a good one,” he said flatly. Nobody had a problem with that; the presence of George Washington in the room, and the shared assumption that he would become the first executive officer, did ease people’s apprehensions to some extent. But then Franklin observed, “No body knows what sort may come afterwards.” True, all too true. Delegates should not be seduced into thinking all executives would be of Washington’s caliber, so they had better take care. Could they ever be careful enough? Perhaps not, Franklin feared, and he closed with a stinger: “The Executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a Monarchy.”
That was precisely what nobody wished to hear. All the votes on this particular matter or that—three years versus seven, manner of selection, and so on—paled by comparison with the meta-issue the delegates could not escape: If they created a single executive, and made him in any way independent of Congress or the people, were they in danger of sowing the seeds of another monarchy?
CHAPTER FOUR
Second Guesses
The best argument for a new and independent executive branch of government was the extreme inefficiency of the competition—administration by deliberative bodies. A case in point was the current convention.
On June 15, after delegates had discussed, debated, and amended the fifteen resolutions in the Virginia Plan, working in earnest day after tedious day, New Jersey’s William Paterson took the floor and announced that he and some colleagues wanted to throw out everything and start anew. This categorical dismissal could be defended, if necessary, by pointing to a recent precedent. On the very first day of deliberations, prodded by Gouverneur Morris, the convention had dismissed the Articles of Confederation in their entirety.
Paterson’s caucus—the majority of delegates from New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, and New York, plus one from Maryland—proposed a return to the Articles, resolving only that they “be so revised, corrected & enlarged, as to render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government, & the preservation of the Union.” Word for word, this was what the states had charged them to do. Speaking on behalf of those states, they refused to cede all authority to a unitary body. Under the New Jersey Plan, the United States was to remain a confederation. There was no mention of a supreme national government.
The central reason for calling the convention was that Congress depended on the states for all its funds and was therefore perennially broke. In its second resolution the New Jersey Plan did speak to that need by granting Congress the right to raise its own money through import duties and postage fees, but it would remain a unicameral legislature. Each state would have one vote, as before. There would be no Senate. The underlying structure would not change.
To provide greater efficiency, the New Jersey Plan included an executive but referred repeatedly to the “persons” filling the office. So it was back to a multiple executive, as if James Wilson had never offered his motion, the convention had never discussed it, and no decision had been made.
The following day, a Saturday, delegates considered whether or not to revisit the myriad decisions they had made when pursuing the Virginia Plan. Old arguments resurfaced, with resolution nowhere in sight.
At 10:00 Monday morning, June 18, Alexander Hamilton entered the fray. A longtime proponent of centralized authority, he took the floor, and he held it for five or six hours, uninterrupted by any other speaker. With the help of William Pierce, we can imagine the youthful military man, only thirty years old, “of small stature and lean,” his “manners tinctured with stiffness,” holding forth to his peers, “sometimes with a degree of vanity that is highly disagreeable,” and remaining “highly charged” for the better part of a day, nonstop.
Hamilton’s speech would prove
That was precisely what nobody wished to hear. All the votes on this particular matter or that—three years versus seven, manner of selection, and so on—paled by comparison with the meta-issue the delegates could not escape: If they created a single executive, and made him in any way independent of Congress or the people, were they in danger of sowing the seeds of another monarchy?
CHAPTER FOUR
Second Guesses
The best argument for a new and independent executive branch of government was the extreme inefficiency of the competition—administration by deliberative bodies. A case in point was the current convention.
On June 15, after delegates had discussed, debated, and amended the fifteen resolutions in the Virginia Plan, working in earnest day after tedious day, New Jersey’s William Paterson took the floor and announced that he and some colleagues wanted to throw out everything and start anew. This categorical dismissal could be defended, if necessary, by pointing to a recent precedent. On the very first day of deliberations, prodded by Gouverneur Morris, the convention had dismissed the Articles of Confederation in their entirety.
Paterson’s caucus—the majority of delegates from New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, and New York, plus one from Maryland—proposed a return to the Articles, resolving only that they “be so revised, corrected & enlarged, as to render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government, & the preservation of the Union.” Word for word, this was what the states had charged them to do. Speaking on behalf of those states, they refused to cede all authority to a unitary body. Under the New Jersey Plan, the United States was to remain a confederation. There was no mention of a supreme national government.
The central reason for calling the convention was that Congress depended on the states for all its funds and was therefore perennially broke. In its second resolution the New Jersey Plan did speak to that need by granting Congress the right to raise its own money through import duties and postage fees, but it would remain a unicameral legislature. Each state would have one vote, as before. There would be no Senate. The underlying structure would not change.
To provide greater efficiency, the New Jersey Plan included an executive but referred repeatedly to the “persons” filling the office. So it was back to a multiple executive, as if James Wilson had never offered his motion, the convention had never discussed it, and no decision had been made.
The following day, a Saturday, delegates considered whether or not to revisit the myriad decisions they had made when pursuing the Virginia Plan. Old arguments resurfaced, with resolution nowhere in sight.
At 10:00 Monday morning, June 18, Alexander Hamilton entered the fray. A longtime proponent of centralized authority, he took the floor, and he held it for five or six hours, uninterrupted by any other speaker. With the help of William Pierce, we can imagine the youthful military man, only thirty years old, “of small stature and lean,” his “manners tinctured with stiffness,” holding forth to his peers, “sometimes with a degree of vanity that is highly disagreeable,” and remaining “highly charged” for the better part of a day, nonstop.
Hamilton’s speech would prove
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