The corruption they feared was crude—a bag of coins passed in a cloakroom, a foreign prince’s jeweled snuffbox slipped into a delegate’s pocket.
In the summer of 1787 and through the bitter ratification debates that followed, the men who built the American republic returned again and again to one question: how do you prevent the men who govern from enriching themselves at the public’s expense?
It was not abstract. They had seen it in the British Parliament, where seats were bought and sold like livestock. They had seen it in the colonial governors, who treated their appointments as licenses to plunder. They had read their Montesquieu and their Tacitus, and they knew that the rot of self-enrichment had eaten greater republics than theirs.
Hamilton, writing as Publius in Federalist No. 72, warned of the “avaricious man” who would treat his time in office as a harvest to be reaped before the season ended. Madison, the architect of structural checks, argued in Federalist No. 51 that ambition must be made to counteract ambition—that the machinery of separated powers would keep any single faction from looting the treasury.
But the Anti-Federalists were not persuaded. The writer known as Brutus, and “Cato”—likely Governor George Clinton of New York—argued that no parchment barrier could restrain men who had determined to enrich themselves. George Mason warned that the presidential pardon power would let a corrupt executive bury the evidence of his own crimes.
In the letters that follow, Hamilton, Madison, and Brutus take up the question that none of them could settle in 1788—and that two and a half centuries have not settled since.
These letters are entirely imaginary—offered with wit, affection, and no partisan agenda. We hope they make you think, and perhaps send you back to what the founders actually wrote.
Source: Multiple Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers on Corruption and Self-Enrichment
Primary sources: Federalist No. 10 (Madison), No. 22 (Hamilton), No. 51 (Madison), No. 55 (Madison), No. 62 (Madison), No. 65 (Hamilton), No. 68 (Hamilton), Nos. 72–73 (Hamilton), No. 76 (Hamilton); Anti-Federalist: Brutus No. 1 and No. 16, Cato Nos. 4–5, Federal Farmer Letters, Centinel Letters; George Mason’s Objections to the Constitution (1787).
Hamilton warned in Federalist No. 72 that an avaricious president would “make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory.” The Anti-Federalist “Cato”—likely New York Governor George Clinton—sneered that “the President’s opportunities of accumulating wealth… will certainly not be neglected.” Madison designed structural checks in the conviction that ambition would counteract ambition. Here, all three camps speculate about a republic where the safeguards they debated have been tested for more than two centuries—and where the avarice they feared has proved remarkably resourceful.
* * *
New York, March 15, 1788
Dear Madison,
I have been much occupied these past weeks with a speculation that has robbed me of sleep. We have labored to design a government in which the avaricious man—and there will always be such men, drawn to power as moths to flame—will find his designs thwarted at every turn. The Emoluments Clauses. The requirement of Senate confirmation. The power of impeachment for bribery. 
The fixed compensation that ensures Congress can neither starve the Executive into submission nor bribe him into compliance.
And yet I find myself haunted by a question: What if, in some distant age, the machinery we have built proves insufficient—not because it was poorly designed, but because the operators discover methods of enrichment we could not have foreseen?
I wrote in my recent essay that an avaricious man, knowing his time in office must end, would feel a propensity “to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory.” I stand by the warning. But consider this, my friend: What if such a man discovers that the harvest need not be transitory at all? That he might use the intelligence gathered in his official capacity to enrich himself through private dealings conducted in plain sight? That he might accept gifts so lavishly disguised as hospitality that no statute could easily reach them?
We have forbidden emoluments from foreign princes. But what of domestic princes—men of such vast private fortune that their generosity to an officeholder might purchase influence as surely as any king’s bribe?
Your consideration of this would ease a troubled mind.
Your obedient servant,
Hamilton
* * *
Montpelier, March 29, 1788
My Dear Hamilton,
Your speculation arrives at a moment when I find myself already wrestling with the limits of our design. I have argued—and I believe it still—that the structure of the government must be so arranged that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. 
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
But I confess your question presses upon a weakness I have not fully resolved. The checks we have constructed presume that each branch will jealously guard its prerogatives against the others. What if, in some future age, the factions I warned of in my tenth paper grow so powerful that the branches themselves become instruments of faction—more devoted to protecting their partisans than to checking their corruption?
Consider the Senate. I have written that a bicameral legislature doubles the security to the people, requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies before any scheme of perfidy can succeed. But what if the Senate, rather than checking the corruption of the Executive, becomes its accomplice—declining to convict even when the evidence of bribery lies before them, because the accused wears the colors of their faction?
And what of the judiciary? We have given judges tenure during good behaviour precisely to insulate them from corrupting pressures. But this same independence means they answer to no earthly tribunal. If a judge of the highest court were to accept lavish gifts from a wealthy patron—and if no mechanism existed to compel his accounting—the very independence we designed as a shield for liberty would become the shield behind which corruption shelters.
I designed the auxiliary precautions. I did not design them to be voluntarily abandoned by the very men entrusted with their operation.
Your friend and servant,
Madison
* * *
New York, April 10, 1788
To the Citizens of the State of New York:
I have received intelligence of a private correspondence between certain advocates of the proposed Constitution in which they confess themselves troubled by the very dangers I have labored these many months to bring before you.
It gives me no satisfaction to say I warned of this. I wrote that no security was provided against corruption and undue influence in a system that concentrates such vast power in so few hands. 
The gentlemen who designed this government placed their faith in parchment barriers and mechanical checks. They supposed that the separation of powers would prevent any man from converting his office into a personal treasury.
But I ask you plainly: What restrains a man who has already determined to enrich himself? The Emoluments Clause? He will call his emoluments by another name—gifts of friendship, gestures of hospitality, the innocent fruits of longstanding private association. The requirement of financial disclosure? He will simply decline to disclose. And who shall compel him? The very colleagues who benefit from the same arrangement?
Our colleague Colonel Mason has put his finger on a danger the Federalists have not satisfactorily answered. The President, Mason warns, may use his power of pardon to shield those who have aided his own corruption. He may pardon the very men who carried his bribes, who arranged his secret enrichments, who know where the money was hidden—and by pardoning them, he prevents the discovery of his own guilt. What check exists against this? Impeachment, they tell us. But impeachment requires the Senate to convict—and if the Senate is itself composed of the President’s partisans, the pardon power becomes the final instrument of corruption: the ability to erase the evidence and silence the witnesses.
I argued for rotation in government—that no man should hold the same office so long that he forgets he is a servant and begins to believe he is a master. I argued for representatives numerous enough that the people might know their character and hold them to account. I was told these precautions were unnecessary. That the Constitution’s machinery was sufficient.
The machinery is only as honest as the men who operate it. And when the operators discover that the penalties for dishonesty are light, that the enforcers are themselves complicit, and that the pardon power can bury what the treasury cannot hide—the machinery will grind on, but it will grind for the benefit of its operators, not the people it was built to serve.
BRUTUS
* * *
New York, April 22, 1788
Dear Madison,
I have seen a copy of the latest essay by our friend Brutus, and I confess it stings—not because he is wrong in every particular, but because he is not entirely wrong.
We designed a system of checks. We did not design a system that could survive the wholesale abandonment of the norms upon which those checks depend. The Constitution forbids emoluments. But if the officers of government decide, collectively, that the word “emolument” means less than Dr. Johnson defined it—if they narrow the definition by degrees until it covers only the crudest bribe while permitting every subtle variation—then the clause remains on the parchment while the corruption it was designed to prevent flourishes beside it.
And Mason’s objection about the pardon—I will not pretend it does not trouble me. I have argued that the pardon power, wisely used, is an instrument of mercy and national reconciliation. But Brutus is correct that no power designed for mercy is safe from a man determined to use it for concealment. If the President can silence his accomplices by pardoning them before they testify, then the pardon is no longer mercy—it is the final act of the crime.
I wrote that impeachment would result in “perpetual ostracism from the esteem and confidence, and honors and emoluments of his country.” I believed this. I believed the disgrace would be sufficient deterrent. But what if the disgrace is merely partisan? What if half the nation celebrates what the other half condemns? What if the man impeached for bribery is pardoned, or commuted, or simply outlasts his accusers and returns to applause?
Madison, I begin to fear that the Anti-Federalists understood something we were reluctant to admit: that written law, however ingenious, cannot long restrain men who feel no shame in breaking it. Our Constitution presumes a minimum of republican virtue. If that minimum is not met, the cleverest architecture in the world will not save the Republic from those who would plunder it.
I remain, with less certainty than I should like,
Your obedient servant,
Hamilton
* * *
Montpelier, May 5, 1788
My Dear Hamilton,
You ask whether the machinery will hold if the operators abandon virtue. I will answer you directly: it will not.
I wrote that if men were angels, no government would be necessary. I did not write the corollary, which I now suspect to be equally true: if men are determined to be devils, no government designed by mortals can contain them.
The system we built was never designed to prevent corruption absolutely. It was designed to make corruption difficult, expensive, and conspicuous—so that the people, seeing it, might act. If a future generation permits it to become easy, cheap, and invisible—if they allow their officers to enrich themselves through methods we could not have imagined, and then decline to punish them because factional loyalty outweighs republican duty—then the fault lies not in the architecture but in the citizens who ceased to maintain it.
Brutus was right about one thing: we rely upon a presumption that rulers will be held accountable. Remove that presumption, and every safeguard we have written is merely ink on parchment—preserved, venerated, and ignored.
And Mason’s warning about the pardon—I must concede its force. I answered Mason at the Convention that impeachment was the remedy for a president who abused his power. I still believe this. But I cannot deny that a remedy which depends upon the courage of senators is only as strong as the senators themselves. If they lack the will, the pardon power becomes what Mason feared: the instrument by which a corrupt president erases the record of his own corruption.
I take no comfort in this conclusion. But I will not deny it.
Your friend,
Madison
* * * * *
If they only knew… that the Emoluments Clauses would still be on the page two and a half centuries later—and that officeholders would get rich anyway. Not through the crude bribery the Founders prohibited, but through the thousand smaller corruptions they couldn’t have named: insider trades placed while the ink on classified briefings was still wet, undisclosed gifts from billionaires repackaged as friendship, lobbying contracts signed the morning after leaving office, and pardons deployed to bury the evidence before it reached a courtroom. Hamilton warned about the avaricious man. Madison built the checks. Brutus said the checks wouldn’t hold. Mason said the pardon would finish the job. All of them were right—and the Republic is still paying the bill.
Questions for Reflection
- The Founders designed the Emoluments Clauses to prevent foreign and domestic corruption. If they could see how modern officeholders accumulate wealth, would they consider their safeguards a success, a failure, or something more complicated?
- Madison argued that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Brutus countered that the ambitious would simply cooperate to protect each other. Which prediction has proved more accurate in your lifetime?
- Mason warned that the pardon power could be used to conceal a president’s own crimes. Hamilton believed the disgrace of impeachment would be deterrent enough. In an age when political disgrace is often temporary and partisan, which man’s judgment do you trust?
- Madison concluded that the system was designed to make corruption “difficult, expensive, and conspicuous—so that the people, seeing it, might act.” If the people see the corruption and choose not to act, does the fault lie with the Constitution’s design or with the citizens it was written to protect?
This article reflects human judgment, restraint, and imperfection consistent with authored prose.
Copyright © 2026 by Charles Cranston Jett
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