The Abolition of the English monarchy appears in Federalist No. 72 as a pointed historical comparison in the argument over executive tenure. The essay recalls that the British House of Commons had abolished both royalty and aristocracy and overturned ancient establishments in Church and State; against that precedent, it asks why an elected President, serving four years with confined constitutional powers, should inspire alarm.

The Historical Precedent

The essay presents the House of Commons’ actions as the culmination of a gradual rise in legislative influence. From what it calls feeble beginnings—the mere power to assent to or disagree with a new tax—the Commons advanced until it became a coequal branch of the legislature and could reduce the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges of the nobility within limits it considered compatible with free government.

The account then marks a more radical reversal: in one instance, the Commons abolished both royalty and aristocracy and overturned the established order in Church as well as State. The episode is invoked not as a full narrative of how the change unfolded, but as evidence of the scale of political transformation a representative legislature had been able to accomplish.

The Comparison with the Presidency

The historical example answers a specific objection to a four-year presidential term. The essay reasons that a limited duration gives an executive some firmness: a President need not act as though public judgment at the next election were immediately imminent throughout the entire term. Yet four years, it argues, is not enough to warrant fears that the office will endanger public liberty.

The Commons supplies the contrast. If a legislature that began with a narrow fiscal check could eventually curb the crown and nobility, abolish the monarchy and aristocracy, and overturn ancient establishments, the essay asks what should be feared from a President elected for four years and restricted to the powers assigned by the proposed Constitution. Its answer is deliberately ironic: the greater danger might be that such a President proves unequal to the task the Constitution gives him, not that he overwhelms liberty through encroachment.

Political Significance in the Argument

The episode turns a familiar British institutional history into a measure of relative power. Legislative capacity to alter entrenched institutions stands beside the proposed executive’s limited authority and finite term. In the essay’s reasoning, the example therefore supports executive independence as a necessary ingredient of government while resisting the claim that a four-year term makes the office despotic.

The reference does not describe the abolition as an uncomplicated model for the proposed American system. Its function is comparative and argumentative: the Commons’ extraordinary reach makes the prospect of presidential overreach seem less plausible, while the essay’s final warning shifts attention toward the possibility of an executive too weak to perform its constitutional duties.