WHAT WASHINGTON THOUGHT OF A THIRD TERM. 325 prohibiting re-election was at that time promptly and emphatically voted down, to come up for debate again later. There appeared, says Curtis, a "solicitude to provide for a re-election of the incumbent.” A proposal to reduce the seven-years’ term to four years and to leave the incumbent subject to re-election " met the approbation of a large majority of the States.” (Curtis, vol. n, p. 391— 2, p. 235-6. Bancroft, vol. n, p. 22, p. 170, p. 179.) Re-eligibility once thus conceded, a term shorter than seven years was insisted on. The party favoring an indefinite tenure "during good behavior” was now appeased, because re-election would be the natural result of good behavior, as is the case in banking and commer- cial concerns, where permanency and stability are of the highest possible moment, and where short official terms result in long tenure through the repeated re-election of the incumbent. The proposed term was reduced first from seven to six years, re-eligibility,which would have extended the incumbency to twelve, eighteen or more years, and our present system of choice by electors being incorporated. Only at the close of the Convention was the term once more reduced, this time to four years, with no restraint imposed on re-election. Every conceivable phase of this question had been successively presented, from a one-term limit to a life-tenure,— from a term of two years at the least to a twenty years’ term at the longest,—all had been presented and rehearsed in the interested hearing of Washington, by the strong body of men who presently thereafter produced the " Federalist ” and, against odds, secured the acceptance of the Constitution by the country, and succeeded in establishing the present form of government. The artificers of this wonderful mechanism dined together formally upon the completion of their labors, and Washington retired from the table early, as his diary records, " to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed.” One more prefatory word. If we were to suppose, in the absence of evidence, that 'Washington as a matter of principle objected to re-election for himself or any other incumbent of the Presidency, and favored rotation in the Presidential oflice as a matter of principle,— and it is not
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