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FEDERALIST No. 50

Periodical Appeals to the People Considered
From the New York Packet. Tuesday, February 5, 1788.

HAMILTON OR MADISON

To the People of the State of New York:
IT MAY be contended, perhaps, that instead of OCCASIONAL appeals
to the people, which are liable to the objections urged against
them, PERIODICAL appeals are the proper and adequate means of
PREVENTING AND CORRECTING INFRACTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION. It
will be attended to, that in the examination of these expedients,
I confine myself to their aptitude for ENFORCING the
Constitution, by keeping the several departments of power within
their due bounds, without particularly considering them as
provisions for ALTERING the Constitution itself. In the first
view, appeals to the people at fixed periods appear to be nearly
as ineligible as appeals on particular occasions as they emerge.
If the periods be separated by short intervals, the measures to
be reviewed and rectified will have been of recent date, and will
be connected with all the circumstances which tend to vitiate and
pervert the result of occasional revisions. If the periods be
distant from each other, the same remark will be applicable to
all recent measures; and in proportion as the remoteness of the
others may favor a dispassionate review of them, this advantage
is inseparable from inconveniences which seem to counterbalance
it. In the first place, a distant prospect of public censure
would be a very feeble restraint on power from those excesses to
which it might be urged by the force of present motives. Is it to
be imagined that a legislative assembly, consisting of a hundred
or two hundred members, eagerly bent on some favorite object, and
breaking through the restraints of the Constitution in pursuit of
it, would be arrested in their career, by considerations drawn
from a censorial revision of their conduct at the future distance
of ten, fifteen, or twenty years? In the next place, the abuses
would often have completed their mischievous effects before the
remedial provision would be applied. And in the last place, where
this might not be the case, they would be of long standing, would
have taken deep root, and would not easily be extirpated. The
scheme of revising the constitution, in order to correct recent
breaches of it, as well as for other purposes, has been actually
tried in one of the States. One of the objects of the Council of
Censors which met in Pennsylvania in 1783 and 1784, was, as we
have seen, to inquire, ``whether the constitution had been
violated, and whether the legislative and executive departments
had encroached upon each other. '' This important and novel
experiment in politics merits, in several points of view, very
particular attention. In some of them it may, perhaps, as a
single experiment, made under circumstances somewhat peculiar, be
thought to be not absolutely conclusive. But as applied to the
case under consideration, it involves some facts, which I venture
to remark, as a complete and satisfactory illustration of the
reasoning which I have employed. First. It appears, from the
names of the gentlemen who composed the council, that some, at
least, of its most active members had also been active and
leading characters in the parties which pre-existed in the State.
Secondly. It appears that the same active and leading members of
the council had been active and influential members of the
legislative and executive branches, within the period to be
reviewed; and even patrons or opponents of the very measures to
be thus brought to the test of the constitution. Two of the
members had been vice-presidents of the State, and several other
members of the executive council, within the seven preceding
years. One of them had been speaker, and a number of others
distinguished members, of the legislative assembly within the
same period. Thirdly. Every page of their proceedings witnesses
the effect of all these circumstances on the temper of their
deliberations. Throughout the continuance of the council, it was
split into two fixed and violent parties. The fact is
acknowledged and lamented by themselves. Had this not been the
case, the face of their proceedings exhibits a proof equally
satisfactory. In all questions, however unimportant in
themselves, or unconnected with each other, the same names stand
invariably contrasted on the opposite columns. Every unbiased
observer may infer, without danger of mistake, and at the same
time without meaning to reflect on either party, or any
individuals of either party, that, unfortunately, PASSION, not
REASON, must have presided over their decisions. When men
exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct
questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some
of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their
opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same.
Fourthly. It is at least problematical, whether the decisions of
this body do not, in several instances, misconstrue the limits
prescribed for the legislative and executive departments, instead
of reducing and limiting them within their constitutional places.
Fifthly. I have never understood that the decisions of the
council on constitutional questions, whether rightly or
erroneously formed, have had any effect in varying the practice
founded on legislative constructions. It even appears, if I
mistake not, that in one instance the contemporary legislature
denied the constructions of the council, and actually prevailed
in the contest. This censorial body, therefore, proves at the
same time, by its researches, the existence of the disease, and
by its example, the inefficacy of the remedy. This conclusion
cannot be invalidated by alleging that the State in which the
experiment was made was at that crisis, and had been for a long
time before, violently heated and distracted by the rage of
party. Is it to be presumed, that at any future septennial epoch
the same State will be free from parties? Is it to be presumed
that any other State, at the same or any other given period, will
be exempt from them? Such an event ought to be neither presumed
nor desired; because an extinction of parties necessarily implies
either a universal alarm for the public safety, or an absolute
extinction of liberty. Were the precaution taken of excluding
from the assemblies elected by the people, to revise the
preceding administration of the government, all persons who
should have been concerned with the government within the given
period, the difficulties would not be obviated. The important
task would probably devolve on men, who, with inferior
capacities, would in other respects be little better qualified.
Although they might not have been personally concerned in the
administration, and therefore not immediately agents in the
measures to be examined, they would probably have been involved
in the parties connected with these measures, and have been
elected under their auspices. PUBLIUS.