of the President and Vice-President in office, and does not refer to the President and Vice-President elect, whose term of office has not commenced.[331] The committee of detail made no provision respecting the qualifications of the President. But the grand committee, to whom the construction of the office was referred, recommended the qualifications which are to be found in the Constitution; namely, that no person shall be eligible to the office who was not born a citizen of the United States, or was not a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and who had not attained the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States. These requirements were adopted with unanimous assent.[332] That the executive should receive a stipend, or pecuniary compensation, was a point which had been settled in the earliest stage of the proceedings, notwithstanding the grave authority of Franklin, who was opposed to it. The speech which he delivered on this subject was based upon the maxim, that, in all cases of public service, the less profit, the greater honor. He seems to have been actuated chiefly by the fear that the government would in time be resolved into a monarchy; and he thought this catastrophe would be longer delayed, if the seeds of contention, faction, and tumult were not sown in the system, by making the places of honor places of profit. He maintained this opinion for the case even of a plural executive, which he decidedly advocated; and he instanced the example of Washington, who had led the armies of the Revolution for eight years without receiving the smallest compensation for his services, to prove the practicability of "finding three or four men, in all the United States, with public spirit enough to bear sitting in peaceful council for perhaps an equal term, merely to preside over our civil concerns, and see that our laws are duly executed." His plan was treated with the respect due to his illustrious character, but no one failed to see that it was a "Utopian idea."[333] The example of Washington was, in truth, inapplicable to the question. A patriotic Virginia gentleman, of ample fortune, was called upon, in the day of his country's greatest trial, to take the lead in a desperate struggle for independence. The nature of the war, his own eminence, his character and feelings, the poverty of a country which he foresaw would often be unable to pay even the common soldier, and his motives for embarking in the contest, all united to make the idea of compensation inadmissible to a man whose fortune made it unnecessary. Such a combination of circumstances could scarcely ever occur in the case of a chief magistrate of a regular and established government. If an individual should happen to be placed in the office, who possessed private means enough to render a salary unnecessary to his own wants, or to the dignity of the position, the duty of his example might point