other characteristics, and is satisfactorily deducible from these circumstances....the election of the president once in four years by persons immediately chosen by the people for that purpose; his liability, at all times, to impeachment, trial, dismission from office, incapacity to serve in any other, and to the forfeiture of life and estate by subsequent prosecution in the common course of law. But these precautions, great as they are, are not the only ones which the plan of the convention has provided in favour of the public security. In the only instances in which the abuse of the executive authority was materially to be feared, the chief magistrate of the United States would, by that plan, be subjected to the control of a branch of the legislative body. What more can an enlightened and reasonable people desire?
Publius.
No. LXXVIII.
By Alexander Hamilton.
A view of the constitution of the judicial department in relation to the tenure of good behaviour.
We proceed now to an examination of the judiciary department of the proposed government.
In unfolding the defects of the existing confederation, the utility and necessity of a federal judicature have been clearly pointed out. It is the less necessary to recapitulate the considerations there urged, as the propriety of the institution in the abstract is not disputed: the only questions which have been raised being relative to the manner of constituting it, and to its extent. To these points, therefore, our observations shall be confined.
The manner of constituting it seems to embrace these several objects: 1st. The mode of appointing the judges: 2d. The tenure by which they are to hold their places: 3d. The partition of the judiciary authority between different courts, and their relations to each other.
First. As to the mode of appointing the judges: this is the same with that of appointing the officers of the
