When Hamilton favored making the president a near-monarch to be chosen for life, Franklin noted that he provided living proof that a person’s life sometimes lasted longer than his mental and physical prime. Instead, it would be more democratic to relegate the president to the role of average citizen after his term. The argument that “returning to the mass of the people was degrading,” he said, “was contrary to republican principles. In free Governments the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors and sovereigns. For the former therefore to return among the latter was not to
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