stant provinces.
This expedient must, no doubt, have had great influence in preventing
those collisions and rivalships which might otherwise have embroiled the
peace of the republic.

But quitting the dim light of historical research, attaching ourselves
purely to the dictates of reason and good sense, we shall discover much
greater cause to reject than to approve the idea of plurality in the
Executive, under any modification whatever.

Wherever two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or
pursuit, there is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be a
public trust or office, in which they are clothed with equal dignity
and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation and even
animosity. From either, and especially from all these causes, the most
bitter dissensions are apt to spring. Whenever these happen, they lessen
the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans and
operation of those whom they divide. If they should unfortunately assail
the supreme executive magistracy of a country, consisting of a plurality
of persons, they might impede or frustrate the most important measures
of the government, in the most critical emergencies of the state.
And what is still worse, they might split the community into the
most violent and irreconcilable factions, adhering differently to the
different individuals who composed the magistracy.

Men often oppose a thing, merely because they have had no agency in
planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom
they dislike. But if they have been consulted, and have happened
to disapprove, opposition then becomes, in their estimation, an
indispensable duty of self-love. They seem to think themselves bound in
honor, and by all the motives of personal infallibility, to defeat the
success of what has been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments. Men
of upright, benevolent tempers have too many opportunities of remarking,
with horror, to what desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes
carried, and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed
to the vanity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of individuals, who
have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting
to mankind. Perhaps the question now before the public may, in its
consequences, afford melancholy proofs of the effects of this despicable
frailty, or rather detestable vice, in the human character.

Upon the principles of a