Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/287

that purpose. It is necessary then that the Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, ag^st Legislative tyranny, against the great & the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the legislative body. Wealth tends to corrupt the mind to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent. The check provided in the 2^d branch was not meant as a check on legislative usurpations of power, but on the abuse of lawful powers, on the propensity in the 1^st branch to legislate too much to run into projects of paper money & similar expedients. It is no check on legislative tyranny. On the contrary it may favor it, and if the 1^st branch can be seduced may find the means of success. The executive therefore ought to be so constituted as to be the great protector of the mass of the people. It is the duty of the executive to appoint the officers & to command the forces of the republic: to appoint 1. ministerial officers for the administration of public affairs. 2. officers for the dispensation of Justice. Who will be the best judges whether these appointments will be well made? The people at large, who will know, will see, will feel the effects of them. Again who can judge so well of the discharge of military duties for the protection & security of the people, as the people themselves who are to be protected & secured?^[1]

Unhappily, the inclefmiteness begat uncertainty, which has multiplied with the growth of the country; for public affairs requiring administrative attention tend to increase geometrically (just as do transportation lines) with the number of individuals and communities touched. Under the natural desire to protect prerogatives (so clearly foreseen by Morris), and with a facility due to the weight of numbers, the congress gradually grew inattentive to the first duty of the president under the constitution (" He shall, from time to time, give to the congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient"), and drifted into the habit of obtaining "information of the state of the union "by more cumbrous methods directly through their own committees or indirectly (and of course unconstitutionally) from the administrative departments. Moreover, they increasingly ignored the warning of George Washington (the presiding officer and moving spirit in the constitutional convention) in that ever-memorable farewell address read annually in their hearing: "Let me. . . warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. . . . The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention . . . serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration"—so that the nominally representative congress has virtually ceased to act in behalf of the people and come to act instead in behoof of party, in ways for which no shadow of constitutional warrant exists. It would appear that the gravest apprehensions of Washington and Morris have been realized in a policy of special legislation so pronounced that—mirabile dictu!—fully 99 per cent, of the bills

1. Ibid., Vol. II., pp. 1-2.