Periodical Appeals to the People Considered

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

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