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 18th 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
18th 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 19th 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.
