Reenter Morris

“We are now at a full stop,” declared a disconsolate Roger Sherman, delegate from Connecticut. The Convention had just split 5–5–1 (ayes, nays, divided) on the question of state suffrage in the upper house. A previous vote taken on June 11 had favored suffrage proportionate to population;Footnote ² but opinion was turning, and on July 2 the forces of equal state suffrage—mostly small-state delegates—managed to produce this tie.

July 2 was also the day when Gouverneur Morris, missing since May 31, returned to the Convention. Morris was a New York native, born into a prosperous political family, who for the last decade had lived in Pennsylvania. He was a big man, something over six feet tall (in an era when the average male height was 5'6”) and as a youth nicknamed Tall Boy. He would have towered above all but a few of the delegates; and if he rambled about the room while speaking, he would have entranced the members—or irritated them—with the recurrent thumping of his wooden peg leg. An unusual individual, to be sure, whom a fellow delegate described as a wit and a genius, “conspicuous and flourishing in public debate,” charming, captivating, and a pleasure to hear; but also “fickle and inconstant—never pursuing one train of thinking—nor ever regular.”Footnote ³

Morris took the floor; and being neither diffident nor apologetic about his month-long absence, he immediately set about accusing the Convention of having misconstrued the basic nature of an upper house, whether conceived as a body representing states or representing people. For in fact, the purpose of an upper house, he averred, was to represent wealth. So vital was this function, and so uncertain of success, that the upper house, or senate, was to be constructed as a set-aside for the propertied few. But the rationale was what truly amazed: that the wealthy must be given a chamber of their own lest they infiltrate and dominate the chamber of the people. “The proper security against them [the wealthy],” said Morris, “is to form them into a separate interest” (1:512). An aristocratic/oligarchic institution, characteristic of mixed regimes, would deliver a partially democratic result, he seemed to promise.

Morris was not the only Convention delegate promoting the representation of property. The Virginia Plan, introduced by Virginia governor Edmund Randolph at the start of the proceedings and organizing debate thereafter, was open to the idea (Resolution 2); and assorted delegates, the South Carolinians especially, returned to it repeatedly. Nor was Morris the only person at the time to propose the sequestration of wealth. For outside the Convention, though present “virtually,” was John Adams, whose recently published book A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, volume 1, was on sale in Philadelphia and likely included in the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia, to which the Convention delegates had free access.Footnote ⁴

Adams used the word “ostracism” to describe the exclusion of the rich, the well-born, and the able from the lower house of a legislative body.Footnote ⁵ Segregating society's luminaries was the function of an upper house, he reasoned, for if allowed to commingle with persons of lesser talents, these “natural aristocrats,” as he styled them,Footnote ⁶ would rise to the top and quickly take command, robbing the lower house of its distinctive quality. But with the classes kept apart in separate chambers, the two chambers would be genuinely different and able to check each other.

Morris's July 2 intervention seemed then to be channeling Adams's thought. But not only Adams's, for behind Adams stood the great Florentine political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. Adams reproduced selections from Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy in volume 1 of his Defence; and in volume 2 he provided a hundred-page transcription of and commentary on Machiavelli's Florentine Histories, plus an abridgment and critique of Machiavelli's Discourse upon the Proper Ways and Means of Reforming the Government of Florence. C. Bradley Thompson discusses the Machiavellian influence on Adams.Footnote ⁷ Other scholars find echoes of Machiavelli in the writings of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.Footnote ⁸ But no one yet has suggested that Machiavelli affected the constitutional thinking of Gouverneur Morris. In making that case,Footnote ⁹ I am mindful of the fact that Morris was an “inconstant” thinker and a “fickle” personality. One of the many biographies of him is titled “An Incautious Man.”Footnote ¹⁰ Of course, Morris's incaution, or impetuosity, might just be another point of contact with Machiavelli.

Senate

In a country without a titled nobility to represent, such as the peers of Great Britain, what was the purpose of an upper house? That question was raised by the French economist Jacques Turgot in a letter to the English moral philosopher, dissenting minister, and political pamphleteer Richard Price. The reprinting of Turgot's letter in 1784 was what prompted Adams to write his three-volume tome defending the bicameral structure of America's newly formed state governments and their adoption of separated powers. At the Convention, George Mason of Virginia confidently pronounced that the American mind—apparently unaffected by Price and Turgot—was settled in favor of bicameralism (June 20, 1:339).

Perhaps not entirely settled, however, as Charles Pinckney of South Carolina came very close to reposing the Turgot question.Footnote ¹¹ In a lengthy speech delivered on June 25, Pinckney described America as an egalitarian country without Old World social orders or concentrations of great wealth; with only occupational classes of little consequence, because these classes were politically equal and mutually dependent, so much so that they effectively had but one interest. Moreover, with a vast and empty frontier to inhabit, the country was destined to remain “but one great & equal body of citizens” for many years to come (1:397–404). Hence no reason existed to imitate the British constitution, however well suited for Britain it might be.Footnote ¹²

Morris missed Pinckney's speech, but his own speech on July 2, coupled with those on July 6 and July 19, seemed designed as a rebuttal. The object of the second branch, Morris maintained, was “to check the precipitation, changeableness, and excesses of the first branch.” The misbehavior of state legislatures—which had inspired Virginia's James Madison to pen his pre-Convention memorandum, “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” and which served as the premise for many of his Convention proposals—was cited as evidence that lawmaking by the people's representatives posed a clear and continuing danger to “personal liberty private property & personal safety” (1:512). Society was not one equal and interdependent mass, as supposed by Pinckney, but consisted of individuals of differing stations, any few of whom could be oppressed by the remainder.

The checking function of the second branch, Morris claimed, depended on three essential elements: interest, property, and independence. While not dismissive of “Abilities and virtue,” Morris put greater store by personal interest: “one interest must be opposed to another interest. Vices as they exist, must be turned against each other.” Vice checking vice was the secret, not wisdom enlightening ignorance or goodness overcoming wickedness. For Morris, personal property, accompanied by an “aristocratic spirit” that “love[d] to lord it thro’ pride,” was the interest and the attitude that properly defined a senate. He allowed that pride was present across the human species but that it showed differently in the poor than in the rich. In the poor it was reactive and resisting, in the rich assertive and abusive. But notwithstanding the more aggressive nature of the rich, the poor generally predominated because of their huge advantage in numbers. Politically this meant that upper houses were creatures of lower houses, and experience at the state level seemed to confirm the relationship. On the other hand, if provided a mode of election independent of the people and of their representatives, specifically appointment by the executive, along with lifetime tenure, senators would have the means and the motive to defend the prerogatives of their office. But would not rich and prideful senators, serving for life, do wrong, Morris asked. His answer was likely intended to stun: “He believed so; he hoped so” (1:512). He hoped so!

Madison, who would go as high as nine years for a senatorial term, hoped for “wisdom & virtue” from the senators, not wrongdoing, because he envisioned them as “the impartial umpires and Guardians of justice and general Good” (June 26, 1:423, 428). After the Convention and writing as Publius, Madison paraphrased Morris's “vice checking vice” line, stating in Federalist, No. 51, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”Footnote ¹³ The purpose, though, of counteracting ambition was to control humanity's nonangelic nature, not to afford it fresh opportunities for misconduct and to showcase its harm.Footnote ¹⁴ Likewise, Adams was not naive in outlining the characteristics of natural aristocrats. Their special talents, he recognized, could easily be put to selfish purposes and result in “the destruction of the commonwealth.”Footnote ¹⁵ But promotion from the lower to the upper house, he supposed, would work as an inducement to good behavior: “The senate becomes the great object of ambition; and the richest and the most sagacious wish to merit an advancement to it by services to the public in the house.”Footnote ¹⁶ Among the champions of checks and balances, Morris then was exceptional in hoping for wrongdoing, and even Alexander Hamilton of New York, who with Morris supported lifetime terms, did so in order to “high-tone” the senate (June 26, 1:424).

Very similar to Morris, and possibly the source for his ruminations on the senate, is Machiavelli. In Prince 9 Machiavelli states that two social classes, which he calls humors, are present in every city. There is the humor of the great—Morris's aristocrats, likewise said to exist in all civilized societies (July 6, 1:545)—and the humor of the people. The great, or grandi, want to dominate and oppress; the people, or popolo, want to escape the domination and oppression of the great. Machiavelli seems to be taking sides. The same could be said of Morris, whose denunciation of wealth was uncompromising: “Wealth tends to corrupt the mind & nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent” (July 19, 2:52).

The division between the humors reappears in the Discourses on Livy: “in every republic are two diverse humors, that of the people and that of the great, and… all the laws that are made in favor of freedom arise from their disunion” (D.1.4.1).Footnote ¹⁷ Freedom arises from the mutual suspicion and animosity of distinct social classes armed with the means of self-defense. Most previous commentators, including Livy, Machiavelli's source, condemned Rome's tumultuous domestic life;Footnote ¹⁸ Machiavelli, on the contrary, credits tumults with providing Rome its good laws and good education, which in turn occasioned countless acts of personal virtue.

The story of how the Roman humors acquired their institutional arms is told by Machiavelli in Discourses 1.2–3. With the expulsion of King Tarquinius Superbus, the patricians assumed command of the city and Rome became in effect an aristocracy, or a partial mixed regime with consuls taking the place of kings (D.1.2.7). But far from domineering and oppressing, the patricians “behaved humanely” toward the people. Machiavelli accounts for this apparent contravention of his verdict on the great and of his wider judgment that “all men are bad,” or must be presumed bad by those who order republics,Footnote ¹⁹ by claiming that “when any malignity remains hidden for a time, this proceeds from a hidden cause” (D.1.3.1). Good government in early republican Rome resulted then from a hidden cause, specifically the patricians’ fear that the people would restore the Tarquins if mistreated by their new rulers. Thus, for as long as any of the royal line was alive and residing nearby, the nobles refrained from revealing their true, malignant nature. This circumstance obtained for thirteen years, from 509 to 496 BC, not quite enough time, in Machiavelli's estimation, for the plebs to have surrendered their pride and slumped into a state of credulous docility. The death of the last of the Tarquins was the “accident” that released the nobles from their fear and awakened the plebs to their danger. When the nobles turned abusive, the people mustered their reactive pride and resisted, abandoning the city until the office of the tribunate was conceded to them as an instrument of self-protection. Rome then passed from a partial mixed regime to a “perfected” mixed regime, combining kingly (consuls), aristocratic (senate), and democratic (tribunes) elements. A popular assembly was added some years later.Footnote ²⁰

Why would Morris hope for wrongdoing by the rich quarantined in an upper house of their own? Because a well-defined class opponent, whose malignity was on full display, would arouse the jealousy and distrust of the people; and because an aroused and vigilant people would safeguard their liberty against encroachments by the wealthy. “By thus combining & setting apart, the aristocratic interest,” Morris thought, “the popular interest will be combined against it. There will be a mutual check and mutual security” (July 2, 1:513).Footnote ²¹ Jennifer Nedelsky puts it thus: “It was as though the isolation of the rich in an explicitly aristocratic body would alert the people to their threats; it would be harder for the wealthy to pass off their interests as the public interest.”Footnote ²² Arthur Kaufman emphasizes these institutional markers: “As representatives of a national class, [senators] could more readily be held to account for their positions on national legislation: ‘The aristocracy (the wealthy) support, or the aristocracy (the wealthy) oppose, this legislation,’ it might be said.”Footnote ²³ On the other hand, if the two classes were intermixed in an upper house constituted along the lines of the lower house and elected popularly, either an oligarchy or a democracy would develop, depending on whether the society was commercial or agrarian.

The former result received considerable attention from Morris. Commerce would remove the poor from farms to cities, where they would be put to work as manufacturers and mechanics in the employ of factory owners and at their mercy. If also enfranchised, the voting poor would feel the influence of their economic masters, if not have their votes outright bought, and the power of the aristocracy would increase thereby (August 7, 2:202–3).Footnote ²⁴ Further advantage would accrue to the rich if the country were also large, as they would have the resources to “communicate & act in concert” across great distances. The rich would manipulate the passions of the people and “make these the instruments for oppressing them”; while the people, “never act[ing] from reason alone,” would “be the dupes of those who [had] more knowledge & intercourse.” Madison argued that size and diversity would break apart economic factions, forcing the construction of temporary coalitions for electoral and legislative purposes; and that moderation and justice would be the inadvertent byproducts of this necessity to combine and recombine for political success (June 6, 1:134–36). Morris concluded, contrarily, that a “violent aristocracy” would be the result of an extended, commercial republic lacking a class-identified bicameral legislature (July 2, 1:514).Footnote ²⁵

Morris did not explain why in an agrarian society a democracy would emerge from the legislative intermixing of rich and poor, except to reference the historical record as certain proof. Perhaps he supposed that with agriculture would come small, uniform, egalitarian republics, whose politics would perforce be a reflection of the popular interest.Footnote ²⁶ Perhaps he meant to apply that other side of his analysis whereby upper houses were the “creatures” of lower houses, sinking into “servile complaisance” if deprived of those institutional protections that made for their independence: for instance, nonpopular election, life tenure, property qualifications. An upper house that merely replicated the lower house was worse than useless, and a government would be “better without it,” thought Morris (July 2, 1:512).

Machiavelli is also alarmed by the prospect of patricians becoming like plebeians, as might happen if the former courted the votes of the latter.Footnote ²⁷ Rome was once saved by its senators when they resisted the people's demand for relocating half of the population to Veii, an Etruscan town conquered by Rome but more splendid in its buildings and countryside. Because the senators represented a distinct social order, they had the wherewithal, and some of them the personal authority, to face down the inflamed populace. Persuading the public is difficult, says Machiavelli, because a policy that promises gain and excites the spirit will always be preferred by the people, notwithstanding the loss and danger contained within. As a case in point, Fabius Maximus was unable to persuade his fellow citizens of the wisdom of delaying combat with Hannibal, because delay seemed cowardly and because quick success was assured by others; consequently, three ill-conceived battles were fought and lost, causing the near ruin of Rome (D.1.53.1–2).

This turnabout in portrayal from malignant oppressors to wise and careful counselors occurred in Morris too. It is to be remembered that Morris introduced the senate as a careful, sober check on the unwise haste and inconstancy of the lower house. In that vein (though not yet reported), he proceeded to describe senators as among “the best, the most able, and the most virtuous citizens”; he defended their lifetime appointment as a safeguard against a change of measures;Footnote ²⁸ and he charged them with responsibility for service as a “select and sagacious body of men, instituted to watch against [encroachments] on all sides.” Rather than one of the sides from which encroachments were anticipated, the senate was now depicted as rising above the competition and operating as a guard. Nedelsky accounts for the change by postulating “ambivalence” in Morris toward the rich;Footnote ²⁹ Nathan Tarcov calls it “an extra fillip on top of the more solid considerations of class interest, human pride, and institutional responsibility.”Footnote ³⁰ More likely though—or additionally—it was a recognition that with a different set of interests, different behaviors could be expected. Because senators would have lifetime appointments, the long-term well-being of the country and the effectiveness of government would become their concern. Dedication to the common good would arise from the alignment of class interest with the public interest. This potential for good was best captured in the notes of Robert Yates, who recorded Morris as saying: “Give them the second branch and you secure their weight for the public good. They become responsible for their conduct” (July 2, 1:517; also July 6, 1:545).Footnote ³¹ Morris, it seems, did not discount the possibility that effective checking of senatorial malignity, coupled with exposure and responsibility, might result in enlightened behavior beneficial to all. Perhaps in the end Morris was attempting to co-opt a portion of the rich, installed as permanent lawmakers, to police the remainder of the rich, busy with moneymaking in the private economy—that is, a quasi aristocracy recruited from the oligarchical class.Footnote ³² Extracting good from bad, and not just preventing bad, was a small, but real, part of Morris's constitutional thinking.

In the main, though, Morris put his faith in vice rather than virtue. On three other occasions during the July 2 speech did Morris show himself accepting of the dark side of human nature. Appointment of senators to executive offices—tightly circumscribed under the Virginia Plan (Resolution 5)—was approved by Morris for the somewhat scandalous reason that competent government rested on influence, which Hamilton, when taking the same position on June 22, was happy to call corruption (1:376). Morris opposed payment of senators, but not for the high-minded reason given by Benjamin Franklin when discussing the presidency—that nonpayment would attract the “wise and the moderate” rather than the “bold and the violent” and that the example of General Washington, who had accepted no pay during the eight years of war, proved the feasibility of gratis service (June 2, 1:82, 84–85). No, because senators would find sub rosa ways of paying themselves and because nonpayment would accomplish a property qualification without having to legislate one. And whereas Adams saw election to the upper house as an encouragement to and reward for good behavior, Morris saw it as a “bribe” and “noble bait” for demagogues in the states (July 2, 1:513–14).

In sum, when Morris took the floor on July 2, reintroducing himself to the Convention, he provided the delegates with a blueprint for the national legislature, modeled on, or reminiscent of, a Machiavellian mixed regime, in which a plebeian house was checked by a patrician senate, each the class enemy of the other. But unless the senate was distinctive in character and design, its independence ensured by a mode of election free of popular influence, it would, Morris argued, succumb to the house, standing for the people; or, in a large commercial society, an oligarchy would emerge as the rich, being better organized and informed, would manipulate and buy off the poor. Accordingly, Morris required his senators to be wealthy, prideful grandees with lifetime, unpaid appointments made by the executive, and confined to a chamber of their own. As a side benefit, the Convention's month-long squabble over equal vs. proportional representation became a moot point. The senate would not be representing states or people, but property, with members selected irrespective of residence. Resetting a stalled debate may have been for Morris a second intention, along with apprising the Convention of an older science of politics, originating with Machiavelli and promoted by Adams.

Presidency

As he had done with the senate on July 2, so on July 19 Morris offered a comprehensive statement regarding the purpose and organization of the executive. And as he had astounded the delegates with his proposal for a lifetime senate representing wealth, so again he astounded them with his description of the president as the “guardian of the people” (2:52). Most delegates gave that distinction to the legislature, especially its lower house. For example, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts claimed that he “relied… on the Representatives of the people as the guardians of their Rights & interests” (July 21, 2:75).

The origin of this expression, “guardian of the people,” and later “guardian of liberty,” may trace to Machiavelli, who devotes two chapters of the Discourses to the constitutional function of guarding. In Discourses 1.5 Machiavelli asks which of society's humors, the great or the people, provides a more reliable guard of freedom. Guardianship appears not to be a separate office of state, but a disposition to defend the constitution, its distribution and balance of power. As Machiavelli frames the issue, the candidates for the title are themselves combatants in the struggle for class ascendancy; so a guardian is one who is simultaneously an interested party and a judge who holds all parties in their place. Machiavelli admits that the question is not easily settled, because history and reason suggest opposing answers. Among ancient republics, Sparta trusted its nobles with the task of guarding the constitution, as did Venice among modern republics; and both preserved their liberty longer than did Rome, which trusted the guardianship to the people. But a different answer is arrived at through reason, which inquires into the motivations and behaviors of actors and discovers that those who possess wealth and power never cease from their acquisitive labors, because they are anxious and fear losing what they hold already unless more of the same is added; also, they have resources and are better positioned to acquire. (Morris's rational inquiries arrived at the same conclusion, that the wealthy were insatiably rapacious, and that they also possessed the means to “communicate & act in concert.”) The argument is consonant with Machiavelli's other judgment that the great wish to oppress and the people wish not to be oppressed. As for the contrary evidence of history, Machiavelli disposes of it by distinguishing between expansionary and nonexpansionary states. The former, of which Rome was the prime example, need the populace to fight their wars and so must bend toward the popular interest; while the latter, with Sparta and Venice as examples, can afford to depoliticize the people. Tumults are the result of a politicized people, who have the military training and institutional representation to act on their envy and resentment. The other part of the chapter's title, besides guarding freedom, is causing tumults, and Machiavelli blames the “incorrect and ambitious behavior” of the great for rousing avarice in the people and tumult in Rome (D.1.5.4).

Machiavelli continues the discussion in the following chapter, but with a focus on the constitutions of Sparta and Venice, whose mixed regimes, without a popular component, were aristocratic republics, Rome's, by contrast, a democratic republic. What prevented the oppression of the people by the great in these two aristocratic republics? In the case of Sparta, its two kings defended the people as a way of defending themselves against the nobles, with the result that the people, not fearing oppression, did not desire a share of rule; and the state, restricted in size and wealth by the laws of Lycurgus, could be governed by a few who socially were not so different from the many (D.1.6.2). In the case of Venice, the status of noble was extended to all early inhabitants, who were called gentlemen, while later arrivals became the populace without political rights. The ruling class was too numerous to profit from oppression, and the ruled had neither cause nor opportunity to revolt, because nothing was taken from them or asked of them, and their numbers were always kept fewer than that of the gentlemen class (D.1.6.1). Accordingly, the aristocratic republics of Sparta and Venice were for many centuries united, tranquil, and free, but at the cost of staying small; while the democratic republic of Rome, for some shorter period of time, was united, tumultuous, and free, but with the prospect of growing great. Machiavelli prefers expansionary Rome, because, as he famously pronounces, necessity mandates expansion, and a state not ordered for it will one day be destroyed by external or internal forces (D.1.6.4).

Morris might initially have conceived of the senate as the guardian of liberty, for he described it, as observed, as a “watch against [encroachments]”; but then the Convention did not give him the senate he wanted—an aristocratic body with members serving for life. He certainly did not follow Machiavelli in placing the guard of freedom with the people, or with a tribunate or assembly providing them protection (D.1.6.4). On the other hand, the part played by Machiavelli's Spartan kings was strikingly similar to that which Morris assigned to the president;Footnote ³³ and possibly Morris intended the president for the role all along. The advantage of such an arrangement would be a guardian from outside the social orders operating as a neutral umpire, rather than a guardian from within trying not to operate as a judge in its own case.

Morris placed the president at the center of a system of governmental checks and balances, responsible for blocking the senate, the house, and the legislature entire, all the while guarding the people, including “the lower classes.” Legislative tyranny was Morris's primary worry, partly because he foresaw the absorption of the lower house by the upper, as “the Great & the wealthy” would “in the course of things… necessarily compose the Legislative body.” Failure to segregate property in a separate chamber, combined with the oligarchical effects of commerce, might have been the reasons for this dire prediction. A united, and effectively unicameral, legislature—its lower house “seduced” by its upper—posed a mortal danger to the independence of the executive, whose work as “protector of the Mass of the people” required that it first defend itself (July 19, 2:52)—the same codependent relationship that existed for the Spartan kings. All of Morris's executive-branch proposals aimed at establishing the executive's independence,Footnote ³⁴ under threat by the humor of the great and acting for the benefit of the humor of the people. In short, the president was to be what Machiavelli calls a “civil prince,” an executive who suppresses the great and befriends the people.

The title of Prince 9 is “Of the Civil Principality.” Machiavelli is in midst of delineating different kinds of princes (virtuous, fortunate, criminal), and the civil prince is said to be one who comes to power “with the support of his fellow citizens.” That support is not registered by election, however, for the city Machiavelli presents is on the cusp of civil war, and the factions are each searching for a champion to help them defeat their class opponent. This is where the humors are introduced, and the result of their competition, Machiavelli reckons, is “principality or liberty or license.” The last of these outcomes, license, most likely describes the triumph of the people in a simple, democratic regime; for “the popular is without difficulty converted into the licentious,” says Machiavelli in the Discourses (1.2.2). Principality, the first of these outcomes, most likely describes the transition of a civil prince (the chapter's title) into an absolute prince (the chapter's end). Having come to power at the head of the popular cause, the prince might later choose to cast off all restraints and oppress the people no less than the great. This princely absolutism appeared also in Morris's July 2 speech, which warned of “a violent aristocracy, or a more violent despotism” resulting from the contest of the humors (1:514). In other words, when the few and the many, in a commercial society, fall into class strife, the fate of the many, barring the construction of a civil principality, is either oppression by the few (“violent aristocracy”) or oppression by one (“violent despotism”).Footnote ³⁵ Liberty, the second outcome, would seem to describe the relationship of the civil prince to the people, whose standard bearer he has become. If the civil prince, content to rule through magistrates and guard the people, resists the temptation to seize absolute power—and Machiavelli specifies the hazards involved without supplying a remedy, as if to discourage the attempt—then liberty obtains.Footnote ³⁶ Machiavelli has no institutional contrivance to curb the ambition of princes, at least not in The Prince, only the advice of a wise counselor. Morris, on the other hand, did—namely, election, impeachment, and term of office.

The prince in Prince 9 is cautioned against assuming power with the aid of the great, whose jealousy can never be assuaged and who are conniving and quick to act; by contrast, the people are “more decent,” more easily satisfied, and too numerous to have as an enemy. Also, the people, but not the great, are grateful, especially so when, expecting harm, they receive benefits instead. The suggestion is that a prince should first befriend the great, making use of their astuteness and energy; switch sides at the first opportunity, thereby ridding himself of envious and conspiracy-prone supporters; and end by extending protection to the people.

Discourses 1.16.5 recreates the situation in Prince 9: domestic strife; an exiled former tyrant brought back to lead the aristocratic faction; a reversal of course, with the repatriated tyrant, now technically a civil prince, betraying his allies and offering them up to the vengeance of the people; and a partial restoration of freedom. Security under the rule of law is the part of freedom that is restored to the people, not a share of power, which Machiavelli judges to be unnecessary because only “a small part of them desires to be free so as to command, but all the others, who are infinite, desire freedom so as to live secure.” Machiavelli calculates that the political class, or those with whom power is shared, amount to no more than “forty or fifty citizens” in any republic; for the remainder, security is freedom enough.

Morris's executive, here compared to a Machiavellian civil prince, was, as noted, a guardian of the people in place of the people themselves. Morris feared that the people, on account of economic dislocations, would, in a short time, be too corrupt to serve in that capacity: “Will [mechanics and manufacturers] be the secure & faithful Guardians of liberty? Will they be the impregnable barrier against aristocracy?” (August 7, 2:202). Assuming negative answers to these questions, Morris transferred guardianship to the president, a “great and illustrious” character who likely would hail from the nation's wealthy elite (July 17, 2:31). But he would not endeavor to advance their interests or satisfy their ambitions, since they, like Machiavelli's great, would “always covet his seat… perplex his administration… cabal with the Legislature, till [they succeeded] in supplanting him” (July 24, 2:104; also August 24, 2:404). He rather would protect the people from the predatory behavior of his own kind, providing security under law, the sort of freedom the people actually desired.Footnote ³⁷

But while a guardian of the people, the president would not quite be an advocate for the popular interest, passing “bad laws” on the people's behalf.Footnote ³⁸ The people were noted for favoring paper money, tender laws, cancellation of debts, and redistribution of land (July 19, 2:52; July 21, 2:76).Footnote ³⁹ The president would oppose these populist measures for the sake of property rights, the sanctity of contracts, and a sound economy, without which civilized society could not exist.Footnote ⁴⁰ In similar fashion, Machiavelli advises his prince to be parsimonious, rather than liberal, because in order “to maintain the name for liberality among men, it is necessary not to leave out any kind of lavish display,” the sure result of which is state insolvency or imposition of confiscatory taxes (Prince 16). Responsible for holding both classes in their place, but especially the great, the president would guard the constitution that guarded the liberty of all. First, he would guard his own powers against usurpation by the legislative branch.

The people, however, would perform this one function—they would serve as the electorate of the executive: “If he is to be the Guardian of the people,” said Morris, “let him be appointed by the people” (July 19, 2:53). On July 17 Morris first proposed popular election of the president, giving his Pennsylvania colleague James Wilson desperately needed support (June 1, 1:68). Aside from Wilson, Morris seemed to be the only delegate (until then) who thought the people up to the task: “If the people should elect, they will never fail to prefer some man of distinguished character, or services; some man… of continental reputation” (2:29).Footnote ⁴¹ Mason of Virginia, speaking soon after Morris, equated popular election with “a trial of colours” judged by “a blind man” (2:31). A standard argument for election by the national legislature, as per the Virginia Plan (Resolution 7), was the expected return of candidates of a higher caliber (July 17, 2:29, 30); as the standard knock on the people was their propensity to prefer unfit mediocrities for office, with deficient information, local prejudice, and a chronic susceptibility to demagogues cited as causes. Morris paired at-large, popular election with a two-year tenure, indefinite reeligibility, and immunity from impeachment (July 19, 2:53–54). The reason for this last provision was a conception of the president as a monarch in a mixed regime assisted by ministers who would stand trial in his stead. In furtherance of that conception, Morris alternately proposed lifetime appointment for the president should election by the legislature be approved over election by the people (2:53–54).Footnote ⁴² Two days earlier, on July 17, the Convention committed a colossal blunder; it voted for executive election by the national legislature along with executive reeligibility, a combination of elements that vitiated executive independence. Following the vote, James McClurg of Virginia moved adoption of tenure during good behavior. Morris chimed in excitedly: “This was the way to get a good Government” (2:33).Footnote ⁴³

But Morris was not exactly recommending a monarch-like executive: He “was as little a friend to monarchy as any gentleman” (July 17, 2:35). He rather worried that a badly constructed executive (respecting mode of election, term of office, reeligibility, and removal) would provoke the people into demanding a monarch. In one particular, he rethought what a well-constructed executive required, reversing his position on impeachment. He came to realize, his “opinion [having] been changed by the arguments used in the discussion,” that “our executive was not like a Magistrate having a life interest, much less having an hereditary interest in office. … This Magistrate is not the King but the prime-Minister. The people are the King” (July 20, 2:68–69). Morris had been building his executive on the model of his senate, where the occupants had “a personal interest in checking the other branch” (July 2, 1:512).Footnote ⁴⁴ Toward that end, he nudged the executive in the direction of a monarch whose person was inviolable. But conceding now that even a hereditary monarch, with the equivalent of “a fee simple in the whole Kingdom,” was not immune to bribery and corruption (and he gave an example from the reign of King Charles II), Morris concluded that the president should be held liable to impeachment, provided that no dependence on the legislature resulted thereby (July 20, 2:68–69). Completing the conversion to a fully republican executive, Morris reiterated his call for a short term of office, after the Convention had heard proposals for terms as high as twenty years. He cautioned that “a long period would prevent an adoption of the plan”; and he declared, brandishing his republican bona fides, that “it ought to do so,” for “he should himself be afraid to trust it” (July 24, 2:105).

Though republican, the president was to be energetic like a king. Morris began his account of the executive branch by citing “a maxim of Political Science that Republican Government is not adapted to a large extent of Country, because the energy of the Executive Magistracy cannot reach the extreme parts of it” (July 19, 2:52). John Dickinson of Delaware explained why that was so in remarks on June 2, saying, “a firm Executive could only exist in a limited monarchy” because of attachments to the crown and prerogatives enjoyed by it, which no elected president could hope to match. Dickinson's remedy was “the division of the Country into distinct States” (1:86); for the states would operate—as he clarified more completely in post-Convention essays—as feudal magnates extending the power of the central government to the nation's outermost parts.Footnote ⁴⁵ Dickinson looked beyond the executive for a fix, whereas Morris challenged the rectitude of the maxim that a republican executive must be weak. For if made guardian of the people in an office structured for the purpose, the president could, Morris believed, meld together erstwhile incompatible elements, namely, republican government and extensive union.Footnote ⁴⁶

Confronted with the same problem of republican weakness, Machiavelli commends the Romans for invigorating executive power through the office of the dictatorship. Previous writers judged the dictatorship hazardous and the cause of Rome's demise. Machiavelli takes the contrary view: republics, he observes, move in “slow motion” because power is divided and action must wait on the assent of many wills (D.1.34.3). The remedy for that disability is the capacity to unite power on the sudden, in one person alone.

Executive power in republican Rome was ordinarily divided between two consuls elected to one-year terms. The dictator was a single, uno solo, executive supplanting the two consuls and resorted to in times of emergency; the term was for six months. Despite the extraordinary character of the dictatorial power, Machiavelli calls it ordinary and safe, always doing good for the city, because it had the sanction of law and caused no scandal (D.1.34.1, 3). The remaining features of the dictatorship were full authority to act, but within a limited jurisdiction, and with the existing offices of government still in operation. Full authority meant the power to decide without consultation and to punish without appeal. Limited jurisdiction meant confinement to a stipulated task. And continued operation meant checks and balances, ensuring that the dictator did not “escape his limits and… hurt the city” (D.1.34.2).

Which of these positions did Morris share with Machiavelli? Morris missed the debate on number—whether a single or plural executive—but was present when that debate resurfaced in the form of an executive council, whose consent might be required in order for the president to take action (September 7, 2:537; also June 4, 1:97). Morris opposed the measure on the narrow grounds that such a council could be used as cover for a president's bad decisions (2:542). But Morris also laid before the Convention his own plan for an executive council. Significantly, every officer of the council was to be appointed by the president and serve at his pleasure (August 20, 2:342–44), thus keeping intact executive autonomy and responsibility.

Like Machiavelli, Morris, as noted, supported a relatively short term of office, as well as popular election of the executive, which was how Rome's ordinary executives, the consuls, were chosen, though with qualifications.Footnote ⁴⁷ The extraordinary nature of the dictator's office had no parallel in Morris, but the reason for hiding its extraordinariness behind a veil of legal normality did appear. The occasion was the debate over executive reeligibility. Most nationalists cited experience as their reason for preferring it, claiming that a term-limited executive would be removed from office just as he was becoming fully competent. But the argument was unconvincing and effectively met by the expedient of a single term of extended duration. Accordingly, the Convention returned again and again to the Virginia Plan's proposal for a single, seven-year term without the option of reelection.Footnote ⁴⁸ Morris, thinking more like a Machiavellian, added to the argument the prospect of usurpation by the incumbent (“Shut the Civil road to Glory and he may be compelled to seek it by the sword”) and defiance of law by the electorate (“In moments of pressing danger the tried abilities and established character of a favorite Magistrate will prevail over respect for the forms of the Constitution”) (July 19, 2:53; also July 24, 2:104–5). Machiavelli also cautions against placing the public in a position of losing the state or breaking the law: “For when a like mode [i.e., concentrated power] is lacking in a republic, it is necessary either that it be ruined by observing the orders or that it break them so as not to be ruined” (D.1.34.3).

The principal powers of the executive branch included veto, pardon, appointment, treaties, and commander-in-chief. In most cases Morris pushed for full and exclusive exercise of these powers. He recommended an absolute veto in the executive, though largely for defensive purposes, which was why he also supported involvement of the judiciary in a council of revision (August 7, 2:200; August 15, 2:299; July 21, 2:75–76, 78–79). He wanted the pardon power exercised by the executive alone, even in cases of treason, which some delegates thought “too great a trust” and an investment “peculiarly improper” (September 15, 2:626–27). He urged removal of the senate from a share of the appointment power (August 23, 2:389). At a moment in the Convention when the treaty-making power rested with the senate, he expressed his misgivings and proposed as an amendment that treaties be ratified by law, which perforce would require the concurrence of the president (August 23, 2:392–93), whom he later referred to, and in this same context, as “the general Guardian of the National interests” (September 7, 2:541).Footnote ⁴⁹ The power of commander-in-chief was discussed in connection with state militias—when they would fall under federal control, how they would be armed and disciplined, who would appoint their officers—and in connection with the legislature's power to “make war,” which on the suggestion of Madison and Gerry was changed to “declare war,” providing a clear instance of limited jurisdiction (August 23, 2:384–88; August 18, 2:329–33). Morris was not heard from on this last topic.Footnote ⁵⁰

To recap: Morris analyzed executive power using (whether deliberately or not)Footnote ⁵¹ the Machiavellian concept of guardianship. But rather than confer this responsibility on one of the social orders, as does Machiavelli when first raising the question, Morris designated the president the guardian of the people, the guardian of liberty, and finally the guardian of national interest. As such, the people's political involvement would be less direct and less constant than was the case with the Roman plebs.Footnote ⁵² Morris's departure from doctrine was more apparent than real, however, because Machiavelli allows that in non-expansionary states, such as Sparta, the executive might perform the task of guarding for a populace that is quiescent. Did Morris see America as a non-expansionary state (albeit an extensive one)? That was his hope, as indicated by a 1781 letter to John Jay, in which Morris recommended that the western territories remain a wilderness lest they become a separate country.Footnote ⁵³ The category of civil prince provided a still stronger point of congruence. The civil prince was an executive who made himself a friend of the people and adversary of the great. For Machiavelli—describing principalities, not republics—that relationship rests on shrewdness, timeliness, treachery, and gratitude; for Morris—describing republics—it rested on popular election. Additionally, Morris, like Machiavelli, sought energy in the executive, if not by an uno solo dictator, jurisdictionally bound but otherwise omnipotent, then by a single president invested with specified powers exercised without constraints; and a short term of office lengthened by the prospect of reelection, providing surety against extraordinary extensions excused by emergencies.

A Fickle, Inconstant, and Irregular Machiavellian

In delegate Pierce's assessment, Morris was not all profundity and splendid elocution; for he could be as well a fickle, inconstant, and irregular person, never pursuing a single train of thought. The charge has some merit. At the Convention, Morris generally displayed a Machiavellian temperament—presuming the worst of human beings—but he also, from time to time, revealed an optimistic, even idealistic, side to his personality.Footnote ⁵⁴ Morris once described himself “as a Representative of America” and of “the whole human race”; as a gentleman who could not “descend to think” that his Convention colleagues had “assembled to truck and bargain for [their] particular States,” and who was confident that a “reasonable & right” plan of government would be embraced by “all who have reasonable minds and sound intentions” (July 5, 1:529). When a southern delegate put these laudable sentiments to the test, speaking on behalf of purely sectional interests, Morris replied, “he [Morris] came here to form a compact for the good of America” (July 12, 1:593). And when another southerner objected to locating the new government in a fixed place, fearing that a temporary site (in New York City, where the Congress presently sat) would become the permanent site, Morris declared, “such a distrust is inconsistent with all Government” (August 11, 2:261). Morris the cynic suffered from occasional bouts of youthful idealism.

And like a youth, he could be absurdly impulsive. “Let us have no Government at all,” he vented, if it were thought that national legislators could not be trusted to reapportion at their discretion (July 11, 1:583). He was similarly hasty in the matter of regional differences: “If [the North-South divide] be real, instead of attempting to blend incompatible things, let us at once take a friendly leave of each other” (July 13, 1:604). Morris was the first to countenance a partial union of the willing (May 30, 1:37).

Morris advised the Convention to protect forevermore the voting advantage of the Atlantic states against untrustworthy westerners with different interests, while simultaneously urging southerners to trust that northern majorities in the national legislature would reapportion in the absence of a constitutional duty. Madison noted the inconsistency: “At the same time that he recommended this implicit confidence to the Southern States in the Northern Majority, he was still more zealous in exhorting all to a jealousy of a Western Majority. To reconcile the gentleman with himself, it must be imagined that he determined the human character by the points of the compass.” Mason then joined the attack, explaining that confidence in the people's representatives required that they actually be representative, which in turn required reapportionment reflective of population shifts (July 11, 1:583, 584, 586).

It was in defense of the principle of legislative discretion that Morris exposed himself to this ridicule and rebuke.Footnote ⁵⁵ He failed to preserve discretion as applied to reapportionment.Footnote ⁵⁶ But as applied to western states, he scored a sly and subtle victory, worthy of a Machiavellian fox.

Morris opposed the easy admission and equal treatment of western states. He rated westerners “back members” from the “remote wilderness,” lacking in political talent and “always most averse to the best measures” (July 11, 1:583). Unenlightened ploughmen were they, who could hardly complain of discriminations, such as underrepresentation, because they “would previously know the conditions on which they would possess their lands” (July 5, 1:534).Footnote ⁵⁷ More alarming than their uncouth backwardness was their supposed proclivity to draw the country into wars—for instance, with Spain over navigation rights on the Mississippi—that the maritime states would have to fight at sea (July 5, 1:533; July 13, 1:604).Footnote ⁵⁸ Also, the commercial interests of the North would suffer oppression if power shifted to the agrarian West (July 11, 1:583; July 13, 1:604). Like many northerner delegates, Morris worried that western migration would depopulate the North, but not the South, costing the North its majority status in the union. He foresaw an inevitable conjoining of southern and western interests against the interests of the mid-Atlantic and northern states: “It has been said that N.C., S.C., and Georgia only will in a little time have a majority of the people of America. They must in that case include the great interior Country, and every thing was to be apprehended from their getting the power into their hands” (July 13, 1:604–5). Not remarked on the occasion, but no doubt in the back of Morris's mind, was the prospect of slavery's expansion into the West.Footnote ⁵⁹ Hence Morris wished to keep the country's political center of gravity firmly in the East, even while acknowledging that western settlement could not be prevented (August 29, 2:454).

Article XVII of the Committee of Detail report addressed the issue of new states. Morris moved that the provision for admission “on the same terms with the original States” be omitted on grounds that “to bind down the Legislature” was improper (August 29, 2:454). When he tried for discriminations in mid-July, he was roughed up in debate, especially by Wilson, who observed that such a policy would replicate the oppression visited on American colonies by the British Parliament, and that the certain result would be, as before, separation and independence (July 13, 1:605). This time the Convention became entangled in questions about the voluntary, or involuntary, disjunction of territories from their parent states. Over the course of two days (August 29–30), the Convention took some eleven votes respecting the motion by Morris to omit, his substitute proposal, other substitutes to his substitute, and related matters. Morris won all eleven votes, concluding with a 10–1 adoption of his lightly amended, substitute proposal. Throughout it all, no one contested the removal of “same terms” treatment of western states, even though one delegate explained, just before the first and most consequential vote, that “existing small states enjoy equality now” because they are already in the union, and that “this reason is not applicable to new Western states” (August 29, 2:454). For reasons not at all clear but likely having to do with backstage maneuverings orchestrated by Morris,Footnote ⁶⁰ the Convention castoff its preference for no discriminations and voted to leave equal or unequal treatment of new states to the discretion of the legislature.Footnote ⁶¹ A small victory was this, perhaps never to be acted on, but one that showed Morris, the foxy Machiavellian, striving to preserve his vision of America.