and administrators whom
America has ever produced, and it is inconceivable that he did not
understand what he was doing. He knew perfectly well that, other things
being equal, the simplest administrative mechanism is the best, and he
knew also that he was helping to make an extremely complicated
mechanism. Not only so, but at the heart of this complexity lay the
gigantic cog of the judiciary, which was obviously devised to stop
movement. He must have had a reason, beyond the reason he gave, for not
only insisting on clothing the judiciary with these unusual political
and legislative attributes, but for giving the judiciary an
unprecedented fixity of tenure. I suspect that he was actuated by some
such considerations as these:

The Federalists, having pretty good cause to suppose themselves in a
popular minority, purposed to consolidate the thirteen states under a
new sovereign. There were but two methods by which they could prevail;
they could use force, or, to secure assent, they could propose some
system of arbitration. To escape war the Federalists convened the
constitutional convention, and by so doing pledged themselves to
arbitration. But if their plan of consolidation were to succeed, it was
plain that the arbitrator must arbitrate in their favor, for if he
arbitrated as Mr. Jefferson would have wished, the United States under
the Constitution would have differed little from the United States under
the Confederation. The Federalists, therefore, must control the
arbitrator. If the Constitution were to be adopted, Hamilton and every
one else knew that Washington would be the first President, and
Washington could be relied on to appoint a strong Federalist bench.
Hence, whatever might happen subsequently, when the new plan first
should go into operation, and when the danger from insubordination among
the states would probably be most acute, the judiciary would be made to
throw its weight in favor of consolidation, and against disintegration,
and, if it did so, it was essential that it should be protected against
anything short of a revolutionary attack.

In the convention, indeed, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina suggested
that Congress should be empowered to negative state legislation, but
such an alternative, for obvious reasons, would have been less palatable
to Hamilton, since Congress would be only too likely to fall under the
control of the Jeffersonian party, while a bench of judges, if once well
chosen, m