Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 25

PROMISED LAND

deemed domestic policy the business of the
legislature, and foreign policy that of the
executive. Sir William Blackstone's volumi-
nous commentaries on common law found
ample precedent for the Crown's exclusive
authority over war and diplomacy so long
as it was exercised for the public good in a
constitutional manner.
But Americans also identified strongly
with Britain's countertradition, the "Coun-
try Party" or Whig opposition to executive
caprice. Even Hamilton, who otherwise
insisted that foreign affairs were "executive
altogether" because of their need for unity of
command, secrecy, and dispatch, neverthe-
less conceded in Federalist No. 75 that his-
tory did not warrant so exalted an opinion of
human virtue as to "make it wise to commit
interests of so delicate and momentous a
kind, as those which concern its intercourse
with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal
of . . . a President of the United States."
Abraham Lincoln would echo this wisdom
when he noted that the Framers "resolved
to so frame the Constitution that no one
man should hold power of bringing this
oppression upon us."15 James Madison was
sufficiently worried about executive malfea-
sance that he wanted all residual or implied
constitutional powers to rest with Congress.
In sum, the office of president was a novelty,
and the expectations of the Framers regard-
ing its evolution cannot be fully guessed. But
we can be sure no one wanted to invite the
tyranny of a monarch like George III or a
demagogue like Oliver Cromwell.

W

ashington was inaugurated the first
president in 1789 just one week
before the Estates General convened in Paris
and the French Revolution began. Accord-
ingly, U.S. politics in those formative, prece-
dent-setting years was dominated by vicious
disputes over Washington's declaration of

neutrality, the controversial Jay Treaty with
Britain, the Citizen Genêt Affair, and the
rise of the Democratic-Republican Party led
by Jefferson. That has tempted some authors
to claim that Washington wrote his Farewell
Address of 1796 just to boost the electoral
campaign of Vice President John Adams.
But such a crabbed interpretation ignores
the fact that Washington knew that every-
thing he did and said-especially his parting
words-set a powerful precedent.16 He spoke
quite consciously for the ages. Moreover, the
crises of the 1790s were not atypical but
prototypical, likely to recur throughout the
future, hence they were parables illustrating
Washington's principles. Nor were those
principles recent inspirations. They appear
again and again in his papers dating back
decades.17 We may therefore take Washing-
ton at his word when he says to the American
people that his motive is "zeal for your future
interest."
Washington did not need to exhort the
American people to love liberty, for that is
interwoven "with every ligament of your
hearts." But he recommends "to your fre-
quent review" the qualities required to pre-
serve liberty, including patriotism, wisdom,
virtue, prudence, and unity, the "main pillar
in the edifice of your real independence, the
support of your tranquility at home, your
peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosper-
ity, or that very liberty which you so highly
prize."
Washington then turns to the most com-
mon poison in the body of a republic, the
spirit of faction: "This spirit, unfortunately,
is inseparable from our nature, having its
root in the strongest passions of the human
mind. It exists under different shapes in all
governments, more or less stifled, controlled,
or repressed; but, in those of the popular
form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and
is truly their worst enemy." Therefore it is
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Modern Age - Fall 2014

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