tion, it was proposed by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay that the Executive should be appointed 'during good behaviour, or in other words for life', Other members of the Convention proposed that the appointment be for seven years. The proposal that it be for four years was carried. 'The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive', says Mr. Justice Story, following Hamilton in The Federalist,[1] 'are unity, duration, an adequate provision for its support, and competent powers. The ingredients which constitute safety in a republican form of government are a due dependence on the people, and a due responsibility to the people.'[2] 'A government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government.'[3] 'Whether the period of four years will answer the purpose for which the Executive department is established, so as to give it at once energy and safety, and to preserve a due balance in the administration of the Government, is a problem which can be solved only by experience. That it will contribute far more than a shorter period towards these objects, and thus have a material influence upon the spirit and character of the Government, may be safely affirmed.'[4]
The study of this subject may with advantage be pursued in The Federalist, especially in five letters—lxii–lxvi—chiefly by Hamilton on the Senate, and in letters lxix–lvxv on the Executive, by Hamilton; in Tocqueville's La Démocratie en Amérique, and in Bryce's American Commonwealth. 'To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government would fill a volume', wrote Hamilton. 'It forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations and all the advantages connected with national character.'[5] 'As for myself', said De Tocqueville, 'I have no hesitation in avowing my conviction, that it is most especially in the conduct of foreign relations that democratic governments appear to me to be decidedly inferior to governments carried on upon different principles. Experience, instruction, and habit may almost always succeed in creating a species of practical discretion in democracies, and
