL appeals are the proper and adequate means of PREVENTING AND

CORRECTING INFRACTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION. It will be attended to,

that in the examination of these expedients, I confine myself to their

aptitude for ENFORCING the Constitution, by keeping the several

departments of power within their due bounds, without particularly

considering them as provisions for ALTERING the Constitution itself. In

the first view, appeals to the people at fixed periods appear to be

nearly as ineligible as appeals on particular occasions as they emerge.



If the periods be separated by short intervals, the measures to be

reviewed and rectified will have been of recent date, and will be

connected with all the circumstances which tend to vitiate and pervert

the result of occasional revisions. If the periods be distant from each

other, the same remark will be applicable to all recent measures; and

in proportion as the remoteness of the others may favor a dispassionate

review of them, this advantage is inseparable from inconveniences which

seem to counterbalance it. In the first place, a distant prospect of

public censure would be a very feeble restraint on power from those

excesses to which it might be urged by the force of present motives. Is

it to be imagined that a legislative assembly, consisting of a hundred

or two hundred members, eagerly bent on some favorite object, and

breaking through the restraints of the Constitution in pursuit of it,

would be arrested in their career, by considerations drawn from a

censorial revision of their conduct at the future distance of ten,

fifteen, or twenty years? In the next place, the abuses would often

have completed their mischievous effects before the remedial provision

would be applied. And in the last place, where this might not be the

case, they would be of long standing, would have taken deep root, and

would not easily be extirpated. The scheme of revising the

constitution, in order to correct recent breaches of it, as well as for

other purposes, has been actually tried in one of the States. One of

the objects of the Council of Censors which met in Pennsylvania in 1783

and 1784, was, as we have seen, to inquire, “whether the constitution

had been violated, and whether the legislative and executive

departments had encroached upon each other. “ This important and novel

experiment in politics merits, in several points of view, very

particular attention. In some of them it may, perhaps, as a single

experiment, made under circumstances somewhat peculiar, be thought to

be not absolutely conclusive. But as applied to the case under

consideration, it involves some facts, which I venture to remark, as a

complete and satisfactory illustration of the reasoning which I have

employed. First. It appears, from the names of the gentlemen who

composed the council, that some, at least, of its most active members

had also been active and leading characters in the parties which

pre-existed in the State.



Secondly. It appears that the same active and leading members of the

council had been active and influential members of the legislative and

executive branches, within the period to be reviewed; and even patrons

or opponents of the very measures to be thus brought to the test of the

constitution. Two of the members had been vice-presidents of the State,

and several other members of the executive council, within the seven

preceding years. One of them had been speaker, and a number of others

distinguished members, of the legislative assembly within the same

period.



Thirdly. Every page of their proceedings witnesses the effect of all

these circumstances on the temper of their deliberations. Throughout

the continuance of the council, it was split into two fixed and violent

parties. The fact is acknowledged and lamented by themselves. Had this

not been the case, the face of their proceedings exhibits a proof

equally satisfactory. In all questions, however unimportant in

themselves, or unconnected with each other, the same names stand

invariably contrasted on the opposite columns. Every unbiased observer

may infer, without danger of mistake, and at the same time without

meaning to reflect on either party, or any individuals of either party,

that, unfortunately, PASSION, not REASON, must have presided over their

decisions. When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a

variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different

opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion,

their opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same.



Fourthly. It is at least problematical, whether the decisions of this

body do not, in several instances, misconstrue the limits prescribed

for the legislative and executive departments, instead of reducing and

limiting them within their constitutional places.



Fifthly. I have never understood that the decisions of the council on

constitutional questions, whether rightly or erroneously formed, have

had any effect in varying the practice founded on legislative

constructions. It even appears, if I mistake not, that in one instance

the contemporary legislature denied the constructions of the council,

and actually prevailed in the contest. This censorial body, therefore,

proves at the same time, by its researches, the existence of the

disease, and by its example, the inefficacy of the remedy. This

conclusion cannot be invalidated by alleging that the State in which

the experiment was made was at that crisis, and had been for a long

time before, violently heated and distracted by the rage of party. Is

it to be presumed, that at any future septennial epoch the same State

will be free from parties? Is it to be presumed that any other State,

at the same or any other given period, will be exempt from them? Such

an event ought to be neither presumed nor desired; because an

extinction of parties necessarily implies either a universal alarm for

the public safety, or an absolute extinction of liberty. Were the

precaution taken of excluding from the assemblies elected by the

people, to revise the preceding administration of the government, all

persons who should have been concerned with the government within the

given period, the difficulties would not be obviated. The important

task would probably devolve on men, who, with inferior capacities,

would in other respects be little better qualified. Although they might

not have been personally concerned in the administration, and therefore

not immediately agents in the measures to be examined, they would

probably have been involved in the parties connected with these

measures, and have been elected under their auspices.



PUBLIUS.









THE FEDERALIST.