It is not yet published, nor will be for some days. This copy has
been ceded to me as a favor.
How do you like our new constitution? I confess there are things in it,
which stagger all my dispositions to subscribe to what such an Assembly
has proposed. The House of federal representatives will not be adequate
to the management of affairs, either foreign or federal. Their President
seems a bad edition of a Polish King. He may be elected from four years
to four years, for life. Reason and experience prove to us, that a
chief magistrate, so continuable, is an office for life. When one or
two generations shall have proved, that this is an office for life, it
becomes, on every succession, worthy of intrigue, of bribery, of force,
and even of foreign interference. It will be of great consequence to
France and England, to have America governed by a Galloman or Angloman.
Once in office, and possessing the military force of the Union, without
the aid or check of a council, he would not be easily dethroned, even
if the people could be induced to withdraw their votes from him. I wish
that at the end of the four years, they had made him for ever ineligible
a second time.
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