collective capacity; and the security to the society must depend on the care which is taken to confide the trust to proper hands, to make it their interest to execute it with fidelity, and to make it as difficult as possible for them to combine in any interest opposite to that of the public good.
So far as might concern the misbehaviour of the executive in perverting the instructions, or contravening the views of the senate, we need not be apprehensive of the want of a disposition in that body to punish the abuse of their confidence, or to vindicate their own authority. We may thus far count upon their pride, if not upon their virtue. And so far even as might concern the corruption of leading members, by whose arts and influence the majority may have been inveigled into measures odious to the community; if the proofs of that corruption should be satisfactory, the usual propensity of human nature will warrant us in concluding, that there would be commonly no defect of inclination in the body, to divert the public resentment from themselves, by a ready sacrifice of the authors of their mismanagement and disgrace.
Publius.
No. LXVII.
By Alexander Hamilton.
Concerning the constitution of the president: a gross attempt to misrepresent this part of the plan detected.
The constitution of the executive department of the proposed government, next claims our attention.
There is hardly any part of the system, the arrangement of which could have been attended with greater difficulty, and there is perhaps none which has been inveighed against with less candour, or criticised with less judgment.
Here the writers against the constitution seem to have taken pains to signalize their talent of misrepresentation. Calculating upon the aversion of the people to monar-
