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Front Page  Quotations Other Quotes Week of 2 November, 2004
About this Quotation:
There are three points to make concerning Bryce. The first is that it is always stimulating to see America through the eyes of a foreigner, like Alexis de Tocqueville or Harriet Martineau. Secondly, that this quote was posted while an election was taking place in the U.S.. And thirdly, that like other Victorian gentlemen such as Herbert Spencer or Lysander Spooner, he sported a luxuriant beard which one can see in the photograph.
Other quotes from this week:Other quotes about Presidents, Kings, Tyrants, & Despots:- 2013: Shaftesbury opposes the nonresisting test bill before the House of Lords as a step towards “absolute and arbitrary” government (1675)
- 2012: Madison on “Parchment Barriers” and the defence of liberty II (1788)
- 2012: James Mill on the “sinister interests” of those who wield political power (1825)
- 2012: Viscount Bryce on how the President in wartime becomes “a sort of dictator” (1888)
- 2012: Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837)
- 2011: Madame de Staël on the tyrant Napoleon (1818)
- 2011: John Adams on how absolute power intoxicates those who excercise that power (1814)
- 2011: Thomas Paine on the absurdity of an hereditary monarchy (1791)
- 2011: Paine on the idea that the law is king (1776)
- 2010: Milton on the ease with which tyrants find their academic defenders (1651)
- 2010: Jefferson’s list of objections to the British Empire in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776)
- 2010: Tocqueville on the form of despotism the government would assume in democratic America (1840)
- 2010: Milton argues that a Monarchy wants the people to be prosperous only so it can better fleece them (1660)
- 2010: Cato denounces generals like Julius Caesar who use success on the battlefield as a stepping stone to political power (1710)
- 2010: Cicero on the need for politicians to place the interests of those they represent ahead of their own private interests (1st century BC)
- 2010: Madame de Staël argues that Napoleon was able to create a tyrannical government by pandering to men’s interests, corrupting public opinion, and waging constant war (1817)
- 2010: Jefferson on how Congress misuses the inter-state commerce and general welfare clauses to promote the centralization of power (1825)
- 2010: Livy on the irrecoverable loss of liberty under the Roman Empire (10 AD)
- 2009: Jefferson feared that it would only be a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into a form of “elective despotism” (1785)
- 2009: Lao Tzu discusses how “the great sages” (or wise advisors) protect the interests of the prince and thus “prove to be but guardians in the interest of the great thieves” (600 BC)
- 2009: Macaulay argues that politicians are less interested in the economic value of public works to the citizens than they are in their own reputation, embezzlement and
“jobs for the boys” (1830)
- 2009: Althusius argues that a political leader is bound by his oath of office which, if violated, requires his removal (1614)
- 2009: Richard Overton shoots An Arrow against all Tyrants from the prison of Newgate into the prerogative bowels of the arbitrary House of Lords and all other usurpers and tyrants whatsoever (1646):
- 2008: Lord Acton writes to Bishop Creighton that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (1887)
- 2008: Edward Gibbon gloomily observed that in a unified empire like the Roman there was nowhere to escape, whereas with a multiplicity of states there were always gaps and interstices to hide in (1776)
- 2008: Thomas Hodgskin wonders how despotism comes to a country and concludes that the “first step” taken towards despotism gives it the power to take a second and a third - hence it must be stopped in its tracks at the very first sign (1813)
- 2008: Thucydides on political intrigue in the divided city of Corcyra caused by the “desire to rule” (5thC BC)
- 2008: George Washington warns that the knee jerk reaction of citizens to problems is to seek a solution in the creation of a “new monarch”(1786)
- 2008: Plato warns of the people’s protector who, once having tasted blood, turns into a wolf and a tyrant (340s BC)
- 2007: George Washington warns the nation in his Farewell Address, that love of power will tend to create a real despotism in America unless proper checks and balances are maintained to limit government power (1796)
- 2006: After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 John Milton was concerned with both how the triumphalist monarchists would treat the English people and how the disheartened English people would face their descendants (1660)
- 2006: Benjamin Constant argued that mediocre men, when they acquired power, became “more envious, more obstinate, more immoderate, and more convulsive” than men with talent (1815)
- 2005: Thomas Jefferson opposed vehemently the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 which granted the President enormous powers showing that the government had become a tyranny which desired to govern with "a rod of iron" (1798)
- 2005: John Milton laments the case of a people who won their liberty “in the field” but who then foolishly “ran their necks again into the yoke” of tyranny (1660)
- 2005: Adam Ferguson notes that “implicit submission to any leader, or the uncontrouled exercise of any power” leads to a form of military government and ultimately despotism (1767)
- 2005: Edward Gibbon believed that unless public liberty was defended by “intrepid and vigilant guardians” any constitution would degenerate into despotism (1776)
- 2005: Montesquieu states that the Roman Empire fell because the costs of its military expansion introduced corruption and the loyalty of its soldiers was transferred from the City to its generals (1734)
- 2005: John Milton believes men live under a “double tyranny” within (the tyranny of custom and passions) which makes them blind to the tyranny of government without (1649)
- 2005: Vicesimus Knox tries to persuade an English nobleman that some did not come into the world with “saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths” and some others like him came “ready booted and spurred to ride the rest to death” (1793)
- 2004: Thomas Gordon believes that bigoted Princes are subject to the “blind control” of other “Directors and Masters” who work behind the scenes (1737)
- 2004: Algernon Sidney’s Motto was that his Hand (i.e. his pen) was an Enemy to all Tyrants (1660)
- 2004: Thomas Gordon compares the Greatness of Spartacus with that of Julius Caesar (1721)
2 November, 2004Read the full quote in context here. Bryce discusses the office of President and the manner of his election in a Chapter on "The President":
Assuming that there was to be such a magistrate [the office of President], the statesmen of the Convention, like the solid practical men they were, did not try to construct him out of their own brains, but looked to some existing models. They therefore made an enlarged copy of the state governor, or to put the same thing differently, a reduced and improved copy of the English king. He is George III shorn of a part of his prerogative by the intervention of the Senate in treaties and appointments, of another part by the restriction of his action to federal affairs, while his dignity as well as his influence are diminished by his holding office for four years instead of for life. His salary is too small to permit him either to maintain a court or to corrupt the legislature; nor can he seduce the virtue of the citizens by the gift of titles of nobility, for such titles are altogether forbidden. Subject to these precautions, he was meant by the Constitution-framers to resemble the state governor and the British king, not only in being the head of the executive, but in standing apart from and above political parties. He was to represent the nation as a whole, as the governor represented the state commonwealth. The independence of his position, with nothing either to gain or to fear from Congress, would, it was hoped, leave him free to think only of the welfare of the people.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):Assuming that there was to be such a magistrate [the office of President], the statesmen of the Convention, like the solid practical men they were, did not try to construct him out of their own brains, but looked to some existing models. They therefore made an enlarged copy of the state governor, or to put the same thing differently, a reduced and improved copy of the English king. He is George III shorn of a part of his prerogative by the intervention of the Senate in treaties and appointments, of another part by the restriction of his action to federal affairs, while his dignity as well as his influence are diminished by his holding office for four years instead of for life. His salary is too small to permit him either to maintain a court or to corrupt the legislature; nor can he seduce the virtue of the citizens by the gift of titles of nobility, for such titles are altogether forbidden. Subject to these precautions, he was meant by the Constitution-framers to resemble the state governor and the British king, not only in being the head of the executive, but in standing apart from and above political parties. He was to represent the nation as a whole, as the governor represented the state commonwealth. The independence of his position, with nothing either to gain or to fear from Congress, would, it was hoped, leave him free to think only of the welfare of the people.
This idea appears in the method provided for the election of a president. To have left the choice of the chief magistrate to a direct popular vote over the whole country would have raised a dangerous excitement, and would have given too much encouragement to candidates of merely popular gifts. To have entrusted it to Congress would have not only subjected the executive to the legislature in violation of the principle which requires these departments to be kept distinct, but have tended to make him the creature of one particular faction instead of the choice of the nation. Hence the device of a double election was adopted, perhaps with a faint reminiscence of the methods by which the doge was then still chosen at Venice and the emperor in Germany. The Constitution directs each state to choose a number of presidential electors equal to the number of its representatives in both houses of Congress. Some weeks later, these electors meet in each state on a day fixed by law, and give their votes in writing for the president and vice-president. The votes are transmitted, sealed up, to the capital and there opened by the president of the Senate in the presence of both houses and counted. To preserve the electors from the influence of faction, it is provided that they shall not be members of Congress, nor holders of any federal office. This plan was expected to secure the choice by the best citizens of each state, in a tranquil and deliberate way, of the man whom they in their unfettered discretion should deem fittest to be chief magistrate of the Union. Being themselves chosen electors on account of their personal merits, they would be better qualified than the masses to select an able and honourable man for president. Moreover, as the votes are counted promiscuously, and not by states, each elector’s voice would have its weight. He might be in a minority in his own state, but his vote would nevertheless tell because it would be added to those given by electors in other states for the same candidate.
No part of their scheme seems to have been regarded by the Constitution-makers of 1787 with more complacency than this, although no part had caused them so much perplexity. No part has so utterly belied their expectations. The presidential electors have become a mere cog-wheel in the machine; a mere contrivance for giving effect to the decision of the people. Their personal qualifications are a matter of indifference. They have no discretion, but are chosen under a pledge - a pledge of honour merely, but a pledge which has never (since 1796) been violated - to vote for a particular candidate. In choosing them the people virtually choose the president, and thus the very thing which the men of 1787 sought to prevent has happened - the president is chosen by a popular vote. Let us see how this has come to pass.
[More works by Viscount James Bryce (1838 – 1922)] |
