control, they will often be restrained by the bare apprehension of
opposition, from doing what they would with eagerness rush into, if no
such external impediments were to be feared.

This qualified negative, as has been elsewhere remarked, is in this
State vested in a council, consisting of the governor, with the
chancellor and judges of the Supreme Court, or any two of them. It has
been freely employed upon a variety of occasions, and frequently with
success. And its utility has become so apparent, that persons who,
in compiling the Constitution, were violent opposers of it, have from
experience become its declared admirers.(1)

I have in another place remarked, that the convention, in the formation
of this part of their plan, had departed from the model of the
constitution of this State, in favor of that of Massachusetts. Two
strong reasons may be imagined for this preference. One is that the
judges, who are to be the interpreters of the law, might receive an
improper bias, from having given a previous opinion in their revisionary
capacities; the other is that by being often associated with the
Executive, they might be induced to embark too far in the political
views of that magistrate, and thus a dangerous combination might by
degrees be cemented between the executive and judiciary departments. It
is impossible to keep the judges too distinct from every other avocation
than that of expounding the laws. It is peculiarly dangerous to
place them in a situation to be either corrupted or influenced by the
Executive.

PUBLIUS

1. Mr. Abraham Yates, a warm opponent of the plan of the convention is
of this number.

FEDERALIST No. 74

The Command of the Military and Naval Forces, and the Pardoning Power of
the Executive.

From the New York Packet. Tuesday, March 25, 1788.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

THE President of the United States is to be "commander-in-chief of the
army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several
States when called into the actual service of the United States." The
propriety of this provision is so evident in itself, and it is, at the
same time, so consonant to the precedents of the State constitutions in
general, that little need be said to explain or enforce it. Even those
of them which have, in other respects, coupled the chief magistrate with
a council, have for the most part concentrated the military authority in
him alone. Of all the