ance the numerous disadvantages on the opposite side. But I do not think the rule at all applicable to the Executive power. I clearly concur in opinion, in this particular, with a writer whom the celebrated Junius pronounces to be "deep, solid, and ingenious," that "the Executive power is more easily confined when it is one;"[1] that it is far more safe there should be a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the People; and, in a word, that all multiplication of the Executive is rather dangerous than friendly to liberty.
A little consideration will satisfy us, that the species of security sought for in the multiplication of the Executive, is unattainable. Numbers must be so great as to render combination difficult, or they are rather a source of danger than of security. The united credit and influence of several individuals must be more formidable to liberty, than the credit and influence of either of them separately. When power, therefore, is placed in the hands of so small a number of men, as to admit of their interests and views being easily combined in a common enterprise, by an artful leader, it becomes more liable to abuse, and more dangerous when abused, than if it be lodged in the hands of one man; who, from the very circumstance of his being alone, will be more narrowly watched and more readily suspected, and who cannot unite so great a mass of influence as when he is associated with others. The Decemvirs of Rome, whose name denotes their number,[2] were more to be dreaded in their usurpation than any one of them would have been. No person would think of proposing an Executive much more numerous than that body; from six to a dozen have been suggested for the number of the Council. The extreme of these numbers, is not too great for an easy combination; and from such a combination, America would have more to fear, than
