He would rely upon a tenure of office of prescribed duration to avoid perpetuation of the dictatorship:
“However this important trust be conferred, it is important that its duration should be fixed at a very brief period, incapable of being ever prolonged. In the crises which lead to its adoption, the State is either soon lost, or soon saved; and, the present need passed, the dictatorship becomes either tyrannical or idle. At Rome, where dictators held office for six months only, most of them abdicated before their time was up. If their term had been longer, they might well have tried to prolong it still further, as the decemvirs did when chosen for a year. The dictator had only time to provide against the need that had caused him to be chosen; he had none to think of further projects.”[19]
Rousseau was unwilling to rely upon an “appeal to Heaven.”
John Stuart Mill concluded his ardent defense of representative government with a shattering aside: “I am far from condemning, in cases of extreme necessity, the assumption of absolute power in the form of a temporary dictatorship.”[20] This is not a loose usage of the term “dictatorship,” but a forthright support of a grant of “absolute power” to the dictator.
Just as in political theory the nineteenth century liberals neglected adequately to provide for the problems which war creates, so also in their economic theory they ignored the dislocations of a war period. In his study of war in the nineteenth century,[21] Edmund Silberner has shown how the liberals’ repugnance to the destructiveness of war, their conviction of its immorality and stupidity, coupled with their faith that the economic and cultural bonds which would be created among nations by extensive free trade would prevent future wars, caused them to neglect adequate theoretical treatment of the problem of war in their economic thought. Silberner points out, for example, that in his chief work, Elements of Political Economy (1821), James Mill virtually does not deal at all with war.[22] And Mill’s distinguished son is brief on the subject of war. John Stuart Mill, according to Silberner’s interpretation, seemed to admit that virtually everything that can be said on this theme had already been expressed before him.[23]
Thus do democratic political theorists tacitly admit the existence of a fatal defect in any system of constitutional democracy: Its processes are inadequate to confront and overcome emergency.
Machiavelli
Machiavelli’s view of emergency powers as one element in the whole scheme of limited government furnishes an ironic contrast to the Lockean theory of prerogative. He recognized and attempted to bridge this chasm in democratic political theory:
“Now in a well-ordered republic it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional measures; for although they may for the time be beneficial, yet the precedent is pernicious, for if the practice is once established of disregarding the laws for good objects, they will in a little while be disregarded under that pretext for evil purposes. Thus no republic will ever be perfect if she has not by law provided for everything, having a remedy for every emergency, and fixed rules for applying it.”[24]
Machiavelli attempted, perhaps without complete success, but with greater caution than the later theorists, to design a system of constitutionalized emergency powers.