Federalist 70
The text of Federalist #70 which explore how energy in the executive branch to preserve liberty.
Federalist #70, March 15, 1788
- I can explain why Alexander Hamilton believed that a strong executive was necessary in the federal government.
- I can develop an argument using evidence from primary sources.
Building Context:
Because of their experience of tyranny under the British monarch, the American revolutionaries feared strong executives in the states or at the national level during the 1770s and 1780s. The Articles of Confederation lacked an independent national executive. Because of this, the national government could not respond to crises such as Shays’s Rebellion, compel the states to follow the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783, or enforce congressional laws over such things as taxation. The Constitution created a single executive with broad powers. Anti-Federalists argued the stronger executive would become tyrannical and corrupt, and therefore would endanger liberty. In Federalist #70, Alexander Hamilton defends the strong executive in the proposed Constitution. Hamilton argued that a single executive would be more effective than a plural executive in executing the law and protecting liberty.
For more background information on Federalist #70, watch our Primary Source Essentials video.
Caption: Alexander Hamilton
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THERE is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government…Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy… …A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government. |
enterprises: schemes and plans faction: party or group anarchy: chaos or lawlessness feeble: weak |
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… attaching ourselves purely to the dictates of reason and good sense, we shall discover much greater cause to reject than to approve the idea of plurality in the Executive, under any modification whatever. Wherever two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit, there is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be a public trust or office, in which they are clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation and even animosity. From either, and especially from all these causes, the most bitter dissensions are apt to spring. |
dissensions: disagreements |
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Whenever these happen, they lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans and operation of those whom they divide. If they should unfortunately assail the supreme executive magistracy of a country, consisting of a plurality of persons, they might impede or frustrate the most important measures of the government, in the most critical emergencies of the state. And what is still worse, they might split the community into the most violent and irreconcilable factions, adhering differently to the different individuals who composed the magistracy. |
magistracy: office or person who administers the law |
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But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the Executive, and which lies as much against the last as the first plan, is, that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility. Responsibility is of two kinds — to censure and to punishment. The first is the more important of the two, especially in an elective office. Man, in public trust, will much oftener act in such a manner as to render him unworthy of being any longer trusted, than in such a manner as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment. But the multiplication of the Executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case. It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author. |
censure: expression of severe disapproval pernicious: harmful dexterity: shiftiness, manipulation |
Comprehension and Analysis Questions
- What are the benefits of a strong, energetic executive, according to Hamilton? Do you agree or disagree?
- Why does Hamilton argue that an energetic executive protects liberty more than a weak one?
- What does Hamilton say are the dangers of an executive made up of two or more people?