The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
Philosophy
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of
different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable
to any other in every point. A judicious selection of the parts of each
suitable to any other, is all which prudence should attempt; this will
appear from a review of some parts of our constitutions.
Our executives are elected by the people for terms of one, two, three,
or four years, under the names of governors or presidents, and are
reëligible a second time, or after a certain term, if approved by the
people. May your Ethnarch be elective also? or does your position among
the warring powers of Europe need an office more permanent, and a leader
more stable? Surely you will make him single. For if experience has ever
taught a truth, it is that a plurality in the supreme executive will
forever split into discordant factions, distract the nation, annihilate
its energies, and force the nation to rally under a single head, generally
an usurper. We have, I think, fallen on the happiest of all modes of
constituting the executive, that of easing and aiding our President, by
permitting him to choose Secretaries of State, of finance, of war, and
of the navy, with whom he may advise, either separately or all together,
and remedy their divisions by adopting or controlling their opinions
at his discretion; this saves the nation from the evils of a divided
will, and secures to it a steady march in the systematic course which
the president may have adopted for that of his administration.
Our legislatures are composed of two houses, the senate and
representatives, elected in different modes, and for different periods,
and in some States, with a qualified veto in the executive chief. But to
avoid all temptation to superior pretensions of the one over the other
house, and the possibility of either erecting itself into a privileged
order, might it not be better to choose at the same time and in the same
mode, a body sufficiently numerous to be divided by lot into two separate
houses, acting as independently as the two houses in England, or in our
governments, and to shuffle their names together and re-distribute them
by lot, once a week for a fortnight? This would equally give the benefit
of time and separate deliberation, guard against an absolute passage by
acclamation, derange cabals, intrigues, and the count of noses, disarm
the ascendency which a popular demagogue might at anytime obtain over
either house, and render impossible all disputes between the two houses,
which often form such obstacles to business.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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