free government, inconveniences from the source
just mentioned must necessarily be submitted to in the formation of the
legislature; but it is unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to introduce
them into the constitution of the Executive. It is here too that they
may be most pernicious. In the legislature, promptitude of decision
is oftener an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion, and the
jarrings of parties in that department of the government, though they
may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation
and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority. When
a resolution too is once taken, the opposition must be at an end. That
resolution is a law, and resistance to it punishable. But no favorable
circumstances palliate or atone for the disadvantages of dissension in
the executive department. Here, they are pure and unmixed. There is no
point at which they cease to operate. They serve to embarrass and weaken
the execution of the plan or measure to which they relate, from the
first step to the final conclusion of it. They constantly counteract
those qualities in the Executive which are the most necessary
ingredients in its composition--vigor and expedition, and this without
any counterbalancing good. In the conduct of war, in which the energy of
the Executive is the bulwark of the national security, every thing would
be to be apprehended from its plurality.

It must be confessed that these observations apply with principal weight
to the first case supposed--that is, to a plurality of magistrates of
equal dignity and authority a scheme, the advocates for which are not
likely to form a numerous sect; but they apply, though not with
equal, yet with considerable weight to the project of a council, whose
concurrence is made constitutionally necessary to the operations of the
ostensible Executive. An artful cabal in that council would be able to
distract and to enervate the whole system of administration. If no such
cabal should exist, the mere diversity of views and opinions would alone
be sufficient to tincture the exercise of the executive authority with a
spirit of habitual feebleness and dilatoriness.

(But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the Executive,
and which lies as much against the last as the first plan, is, that it
tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility. Responsibility is of
two kinds--to censure and to punishment. The first is the more i