That long struggle had been over for several years, and its result was certainly not to be regretted by the people of America. But it had left them, as it naturally must have left them, with as strong prejudices and jealousies against every aristocratic, as against every monarchical institution. Public liberty in England they knew might consist with an hereditary throne, and with a privileged and powerful aristocracy. But public liberty in America could consist with neither. The people of the United States could submit to restraints; they could recognize the necessity for checks and balances in the distribution of authority; and they understood as much of the science of government as any people then alive. But an institution,--however originating and however apparently necessary its peculiar construction might be,--embracing but a small number of persons, with power to elect the chief magistrate, with power to revise every appointment from a chief justice down to a tidewaiter, with power to control the President through his subordinate agents, with power to reject every treaty that he might negotiate, and with power to sit in judgment on his impeachment, they would not endure. "We have, in some revolutions of this plan of government," said Randolph, "made a bold stroke for monarchy. We are now doing the same for an aristocracy." How to attain the true intermediate ground, to avoid the substance of a monarchy and the substance of an aristocracy, and yet not to found the system on a mere democracy, was a problem not easy of solution. All could see, that a government extended over a country so large, which was to have the regulation of its commerce, the collection of great revenues, the care of a vast public domain, the superintendence of intercourse with hordes of savage tribes, the control of relations with all the nations of the world, the administration of a peculiar jurisprudence, and the protection of the local constitutions from violence, must have an army and a navy, and great fiscal, administrative, and judicial establishments, embracing a very numerous body of public officers. To give the appointment of such a multitude of public servants, invested with such functions, to the unchecked authority of the President, would be to create an executive with power not less formidable and real than that of some monarchs, and far greater than that of others. No one desired that a sole power of appointment should be vested in the President alone; it was universally conceded that there must be a revisionary control lodged somewhere, and the only question was where it should be placed. That it ought to be in a body independent of the executive, and not in any council of ministers that might be assigned to him, was apparent; and there was no such body, excepting the Senate, which united the necessary independence with the other qualities needful for a right exercise of this power.