* * *
Every just view that can be taken of this subject,
admonishes the public, of the necessity of a rigid adherence to the simple, the
received and the fundamental doctrine of the constitution, that the power to
declare war including the power of judging of the causes of war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature: that the executive has no
right, in any case to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for
declaring war: that the right of convening and informing Congress, whenever
such a question seems to call for a decision, is all the right which the
constitution has deemed requisite or proper: and that for such more than for
any other contingency, this right was specially given to the executive.
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the
legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such
a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too
great for any one man: not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many
centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy.
War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical
force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In
war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which
is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be
multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be
enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the
executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions, and most dangerous
weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or
venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of
peace.
Hence it has grown into an axiom that the executive is the department
of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice
of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its
influence.
As the best praise then that can be pronounced on an
executive magistrate, is, that he is the friend of peace; a praise that rises
in its value, as there may be a known capacity to shine in war: so it must be
one of the most sacred duties of a free people, to mark the first omen in the
society, of principles that may stimulate the hopes of other magistrates of
another propensity, to intrude into questions on which its gratification
depends. If a free people be a wise people also, they will not forget that the
danger of surprise can never be so great, as when the advocates for the prerogative
of war, can sheathe it in a symbol of peace.
* * *
Letters of Helvidius, No. IV, August-September 1793, The
Writings of James Madison, Galliard Hunt, ed. (1906), VI: 174-75. (Online
Library of Liberty)
