FEDERALIST No. 50



Periodical Appeals to the People Considered

From the New York Packet.

Tuesday, February 5, 1788. 



MADISON



To the People of the State of New York:



IT MAY be contended, perhaps, that instead of OCCASIONAL appeals to the

people, which are liable to the objections urged against them,

PERIODICAL appeals are the proper and adequate means of PREVENTING AND

CORRECTING INFRACTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION.



It will be attended to, that in the examination of these expedients, I

confine myself to their aptitude for ENFORCING the Constitution, by

keeping the several departments of power within their due bounds,

without particularly considering them as provisions for ALTERING the

Constitution itself. In the first view, appeals to the people at fixed

periods appear to be nearly as ineligible as appeals on particular

occasions as they emerge. If the periods be separated by short

intervals, the measures to be reviewed and rectified will have been of

recent date, and will be connected with all the circumstances which tend

to vitiate and pervert the result of occasional revisions. If the

periods be distant from each other, the same remark will be applicable

to all recent measures; and in proportion as the remoteness of the

others may favor a dispassionate review of them, this advantage is

inseparable from inconveniences which seem to counterbalance it. In the

first place, a distant prospect of public censure would be a very feeble

restraint on power from those excesses to which it might be urged by the

force of present motives. Is it to be imagined that a legislative

assembly, consisting of a hundred or two hundred members, eagerly bent

on some favorite object, and breaking through the restraints of the

Constitution in pursuit of it, would be arrested in their career, by

considerations drawn from a censorial revision of their conduct at the

future distance of ten, fifteen, or twenty years? In the next place, the

abuses would often have completed their mischievous effects before the

remedial provision would be applied. And in the last place, where this

might not be the case, they would be of long standing, would have taken

deep root, and would not easily be extirpated.



The scheme of revising the constitution, in order to correct recent

breaches of it, as well as for other purposes, has been actually tried

in one of the States. One of the objects of the Council of Censors which

met in Pennsylvania in 1783 and 1784, was, as we have seen, to inquire,

"whether the constitution had been violated, and whether the legislative

and executive departments had encroached upon each other." This

important and novel experiment in politics merits, in several points of

view, very particular attention. In some of them it may, perhaps, as a

single experiment, made under circumstances somewhat peculiar, be

thought to be not absolutely conclusive. But as applied to the case

under consideration, it involves some facts, which I venture to remark,

as a complete and satisfactory illustration of the reasoning which I

have employed.



First. It appears, from the names of the gentlemen who composed the

council, that some, at least, of its most active members had also been

active and leading characters in the parties which pre-existed in the

State.



Second. It appears that the same active and leading members of the

council had been active and influential members of the legislative and

executive branches, within the period to be reviewed; and even patrons

or opponents of the very measures to be thus brought to the test of the

constitution. Two of the members had been vice-presidents of the State,

and several other members of the executive council, within the seven

preceding years. One of them had been speaker, and a number of others

distinguished members, of the legislative assembly within the same

period.



Third. Every page of their proceedings witnesses the effect of all these

circumstances on the temper of their deliberations. Throughout the

continuance of the council, it was split into two fixed and violent

parties. The fact is acknowledged and lamented by themselves. Had this

not been the case, the face of their proceedings exhibits a proof

equally satisfactory. In all questions, however unimportant in

themselves, or unconnected with each other, the same names stand

invariably contrasted on the opposite columns. Every unbiased observer

may infer, without danger of mistake, and at the same time without

meaning to reflect on either party, or any individuals of either party,

that, unfortunately, PASSION, not REASON, must have presided over their

decisions. When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety

of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on

some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their

opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same.



Fourth. It is at least problematical, whether the decisions of this body

do not, in several instances, misconstrue the limits prescribed for the

legislative and executive departments, instead of reducing and limiting

them within their constitutional places.



Fifth. I have never understood that the decisions of the council on

constitutional questions, whether rightly or erroneously formed, have

had any effect in varying the practice founded on legislative

constructions. It even appears, if I mistake not, that in one instance

the contemporary legislature denied the constructions of the council,

and actually prevailed in the contest.



This censorial body, therefore, proves at the same time, by its

researches, the existence of the disease, and by its example, the

inefficacy of the remedy.



This conclusion cannot be invalidated by alleging that the State in

which the experiment was made was at that crisis, and had been for a

long time before, violently heated and distracted by the rage of party.

Is it to be presumed, that at any future septennial epoch the same State

will be free from parties? Is it to be presumed that any other State, at

the same or any other given period, will be exempt from them? Such an

event ought to be neither presumed nor desired; because an extinction of

parties necessarily implies either a universal alarm for the public

safety, or an absolute extinction of liberty.



Were the precaution taken of excluding from the assemblies elected by

the people, to revise the preceding administration of the government,

all persons who should have been concerned with the government within

the given period, the difficulties would not be obviated. The important

task would probably devolve on men, who, with inferior capacities, would

in other respects be little better qualified. Although they might not

have been personally concerned in the administration, and therefore not

immediately agents in the measures to be examined, they would probably

have been involved in the parties connected with these measures, and

have been elected under their auspices.



PUBLIUS