Centinel I, Part IX: Adverse Interests

Another principle upon which the proposed constitution appeared to be grounded but which Samuel Bryan called very much into question was that of checks and balances. Though this essential doctrine – by which different organs of government are kept from becoming too powerful though a degree of managed competition – has since achieved the effective status of revealed truth in American political culture, it was not so at the time that Bryan was writing in the waning months of 1787. On the contrary, it constituted but another (largely) untested theory. The idea, as embodied by the proposed constitution, and as put in practice by the existing – and, as of this writing, yet still current – constitution of Massachusetts, was that the most sustainable and most effective way to keep the ambitions of a particular set of public servants in check was to counteract them with the ambitions of another set of officers within the same administrative framework. Legislators, for example, could be prevented from overpowering the relevant executive by furnishing the latter with a veto upon the acts of the legislature in question. In order to prevent this same executive from abusing such a check to their own benefit, the aforementioned legislature might in turn be granted the ability to override said veto upon meeting a set threshold, most often 2/3 of the whole number of votes therein. By also granting the power of appointment to the executive and the power of confirmation to the legislature, placing the enforcement of judicial rulings in the hands of the executive, and even separating the responsibilities of the two branches of the legislature, a kind of web of responsibility might effectively be created whereby cooperation becomes absolutely necessary to the accomplishment of almost any substantial decision. Structurally prevented from acting entirely upon its own initiative within the most consequential areas of its allocated authority, no one organ of government could thus displace any other on the way to seizing absolute power.

The concept of separating the responsibilities of government into distinct and functionally autonomous branches or offices was not one which owed its existence to the political and philosophical discourse which emerged from and fueled the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Indeed, the concept of “mixed government” had been famously advocated by contemporary supporters of the ancient Roman Republic, and the ideal distribution of political authority formed one of the central theses of the political theorist Montesquieu’s aforementioned Spirit of the Laws (1748). Nonetheless, it was to a particularly American articulation of the principle that Bryan sought to address himself. “I am fearful that the principles of government inculcated in Mr. Adams’s treatise,” he stated accordingly in the sixth paragraph of Centinel I, “And enforced in numerous essays and paragraphs in the newspapers, have misled some well designing members of the late Convention.—But it will appear in the sequel, that the construction of the proposed plan of government is infinitely more extravagant.” The treatise in question was almost certainly Thoughts on Government (1776) by John Adams (1735-1826), a document – as discussed in these very pages – which was written in answer to solicitations made to Adams by a number of gentlemen as they set themselves to the task of crafting their respective states’ first independent constitutions. Mr. Adams’s advice, with which Samuel Bryan appeared to take particular issue, was essentially that authority ought to be distributed between three distinct branches – legislative, executive, and judicial – that these branches should possess distinct responsibilities and powers, and that competition between them should be encouraged to the extent that it served to prevent any one of them from becoming dominant. Innocuous though this prescription may now seem – given that it forms the basis of the national government and every state government in present-day America – the nature of Bryan’s objection was both adamant and fundamental. Not only did he believe it functionally impossible to create a government that so perfectly balanced competing interests so as to indefinitely stave off some manner of tyranny, but he questioned the ability of even so poised an administration as Adams described to somehow transform the quarrelling of its constituent branches into stability and happiness for its constituents.

In fairness to Mr. Adams, he did not set down his Thoughts on Government with the intention that they be treated as the last word on American constitutionalism. Nor did he assert that the arrangement of authority which he was therein advocating the states adopt should have been replicated at the national level – or what he referred to as the “continental” level. Far from embodying some kind of Platonic ideal, his belief in the efficacy of a “divided,” “balanced,” “mixed,” or “tripartite” government was rather the product of misgivings on his part as to the wisdom of locating all the major powers of state in a single body or institution. These misgivings he gave voice to at length in the relevant text, demonstrating clearly enough that his intentions were in actual fact utilitarian rather than utopian. A single assembly, he thus avowed – that doubtless being the default institution favored by colonial legislators disabused of any affection for executive authority by the actions of unrepresentative, Crown-appointed governors – was undesirable as a basis for government for essentially the same reason that argued against acceding unquestioningly to the authority of a monarch. Legislators, like kings, were only human, and thus, “Liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments.”

This was not necessarily a problem in itself, inasmuch as it wasn’t a problem that it was really possible to solve. Imperfection was an essential characteristic of humanity, and one which no amount of effort, or planning, or discipline was ever going to eradicate. To that end, Adams continued, a single legislature was no less likely than a single executive to, “Be avaricious, and […] to exempt itself from burdens, which it will lay, without compunction, on its constituents […] to grow ambitious, and after a time […] to vote itself perpetual,” or to, “Make arbitrary laws for their own interest, execute all laws arbitrarily for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own favor.” That they were also, by their structure and their makeup, “Unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch” and, “still less qualified for the judicial power, because it is too numerous, too slow, and too little skilled in the laws [,]” did not help their case one whit. Granted, Adams was not of the opinion that these manifest deficiencies should disqualify an elected legislature from serving an essential function within a stable, effective government. “A representative assembly,” he accordingly affirmed, was, “Extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative [.]” The key was to augment the effectiveness and balance the deficiencies of such a branch by joining it to other institutions whose powers, responsibilities, and expertise substantially differed. Thus might the errors of a singular legislature stemming from poor judgment, or ambition, or partiality be checked, if not by superior wisdom than at least by another set of eyes and minds whose collective interests and knowledge would of necessity incline them to perceive the issue at hand in a different light. By also leaving to the separate branches such responsibilities to which their structure and expertise properly fit them – i.e. executive decision-making to a singular, non-deliberative body – a model of government might have been achieved which, while not perfect, would at least avoid the most obvious defects of one wholly dominated by a singular assembly.

All of this counsel, of course, was offered specifically within the context of a sudden need for independent governments in the various American states. Adams did not claim that the model he sought to define was fit for replication at the level of the union of American colonies then meeting in Philadelphia. On the contrary, he asserted in a clear and unambiguous manner in the text of Thoughts on Government,

If a continental constitution should be formed, it should be a congress, containing a fair and adequate representation of the colonies, and its authority should sacredly be confined to these cases, namely, war, trade, disputes between colony and colony, the post office, and the unappropriated lands of the crown, as they used to be called.

That this description quite closely conforms to what would become the Articles of Confederation – essentially the first constitution of the United States of America – would seem to indicate that what Adams had in mind for larger union of American states was not at all out of step with what his contemporaries in Congress were inclined towards themselves. Bryan’s aforementioned lament, therefore, that, “The principles of government inculcated in Mr. Adams’s treatise […] have misled some well designing members of the late Convention” should properly be laid at the feet of the relevant “members of the late Convention” rather than at those of Adams himself.

            That being said, the structure which the Framers ultimately settled upon in 1787 did closely resemble that which Adams had proposed over a decade earlier in 1776. Though this outcome may not have been what Adams had intended, Bryan’s critique of Thoughts on Government and the principles it laid down was therefore quite apt. Specifically, it was the mixture of balance and conflict which Adams believed should characterize a truly stable government that the author of Centinel I found hardest to swallow. “Mr. Adams’s sine qua non of good government,” he began in the seventh paragraph thereof,

Is three balancing powers, whose repelling qualities are to produce an equilibrium of interests, and thereby to promote the happiness of the whole community. He asserts that the administrators of every government, will ever be actuated by views of private interest and ambition, to the prejudice of the public good; that therefore the only effectual method to secure the rights of the people and promote their welfare, is to create an opposition of interests between the members of two distinct bodies, in the exercise of the powers of government, and balanced by those of a third.

As summaries preceding a substantive critique tend to go, this would seem a relative accurate characterization of what Adams proposed. The author of Thoughts on Government spoke of mediation, of finding balance among extremes, and of promoting common cause through an equality of power, necessary because every public servant was bound to be moved in some way by “private interest and ambition.” The flaw in this proposal, Bryan went on to explain, was that human wisdom was manifestly incapable of,

Instituting three co-equal orders of government, and a corresponding weight in the community to enable them respectively to exercise their several parts, and whose views and interests should be so distinct as to prevent a coalition of any two of them from the destruction of the third.

The issue, it seemed, was not with the theory itself so much as with its practicability. Perhaps three perfectly balanced “orders of government” could achieve the kind of functional equilibrium Adams described, to the benefit of the community from which they arose. But it appeared to Bryan – and not without reason – that the creation of such a balance was wholly beyond the ability of humanity to achieve.

People, after all, were prone to “vices, follies, and frailties,” and so were hardly fit to create something of such demanding precision and durability. Indeed, Bryan continued in the text of Centinel I, it seemed as though Adams tacitly agreed on this score. “Although [,]” he affirmed of the author of Thoughts on Government, “He has traced the constitution of every form of government that ever existed, as far as history affords materials, has not been able to adduce a single instance of such a government [.]” While this, too, was a reasonably fair summation of the case Adams made in his aforementioned treatise, it remained accurate only up to a point. It was true that Adams could not point to a practical example of the kind of government he was attempting to describe. His praise of a portion of the British Constitution – the “republican portion” as he described it – was as close as he came to endorsing any model either presently in existence or having passed into antiquity, and this Bryan did not think much helped his case. “He indeed says,” he wrote of Adams, “That the British constitution is such in theory, but this is rather a confirmation that his principles are chimerical and not to be reduced to practice.” What Bryan failed to account for, however, and what Adams yet could not have, was the Constitution of Massachusetts, drafted in large part by Adams in the autumn of 1779 and ratified in the summer of 1780.

This document – which remains in force to this day – was constructed almost exactly in accordance with the principles that had been laid down in Thoughts on Government, and as of the publication of Centinel I in the winter of 1787 had been in force for the better part of a decade. Authority therein was divided between a bicameral legislature – the General Court – an elected chief executive – the Governor – and an appointed judiciary – the Supreme Judicial Court – with powers and responsibilities dispersed among them broadly according to the principle of balance which Adams had earlier described. The lower house of the legislature – the House of Representatives – was to be apportioned on the basis of population to each of the townships existing within the state, while the upper house of the same – the Senate – would draw its members from among the districts, “Into which the commonwealth may from time to time be divided by the general court for that purpose [.]” The Governor, to be elected by popular vote, was accompanied in their decision making by a council chosen in part by the general public and in part by the General Court. Members of the state judiciary were to be nominated by the Governor and approved by said council, and impeachments were to be made by the House of Representatives and tried in the Senate. By these and other measures, the Bay State thus gave equal legitimacy to each of the major organs of government by permitting them an independent connection with the electorate and by providing them with responsibilities that overlapped just enough to promote competition within a set of strictly delineated spaces. The two houses of the General Court could haggle all they wanted over spending priorities, but neither possessed the ability to completely nullify the other. Just so, while the Governor would possess the sole ability to nominate, “All judicial officers, the attorney-general, the solicitor-general, all sheriffs, coroners, and registers of probate,” these same positions could not be confirmed to their nominees without the consent of the Council. Other than complete and total deadlock, the result of which was likely to be the summary dismissal of the officials responsible during the next election cycle, the likeliest outcome of such contrived interdependence was bound to be some form of compromise.

Though this was as much a theory when put into force in 1780 as when Adams first proposed it in 1776, the seven years that followed ostensibly proved its soundness. Rather than succumb to some form of legislative or executive tyranny owing to an imbalance in the powers of its constituent branches, the government of Massachusetts demonstrated sufficient flexibility and resilience to both undertake the judicial abolition of slavery and weather a significant frontier uprising between 1780 and 1786. The former almost certainly represents the more famous outcome, Shay’s Rebellion – named after its purported leader, one Daniel Shays (1747-1825) – being often cited as one of the primary motivating factors for the Philadelphia Convention. In point of fact, however, it would be hard to say what the resolution of the same really had to do with the relative durability of the Massachusetts Constitution. Granted, the various branches of the relevant government managed to avoid tearing each other apart over competing visions of how best to respond to the campaign of anti-government vigilantism then occurring in the western portion of the state. But this was more likely a consequence of the Governor, the state legislature, and the courts having in common a desire to protect the integrity of the government to which they belonged than it was evidence of the hardiness thereof. By comparison, the effective elimination of slavery as a legally protected institution represented a far more significant demonstration of the viability of Adams’s aforementioned model of government.

Slaves, its bears mentioning, were never as important to the economy of 18^th century Massachusetts as was most emphatically the case with states like Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Invested economically in shipping to a far greater extent than commercial agriculture, Boston functioned more often as a waypoint for slaves on their way from the West Indies and to plantations in the south than as their final destination in British North America. While this isn’t to say that slaves never amounted to a sizable portion of the Massachusetts population – contemporary records show a little over two percent as of about 1760 – it does appear as though the people of the Bay State had far less to lose by eliminating slavery than did their counterparts in certain other jurisdictions. Doubtless this state of affairs was in no small part responsible for the relative speed with which Massachusetts rendered slavery a legally untenable practice over the course of the early 1780s. Even notwithstanding this evident lack of socio-economic resistance, however, the mechanism by which the abolition was accomplished still represents a significant – and by no means guaranteed – victory for Adam’s model of balanced government. The colonial legislature had been defining and regulating the practice of human bondage since at least the 1640s, and since it was generally taken as a given that the succeeding state legislature stood to inherent all the competencies of its predecessor, it would therefore seem a given that if any branch of the post-1780 government of Massachusetts were going to exercise the right to potentially eliminate the practice of slavery, it would have been the General Court. As it happened, however, this is not what occurred. A series of cases heard over the course of 1781 in the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas, along with another unrelated case heard that same year in Great Barrington, established that the clause of the state constitution which declared that, “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties” applied to people of African descent as well as those of European extraction. The result in the short term was obvious enough, being the immediate emancipation of the two enslaved plaintiffs, Quock Walker (1753-unknown) and Elizabeth Freeman (1744-1829), on the grounds than their continued bondage was unconstitutional. The long term result took a little more time to shake out, though its significance was far greater.

Even granting the aforementioned unimportance of slavery to the economy of contemporary Massachusetts, the General Court might easily have claimed to challenge a judicial finding that ostensibly removed its ability to make law in a given policy area. The Governor, too, might just as well have taken up the cause of the potentially thousands of slave owners now effectively dispossessed of what had until recently been their incontestable property. “All men being born free and equal” was a worthy sentiment, of course, and one which many citizens of Massachusetts had only recently risked their lives to defend. But private property was not a concept 18^th century Americans were prepared to take lightly, particularly so when an arm of government – not to mentioned an unelected one – threatened to violate the same. In spite of the existence of such philosophical prohibitions to exactly the action that the Massachusetts judiciary had undertaken, however, the rulings in question were permitted to stand. The courts had made a decision based on their interpretation of the state constitution, and by doing nothing to obstruct or deny their being enacted the legislative and executive branches of that same government had signaled their effective acquiescence. Lawmakers did not claim that the judiciary was encroaching on the legislative prerogative, and the Governor did not complain that the property rights of his constituents had been arbitrarily violated. Granted, the officers in question may simply have lacked the enthusiasm to defend an institution whose moral indefensibiliy had become increasingly apparent. All the same, their actions – or lack thereof – made it clear in practice that the legal authority of the various branches of the state government would remain unassailable within their proper spheres.  

Even in light of the evident success Adams’s theory was presently enjoying as the basis of government in his home state of Massachusetts, the complaints leveled against the same in the text of Centinel I were still possessed of no small degree of merit. The Bay State, after all, was but a small jurisdiction when compared to the whole territory embraced by the United States of America. Massachusetts had certainly experienced its share of internal tensions in the years since its new constitution was adopted, the most significant instance of which had exposed a series of socio-economic cleavages between different classes and regions that would not easily be resolved. All the same, the extent to which these different interests were still dependent upon each other was fairly evident to all involved. Daniel Shays and his compatriots may not have held much affection for the merchants who owned their debts, or for the financiers which these men owed in turn, but there could be no illusions on their part as to the necessity of each link in the resulting financial chain. Not everyone in Massachusetts was directly involved in the same sector of the economy, and not everyone was in agreement as to the obligations they owed to one another. But it should have been plainly evident to all that farmers needed merchants, that merchants needed shippers, and that everyone needed financiers. This understanding, though fraught with tension in practice, was a durable one, and doubtless helped to ameliorate the worst conflicts that were bound to arise within the Bay State’s economy to potentially threaten its nascent constitutional settlement.

The United States of America was by comparison far less integrated economically or socially than contemporary Massachusetts. Granting that agriculture was by far the dominant economic activity in every state in the fledgling union, and bearing in mind the common need of yeoman farmers in Massachusetts and plantations farmers in Virginia to access foreign markets for their produce, competition was arguably more likely than cooperation within the context of inter-American relations. Consider, to that end, a national government based on the model described in the proposed constitution. The Presidency was almost certainly going to fall to George Washington (1732-1799) initially, and afterwards more than likely to men possessed of a similar degree of wealth and distinction. The Senate, by way of the provisions defining election thereto, would probably be dominated by similarly advantaged individuals, and would be split between six states whose economies were dependent on slavery and seven whose economies were not. The House of Representatives, whose seats would be allocated in proportion to population rather than equally by state as in the Senate, would lend even greater advantage to the non-slave states – thirty-five to thirty – at the same time that its rules of election would likely favor candidates with less wealth and lesser reputations. The federal judiciary, meanwhile, would hopefully be composed of men specially qualified and experienced in matters of law, though their being nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate was bound to moderate this outcome to a greater or lesser degree.

Now, imagine within the context of exactly this arrangement of offices, institutions, and interests, a discussion about the needs of the national economy. Specifically, imagine a debate about the regulation of slavery. Based on the fact that Senators were to be chosen by the legislatures of the relevant states, it would seem incredibly unlikely for a state government whose economy was clearly dependent on slavery to choose as its representatives in Congress anyone who wasn’t prepared to defend the viability of the institution at all costs. There would seem to be, then, in consequence of this fact, twelve votes in the Senate dead-set against any proposal that would in any way harm the ability of the affected states to continue protecting the ownership of human chattel. While this would not represent a majority of the twenty-six Senators seated upon the first meeting of Congress in 1789, it would only require the agreement of two representatives from non-slaves states to become so. This margin would be reduced to one if the Vice-President, required by the Constitution to cast the tie-breaking vote on the Senate, could be counted on to side with the pro-slavery interest. Consider also the President, whose origins would often likely lie in the slave-owning south. Suppose that the President believed it was in the best interests of the nation as a whole that the economies of the slave-holding states be preserved as they were. Presented with a bill which threatened to restrict or abolish slavery, he might use any number of the means at his disposal to ensure its ultimate failure. He could deploy the wealth he was likely to possess, or his authority over appointments, or his command of the national military establishment to bribe, extort, cajole, or otherwise produce the outcome he desired. Consider, also, the federal judiciary. While not explicitly granted the power of judicial review in the text of the proposed constitution, they were nonetheless bound to consider all appeals made within the either the federal courts or the state courts and to deliver binding decisions as to the validity of the original suit. At the same time, of course, though intended to function wholly independently of either the executive or legislative branches, the justices of the federal bench would be subject to nomination by the President and confirmation by the Senate, to some degree placing the composition and character of the national judiciary in the hands of these two other branches of government.

Supposing that the House of Representatives, in which thirty votes were likely to go in favor of preserving slavery and thirty-five votes were likely to go against, voted strictly according to these numbers – non-slave state Representatives having decided that the ability of southern plantation owners to profit from free labor constituted an unfair advantage – the outcome in the Senate, on the desk of the President, and in the national courts could proceed in a number of different ways. Going strictly by the book, the Senate might vote predictably as well, with twelve in favor of preserving slavery and fourteen votes against, the President might sign the measure into law, and that would be that. Even if the President vetoed the bill in question, the likely results would be about as disquieting as if he hadn’t: either Congress would override his veto or let it stand, in each case according to the relevant parliamentary calculus.

But what if things didn’t go as the Framers envisioned they would? What if President and the minority in the Senate found common cause in the need to protect slavery in America, and the former used his influence on behalf of the latter to flip the votes necessary to defeat the bill in question? What if he managed to engineer a tie and instructed his Vice-President to break it in favor of protecting slavery? Then again, what if the President and the aforementioned pro-slavery minority in the Senate decided to play the long game, accepted the passage of the anti-slavery bill in the short term, and then engaged in a court-packing campaign to ensure that the measure – and any others like it – was ultimately nullified by judicial fiat? Supposing that any of the scenarios described above ever came to pass, the balance of authority which Adams described in Thoughts on Government and which the Framers sought to implement in their proposed constitution could fairly be said to have broken down completely. Having made an alliance of shared interest, the executive branch will have partnered with one portion of the legislative branch to effectively disenfranchise the other, potentially through the medium of the federal courts. The authority of the House of Representatives thus functionally nullified, power would rest solely in the hands of the President, a minority of Senators, and the justices which they between them succeeded in placing on the federal bench.

There were, of course, a great many factors which could potentially shake up or otherwise alter the probability of any of these developments actually taking place. The numbers quoted above pertaining to the composition of the two houses of Congress are based on the existence of only the thirteen original states. The accession of further states beyond this initial cohort would undoubtedly alter the outcomes described above, though perhaps not all that extensively. Slavery having in actual fact become the dominant issue in the nation’s political discourse following the introduction of cotton as a staple crop around the turn of the 19^th century, subsequent generations of American legislators were careful not to upset the existing balance between slave and non-slave interests regardless of how many new states joined the union. At the same time, while it was entirely possible that the American people – through the medium of the Electoral College – would elect as President someone from a state whose economy did not depend on slavery – and thus someone comparatively unsympathetic to the claimed need to protect the institution – certain provisions within the text of the proposed constitution made this a generally unlikely outcome. Granted, the election of the aforementioned John Adams as the second President in 1796 certainly speaks to the possibility. But the nature of the so-called Three-Fifths Clause – Article I, Section 2, whereby, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States […] according to […] the whole Number of free Persons […] and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons” – and the resulting dominance enjoyed the slave states over the office of President – Adams and his son, John Quincey Adams (1767-1848) being the only American chief executives from non-slave states elected between 1789 and 1836 – would seem to make it quite clear that from the vantage point of 1787, the foreseeable future was likely to produce American Presidents sympathetic to slavery and desirous of protecting it.

Bearing all of this in mind, Samuel Bryan’s aforementioned objection to the principle of checks and balances as a practical basis for government would seem to have been far from hysterical or ill-considered. Notwithstanding the likelihood or unlikelihood of any given set of circumstances coming to pass, there were plenty of opportunities for the system to fail, particularly in light of the economic and political interests which were likely to motivate seekers after national office.The long-term political consequences of slavery in particular, as detailed above, were likely to produce any number of outcomes which the Framers had evidently neglected to consider. Alliances of interest might form between institutions as well as within them, breaking down the intended balance of power and creating a severely distorted structure of authority whereby a relatively small portion of an already very condensed cohort of magistrates and legislators were free to set the national agenda. Worse yet, as Bryan noted, this imbalance might shift and change at any given moment as the influence of different personalities and factions ebbed and flowed. “There is so great a disparity in the talents, wisdom and industry of mankind,” he thus asserted, “That the scale would presently preponderate to one or the other body, and with every accession of power the means of further increase would be greatly extended.” Notwithstanding the inherent deficiencies of a framework of government in which power is vested almost exclusively in a unicameral legislature – which Mr. Adams helpfully noted in the cited text of Thoughts on Government – there could at least exist some degree of certainty as to which powers at any given time the various organs of government possessed. The lawmakers seated therein might not possessed the knowledge or experience necessary to confront every issue with the competence and wisdom one might prefer that they possessed, but a person could at the very least take comfort in the fact that the powers ascribed to the assembly in question by the relevant constitution would not be subject to sudden and unannounced change.

The model of government embraced by the proposed constitution – bearing no small resemble to that which was earlier advocated by the aforementioned treatise of Mr. Adams – appeared to embody no such guarantee. And while the Framers were quick to dispel any concerns to that end, their assurances were in actual fact no more solid than the basic principles of the proposal they were defending. Granting that the continued stability of the contemporary government of Massachusetts spoke to some degree in favor of the notion that checks and balances could serve as a viable basis for a stable republican administration, this still represented but one example, deployed over a relatively small expanse of territory and yet sustained for a span of less than ten years. The United States of America was far too large and too complicated by comparison to fundamentally restructure along such manifestly untested lines without thinking very long and very hard about the consequences likely to arise. For this exact reason, Samuel Bryan would seem to have been entirely justified when he asked his readers in the eighth paragraph of Centinel I, “If the administrators of every government are actuated by views of private interest and ambition, how is the welfare and happiness of the community to be the result of such jarring adverse interests?” This would have been an interesting enough question strictly in the context of political theory, and one whose answer may have been deployed with great effect during later attempts at modifying existing governments or crafting new ones. But as an inquiry into the basis of a frame of government which was on the verge of being approved and which would have affected millions of people across a vast swath of territory, it was a question of  acute mortal significance.

Laying aside the fact that the proposed constitution was ultimately adopted, and that the government it described has since survived any number of crises without (for the most part) becoming fatally distorted, no one could have said with any certainty that the more novel aspects of the same were entirely without fault. In consequence of the sheer scale of change being proposed, therefore – the sheer scale of the authority which the proposed government would possess – it would seem entirely correct to characterize rigorous skepticism of the same as a kind of moral imperative. Though Samuel Bryan, and others like him, ultimately ended up on the losing side of the resulting debate, his efforts ought nevertheless to be considered, not only appropriate and necessary, but absolutely vital if the American people were to enter into the next phase of their shared existence as a nation conscious of the perils as well as the opportunities that lay before them.    

Centinel I, Part VIII: The Sense of the People at Large

By way of offering a last few parting thoughts before concluding the present series and moving along to some other subject, I would like to ask my inexhaustibly patient readers – whom I quite possibly fool myself I haven’t driven away entirely – to accompany me in a brief, final examination of one last aspect of Samuel Bryan’s Centinel I. Specifically, I would like to turn the attention of the present program to the various ways in which the aforementioned author sought directly to question the practicality of certain provisions and structures within the proposed constitution. As previously discussed, the author of Centinel I tended towards a very grounded style of argument, often confronting a theory with which he disagreed with facts that seemed to disprove it. Recall, to that end, the concept of the extended republic as it applies to the enlarged scope of federal power envisioned by the proposed constitution and Bryan’s counterargument concerning contemporary state secessionism. This kind of approach did not constitute his only mode of argument, however. In some cases, when confronting a given theoretical principle, Bryan instead simply drew attention to the plain truth that the validity of the same had yet to be proven. While this might seem on its face a fairly obvious approach, it is nevertheless a very useful one in the context of public policy. Innovation is, and always will be, a very valuable quality in public administration. Precedent, on its own, can be needlessly stifling, and is best tempered by the admission that sometimes the best idea is the one that hasn’t been thought of yet. But properly embracing innovation within the context of government – in which even minor changes stand to affect the lives of hundreds, or thousands, or millions of people – requires the officers and the constituents thereof to ask hard question of themselves and each other. Indeed, at the same time that it asks them to hope for the best, it simultaneously demands that they consider the worst.

            Considering the worst, as it happened, was something Samuel Bryan appeared to excel at. Unimpressed by ambition and unmoved by fame, he questioned a great deal of what the supporters of the proposed constitution attempted to present to their countrymen in the final months of 1787. Who were these men, he asked, that drafted an entirely new plan of government for America? What difference did it make of some of them were popular and beloved? And for that matter, why should Americans consent to enlarge the sphere of national power when certain of the states themselves were dealing with secession movements caused by political centralization? Certainly this was not a method intended to sway men by feats of rhetorical imagination, but under the circumstances it nonetheless represented a very useful way of thinking. The powers being discussed, to be wielded by a national government more competent in its own right than any which had come before, were too significant not to question their every aspect, from how they were arrived at to the needs they sought to address. The architects and supporters of the same, of course, had a great many theories at hand which ostensibly addressed these inquiries. A government which balanced equal centers of power against each other, they said, would guard itself from the domination of a single party or interest. The responsibility of the Senate to approve treaties and executive appointments, they said, would allow the individual states to exert substantial influence directly upon the administration of the sitting president. And what possible danger, they added, could the proposed federal government present to the states when both derived their authority from the same source, the American people? Reasonable though these explanations no doubt sounded – and sincere though the intentions of those who offered them no doubt were – they were nonetheless little more than hypothetical models which experience had yet to prove or disprove. Bryan attempted to point this out to his countrymen throughout the text of Centinel I, sometimes pointedly, sometimes subtly, but always with effect.

            Consider, to that end, the point which Bryan attempted to raise in the sixteenth paragraph of the aforementioned essay concerning a particular clause of the proposed constitution and the effect he believed it was bound to exert – indeed, was intended to exert – upon the individual states. The passage in question, which Centinel I quoted in full, was located in Article VI, and stated with admirable plainness that,

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.     

The logic of this provision, as offered by Framers and ardent supporters of the proposed constitution Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) and James Madison (1751-1836), was essentially twofold. On one hand, Hamilton asserted in Federalist No. 33, the supremacy of the union of states over any single state was fundamental to the very existence and purpose of that union. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not convene in Philadelphia and labor for five months for the purpose of creating yet another national government incapable of compelling the individual American republics to abide by its authority. Not only would that have been a wholly senseless endeavor, but it would have defied the very nature of political association. “If individuals enter into a state of society,” Hamilton posited accordingly,

The laws of that society must be the supreme regulator of their conduct. If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers entrusted to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed.

The “Supremacy Clause,” therefore – as the cited passage has since become known – was both necessary for the proposed constitution to have any effect at all and a wholly logical outgrowth of the theory of the social contract. If the states were going to derive any benefit from the existence of a political union, they would necessarily be required to cede some portion of their sovereign authority and abide by the ends to which that same authority was subsequently deployed. The American people were already required to do exactly that within the states, and it evidently made little sense to Hamilton for states to be expected to do any less within the union.   

            And on the other hand, Madison clarified in Federalist No. 44, there was the question of sovereignty. Faced with criticisms of the proposed constitution which centered mainly on the extent to which the states were bound to be diminished at the expense of an empowered national government, the future author of the Bill of Rights sought to clarify rather emphatically that the welfare of the American people should by rights have been the only consideration of any attempt at collective public action. The states, he elaborated, did not exist to be protected from the encroachment of a theoretical superior power. The Revolution had not been waged for that purpose, “The precious blood of thousands spilt, and the hard-earned substance of millions lavished [.]” The continued existence of the various American states depended on their ability to protect and promote the peace, liberty, and safety of those dwelling within them, and nothing more. If it pleased the people to alter or do away with the relevant governments, there could be no argument that they possessed the right to do so, the states possessing no sovereignty which their citizens did not cede them in turn. Just so, if it the inhabitants of the various states came to the conclusion that the creation of a more powerful national government was necessary to their continued happiness and prosperity, there could be no argument that the integrity of the states need in any way be considered. Sovereignty fundamentally resided with the people, to use and direct as they say fit. Consequent to this, Madison went on to affirm, it ought to have been remembered by any who would claim that the states would be improperly impaired by the relevant clause of the proposed constitution that, “The public good, the real welfare of the great body of the People, is the supreme object to be pursued; and […] no form of Government whatever has any other value, than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.”

            The relevant commentary which Samuel Bryan offered upon the same subject in the cited passage of Centinel I, it must be said, did not address either of these explanations for the existence or the purpose of the aforementioned Supremacy Clause. To be fair, this may simply have been a matter of chronology. Hamilton’s Federalist No. 33 and Madison’s Federalist No. 44 were both published in January, 1788, two months after the first printing of Bryan’s Centinel I in November, 1787. Nevertheless, the thrust of the response which he did offer begs the question whether he’d have cared to address the relevant Federalist assertions if he’d been given the chance. His approach to the Supremacy Clause did not so much as approach the theoretical justifications which Hamilton and Madison later offered, seeming instead to focus on what Bryan believed to be its likely effects and the true intention of its authors. “By these sections,” he avowed, referring specifically to the cited passage from Article VI,

The all-prevailing power of taxation, and such extensive legislative and judicial powers are vested in the general government, as must in their operation, necessarily absorb the state legislatures and judicatories; and that such was in the contemplation of the framers of it, will appear from the provision made for such event, in another part of it; (but that, fearful of alarming the people by so great an innovation, they have suffered the forms of the separate governments to remain, as a blind.)

Theory, it seemed, did not interest Bryan nearly so much as outcome. Paying no heed to whatever principle may or may not have undergirded the existence of the Supremacy Clause, he instead sought to call attention to what he believed would be the most likely effect of its adoption.

The states, Bryan reckoned, were bound to be completely nullified as political entities if the federal government described by the proposed constitution was permitted to claim that its laws and its directives were superior. No law their legislatures might endeavor to pass, and no ruling their courts might attempt to hand down, would be safe from eventual invalidation on the whim of whatever party controlled the organs of national power. Faced with this stark reality, what possible purpose could the states legitimately claim for themselves? By what right might they assert their continued existence? To Bryan’s thinking, it seemed there could be no answer which would come close to satisfying the devotees and supporters of the individual American republics. These entities were vested with the sovereignty of their citizens, had defended their liberties against the tyrannical ambitions of Parliament and the Crown, and were now to be reduced to little more than powerless relics of an era in American history whose primacy had since been eclipsed. What other explanation could there be? The only purpose which the Supremacy Clause could possibly serve, Bryan asserted, was to facilitate the consolidation of all legislative and judicial power in the United States of America in a single, centralized national government. The Philadelphia Convention had not ostensibly been convened for this reason, of course, and the proposed constitution did not otherwise claim such an outcome as its primary function. But there could be no mistaking the implications of the text of Article VI.

For that matter, Bryan added, there could be no mistaking the intentions of its authors. With complete and total centralization clearly in mind, they could only have left the states outwardly intact “as a blind” intended to lull the people into a false sense of security. The duplicity inherent to this approach was further supported by what Bryan claimed to be the parallel implication of Article I, Section 4. “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,” the passage in question states, “Shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” There being no obvious or stated reason why Congress would ever need to regulate these kinds of elections, Bryan accordingly concluded that the intention of the Framers must have been to ensure, “When the state legislatures drop out of sight, from the necessary operation [of] this government, [that] Congress [will be] able to provide for the election and appointment of representatives and senators.” The cause of Bryan’s suspicion, it seemed, was the quiet way in which these provision had been inserted amongst other more outwardly benign ones. The states were not to be done away with entirely, their forms and traditions being for the meantime preserved. But a figurative Sword of Damocles was to be raised above their heads, in the form of the national government’s latent ability to undo every law and every directive they might think to pursue, and to pick up the slack when the inevitable transpired. That this was being pursued at all was doubtless cause enough for Bryan to raise his voice in protest. But that it was being done via subterfuge? That the sovereign rights of the American people were being violated by an assembly of their countrymen under their very noses? Surely the author of Centinel I could have imagined few more legitimate sources of moral outrage.

In point of fact, notwithstanding certain proposals forwarded by the aforementioned Alexander Hamilton over the course of the Philadelphia Convention debates – which would have, among other things, established a Senate that served for life upon election and mandated the federal appointment of state governors – the overwhelming majority of the delegates responsible for the final draft of the proposed constitution showed themselves to be exceptionally sensitive of the sovereignty and the authority of the governments that had sent them. It was necessary, of course, for the states to show some degree of deference to the national government lest the central weakness of the Articles of Confederation continue to hamper the fortunes of the nascent American republic. But at no point did the Framers ever demonstrate a collective inclination towards abolishing or even substantially weakening the powers of the individual states. Indeed, quite the opposite was true. In addition to rejecting out of hand Hamilton’s aforementioned plan for the federal appointment of state executives, the assembled delegates placed the states at the very center of their discussions about the structure of the Constitution and the distribution of power within the government it described. The reason, for instance, that the United States Congress is bicameral rather than unicameral, or that its two houses are elected by different means, is because different groups of Framers had different ideas about how power within the federal government should have been distributed among the states. The crux of the resulting disagreement, it turned out, had everything to do with size.

At the time that the various delegates to the Philadelphia Convention assembled in the autumn of 1787, the central distinction between the thirteen American states did not yet pivot upon whether they recognized the institution of slavery or prohibited it. This would most definitely become the defining feature of the century to come, but as yet most every state, North and South, made legal allowance for the ownership of human chattel. Rather, what separated the states in the late 1780s – and formed them into what at times amounted to two mutually antagonistic camps – was their relative size. States like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York possessed large populations and powerful economies, and had historically harbored significant territorial ambitions in what was then the unsettled – though still very much populated – Midwest. The Articles of Confederation had stymied their ambitions by mandating equal representation in Congress for every state, and it was their hope that a new framework of government would allow them to claim their rightful place – based on the fact that they contained the greatest share of the American population between them – as the principle drivers of the nascent American republic’s foreign and domestic policy. By comparison, states like Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Maryland were very small in terms of population and economic significance. The Articles of Confederation had served them well by permitting them the same weight in Congress as their larger counterparts, and it was the intention of their representatives in Philadelphia to preserve this state of affairs under any new form of government.

The resulting debates produced a number of proposals embodying each of these positions or some variation thereof. The Virginia Plan, for instance – named for its origin in the Virginia delegation – described a bicameral legislature whose two houses would both be allocated proportionally. The lower house was to be chosen by the general electorate, the upper house by the lower house, and the chief executive by some combination of the two. While this arrangement met with the general approbation of the large state delegates, it was understandably rejected by those who had been chosen to represent the aforementioned small states. Fearing that the interests of their respective communities would be completely overwhelming within a system that gave such clear advantage to population, these delegates instead came out in favor of the countervailing New Jersey Plan. Introduced by delegate William Patterson (1745-1806), this framework skewed much nearer to the existing arrangement under the Articles of Confederation. Congress was to remain unicameral, states were to possess a single vote each, and representatives were to be chosen by the various state legislatures. Though it ultimately failed to garner enough support among advocates of the Virginia Plan to replace it as the basis of further debate, the New Jersey Plan arguably did succeed in shifting the focus of its supporters going forward. Faced with the increasingly inarguable reality that the product of the Philadelphia Convention would differ significantly from the Articles of Confederation, small state delegates accordingly set themselves to the task of forging some manner of compromise that would preserve as much of what they valued about the Articles as possible. The aforementioned Hamilton Plan – under which the state governments would exercise almost no influence on national affairs – quite possibly served the same purpose for the supporters of the Virginia Plan, being so thoroughly centralizing that it may have shocked then into reconsidering the relationship they envisioned between the state governments and the national government.

Connecticut’s Roger Sherman (1721-1793) ultimately broke the logjam by offering a compromise proposal whose basic framework formed the spine upon which the United States Constitution was subsequently built. Seeking to ameliorate the concerns of both large state delegates and small state delegates – and being himself from a small state – Sherman combined the bicameralism and the proportional representation of the Virginia Plan with the uniform representation and state appointment of the New Jersey Plan into a blueprint which recognized population advantage without allowing it to become the only source of power within the proposed national government. Representatives in the lower house of Congress were to be seated according to the population of their state – to the advantage of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia – while representatives in the upper house would be apportioned equally per state at the behest of the relevant legislatures – to the relief of New Hampshire, Maryland, and their similarly diminutive counterparts. Further additions to the plan – exclusive power over the introduction of financial legislation in the lower house, exceptionally long terms in office for members of the upper house – helped to ensure that large states and small states alike could derive some exclusive advantage from abiding by the arrangement and accordingly secured its endorsement by the majority of the assembled delegates.

Granting that subsequent developments in American political culture ultimately led to the development of factions, alignments, and, eventually, party organization that cut across state interests in favor of ideological principles or basic policy goals, the developments noted above hopefully serve to make it exceptionally clear that the lens through which the essential structure of the United States Government were first envisioned in 1787 was decidedly dominated by the existence of the states themselves. While a significant number of the delegates assembled in Philadelphia had come to assign some value to truly national institutions through having served in the Continental Army, state government remained the default context within which the majority of those selfsame envoys had grown accustomed to conceiving of political power and political institutions. For representatives of the smaller states, this tendency manifested in their devotion to the idea that the individual states should remain at the center of whatever model of national government was ultimately adopted. Lacking the popular or economic advantages of their larger counterparts, they accordingly sought refuge from functional irrelevance in the preservation of the states as meaningful political entities within a distinctly federal administrative framework. While this might appear to have been little more than a tactical decision – and perhaps indeed it was – the evident impulse behind it would seem anything but.

If the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention dispatched by Georgia, New Hampshire, and Delaware (among others) had been as intent on the elimination of the individual states as Samuel Bryan asserted they and their colleagues were in the text of Centinel I, they should not have raised any objection at all to the adoption and promotion of the initial Virginia Plan. So what if the larger states enjoyed a much greater share of influence in Congress? The small states would elect representatives as well, if fewer, who would in turn be free to conspire with any number of their compatriots to rob the American people of the liberty for which they had lately fought and suffered. The inability of New Jersey to speak effectively for itself in national council would appear to matter very little if this was truly what the convention delegates were after. The fact that the small state delegates did not give way to the Virginia Plan immediately is proof enough that it was not. The existence of the states mattered to the New Jersey delegates, the New Hampshire delegates, and the Maryland delegates. These men came from different places, spoke for and from different sets of interests and experiences, and were demonstrably disinclined to have the needs of their particular communities subsumed within those of any nationwide party or interest.

  At the same time, if the large state delegates were the ones who stood to benefit from a radically empowered national government, they should not have had any cause to reject the Hamilton Plan or its implications. Whether the national government appointed state governors or not, whether Senators served for life or not, the people of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York would between them have enjoyed majority representation in Congress and subsequent control over federal spending priorities. More to the point, the people of a certain class within these states would have been able to enhance their access to institutional power while weakening potential roadblocks – i.e. the state governments – to their eventual assumption of complete legislative and executive authority. In spite of the allure which this outcome would seem to have held, however, the Hamilton Plan was rejected almost immediately as it was offered. Why should this have been the case? Why, if what Bryan claimed was true, should any of the assembled delegates have rejected the chance to drastically weaken the states at the expense of a greatly empowered national government whose leadership would have fallen almost certainly to them? The answer, as records made by participants like James Madison show, is a fairly simple one. Contrary to Bryan’s aforementioned claim – that the Framers chose to leave the states mostly intact so as not to draw attention to their efforts to otherwise weaken those same entities – even the delegates who supported the adoption of the Virginia Plan, and accordingly favored population over state sovereignty as a means of allocating power, balked at the notion of undermining the states to the point of irrelevance.

Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, by which the daily goings-on of that body were recorded and published, accordingly relates that Hamilton’s plan was introduced on June 18^th, 1787 along with introductory and explanatory remarks, that the assembled delegates rose and adjourned after the presentation was made, and that nothing more was said of the idea for the remainder of the Philadelphia Convention. The introduction of the Virginia Plan on May 29^th by comparison resulted in several weeks of intense debate until the counterproposal of the New Jersey Plan was made on June 15^th. This in turn prompted three further days of direct discussion (June 16^th, 18^th, and 19^th) and went on to influence much of the three months that followed until the final adjournment of the Convention on September 17^th. Recalling that these debates were conducted under a strict veil of secrecy, and that Madison’s records thereof were not published until significantly after the fact, it would accordingly seem rather telling that no more than a single day of the proceedings was turned over to topic of Hamilton’s plan for the proposed national government. The assembled delegates were perfectly free to speak in support of it if they wished, or to debate the merits of certain elements thereof without fear that their intentions might become cause for suspicion among their constituent governments. But they did not. It is, of course, certainly possible that Madison altered his account by omitting such exchanges as he felt would have sowed distrust among his countrymen for him and his fellow Framers. There is no proof for such an assumption, however, any more than there is for Bryan’s cited claim that the architects of the Constitution, “Suffered the forms of the separate governments to remain, as a blind.” As far as the available evidence is concerned, which has since been widely accepted as representing an accurate account of the relevant events, the Hamilton Plan was never seriously considered and the New Jersey Plan had an outsized influence on the character of the debates. Both of these outcomes almost certainly owed to the demonstrable fact that the assembled delegates were at least broadly united in their concern for the continued existence and relevance of the various state governments.

None of this is to say, however, that Samuel Bryan wholly failed to make a useful point in the cited text of Centinel I. Though the aforementioned provision of the United States Constitution reserving to Congress along with the state legislatures the authority to prescribe, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives” was, by Madison’s accounting of the relevant debates, enacted as a check against corruption within the state governments or attempted partisan manipulation, it was most definitely also vulnerable to abuse on the part of the accordingly empowered members of Congress. The Framers who ultimately voted in favor of the same certainly thought that the states were the likeliest source of abuse in this context. “Whenever the State Legislatures had a favorite measure to carry,” Madison hypothesized during the relevant debates, “They would take care so to mould their regulations as to favor the candidates they wished to succeed,” while Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) posited that, “The States might make false returns, and then make no provisions for new elections.” All the same, there existed no means of guaranteeing that the opposite outcome would not take place. United by a desire to disenfranchise such elements within the states as they felt stood in opposition to a further consolidation of federal power, the membership of Congress could well have used the cited clause to secure their own continued re-election, or to increase the likelihood of likeminded officers being sent to the House and the Senate. The Framers thought this an unlikely outcome, with Madison in particular asserting that the appointment of Senators by the state assemblies would ensure that the state governments were well represented in Congress. But such an assumption on their part once again constituted nothing more or less than a theory. It was what they thought should happen, but not what absolutely would happen. It was this possibility, this uncertainty, to which Bryan necessarily addressed his efforts. Likely or not, intended or not, abuse of the relevant provision was possible.

The Supremacy Clause operated within essentially the same speculative context. While Hamilton and Madison would shortly assert that the legal superiority of the proposed constitution and the statutes approved under its authority was both necessary to the overall success of the venture and logically consistent with established principles of political organization, they would not – indeed, could not – predict what effect this selfsame proviso would actually have in fact. Notwithstanding the evident necessity – or at least the usefulness – of ensuring the consistent application of national authority across the various jurisdictions within the United States, what would the relationship between the states and the federal government ultimately resemble? Would Congress take it upon itself to review every statute passed by the states in order to ensure their conformity with its priorities and designs? What effect might federal supremacy have upon the initiative of state legislators whose work could summarily be struck down or nullified? Did the power allocated to Congress by the relevant article extend so far as to allow the federal government to disregard – or even to effectively rewrite – the constitutions of the states? Hamilton, Madison, and their allies among the Federalists tended to respond to these kinds of inquiries by avowing that the scenarios they described were too outlandish to be all that likely. If a given action taken by Congress did not plainly serve the needs of the American people, there was no reason to believe it was liable to occur. If, on the other hand, said action did serve some need or priority of the American public, then it did not matter by whom it was achieved, only that a government elected by the people had rendered a service unto the people.

Samuel Bryan’s evident issue with this manner of reasoning was that it allowed those with a vested interest in their own power to decide what, in terms of the limit of their authority, was permissible and what was not. Granting that the states would ultimately be responsible for ratifying or rejecting the proposed constitution, and that the states had initially chosen the delegates whose efforts produced that very same document, the national government would exist as a thing unto itself once its various institutions were erected and set in motion. The officers of the national legislature, the chief executive, and the judiciary would be free to decide to what extent they believed their authority reached, the only restriction thereupon being the wording of the Constitution itself. In light of how vaguely certain clauses of the same had been written – quite possibly with the intention of giving as much latitude as possible to future generations – there would seem to have been very few limits indeed upon the actions of the aforementioned national authorities. Bearing this in mind, why would the various members of Congress, or the President, or the justices of the federal judiciary ever reject the opportunity to increase their power if so little appeared to stand in their way? Given the opinions which Samuel Bryan had previously expressed in the text of Centinel I of “the wealthy and ambitious,” and the extent to which he seemed to believe that the Framers of the proposed constitution were those most likely to benefit from its ratification, this was almost certainly a question he hoped the great mass of his countrymen would take the opportunity to thoroughly consider. The prospect which the outcome of the Philadelphia Convention had placed before them – the creation of a powerful, activist central government where a weak and passive one had existed before – constituted a tremendous potential transfer of sovereignty from the people at large to a set of previously non-existent officers and institutions. Under the circumstances, and as Bryan attempted rather emphatically to communicate, some degree of skepticism – if not, indeed, outright suspicion – was most definitely called for.