COMMENTARIES, 8 NOVEMBER 1787

Though the president, during the sitting of the legislature, is assisted
by the senate, yet he is without a constitutional council in their recess-
he will therefore be unsupported by proper information and advice,
and will generally be directed by minions and favorites, or a council of
state will grow out of the principal officers of the great departments,
the most dangerous council in a free country.
The ten miles square, which is to become the seat of government,
will of course be the place of residence for the president and the great
officers of state-the same observations of a great man will apply to
the court of a president possessing the powers of a monarch, that is
observed of that of a monarch-ambition with idleness-baseness with
pride-the thirst of riches without labour-aversion to truth-flattery-trea-
son-perfidy-violation of engagements-contempt of civil duties-hope from
the magistrates weakness; but above all, the perpetual ridicule of virtue4-
these, he remarks, are the characteristics by which the courts in all ages
have been distinguished.
The language and the manners of this court will be what distinguishes
them from the rest of the community, not what assimilates them to it,
and in being remarked for a behaviour that shews they are not meanly
born, and in adulation to people of fortune and power.
The establishment of a vice president is as unnecessary as it is dan-
gerous. This officer, for want of other employment, is made president
of the senate, thereby blending the executive and legislative powers,
besides always giving to some one state, from which he is to come, an
unjust pre-eminence.
It is a maxim in republics, that the representative of the people
should be of their immediate choice; but by the manner in which the
president is chosen he arrives to this office at the fourth or fifth hand,
nor does the highest votes, in the way he is elected, determine the
choice-for it is only necessary that he should be taken from the high-
est of five, who may have a plurality of votes.
Compare your past opinions and sentiments with the present pro-
posed establishment, and you will find, that if you adopt it, that it will
lead you into a system which you heretofore reprobated as odious. Every
American whig, not long since, bore his emphatic testimony against a
monarchical government, though limited, because of the dangerous in-
equality that it created among citizens as relative to their rights and
property; and wherein does this president, invested with his powers and
prerogatives, essentially differ from the king of Great-Britain (save as to
name, the creation of nobility and some immaterial incidents, the off-
spring of absurdity and locality) the direct prerogatives of the presi-

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