few good laws, will be amply compensated by the
advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.

Nor is this all. The superior weight and influence of the legislative
body in a free government, and the hazard to the Executive in a trial
of strength with that body, afford a satisfactory security that the
negative would generally be employed with great caution; and there
would oftener be room for a charge of timidity than of rashness in the
exercise of it. A king of Great Britain, with all his train of sovereign
attributes, and with all the influence he draws from a thousand
sources, would, at this day, hesitate to put a negative upon the joint
resolutions of the two houses of Parliament. He would not fail to
exert the utmost resources of that influence to strangle a measure
disagreeable to him, in its progress to the throne, to avoid being
reduced to the dilemma of permitting it to take effect, or of risking
the displeasure of the nation by an opposition to the sense of the
legislative body. Nor is it probable, that he would ultimately venture
to exert his prerogatives, but in a case of manifest propriety, or
extreme necessity. All well-informed men in that kingdom will accede
to the justness of this remark. A very considerable period has elapsed
since the negative of the crown has been exercised.

If a magistrate so powerful and so well fortified as a British monarch,
would have scruples about the exercise of the power under consideration,
how much greater caution may be reasonably expected in a President of
the United States, clothed for the short period of four years with the
executive authority of a government wholly and purely republican?

It is evident that there would be greater danger of his not using his
power when necessary, than of his using it too often, or too much. An
argument, indeed, against its expediency, has been drawn from this very
source. It has been represented, on this account, as a power odious in
appearance, useless in practice. But it will not follow, that because it
might be rarely exercised, it would never be exercised. In the case
for which it is chiefly designed, that of an immediate attack upon the
constitutional rights of the Executive, or in a case in which the public
good was evidently and palpably sacrificed, a man of tolerable firmness
would avail himself of his constitutional means of defense, and would
listen to the admonitions of duty and responsibility. In the former
supposition,