The Constitution provides that the President and Vice-President shall hold office for the term of four years. The proper length of term, and the propriety of forbidding re-election, were discussed in the Convention and the four-year period with eligibility to re-election finally agreed upon. Nothing is said in the Constitution as to the number of times the same person may be re-elected President, but, as is well known, the propriety of restricting the number of successive terms has become firmly rooted in the American mind.

With reference to this third term tradition one observation may perhaps be made. This is, that the doctrine is generally considered to have been first stated by Washington in his " Farewell Address." It would appear, however, as the historian McMaster has pointed out,7 that Washington did not there attempt to lay down a principle, but simply to explain that he did not feel that the then condition of the country required him to serve a third term. He says: " The acceptance and continuance hitherto in office, to which your suffrages have twice called me, have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to duty, and to a deference to what appeared to be your wishes. ... I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of this inclination incompatible with the pursuit of duty or propriety." Jefferson was the first to decline a third term upon principle. Having been invited by a number of the States to stand for a third term he wrote (December 10, 1807) : " That I should lay down my charge at a proper period is as much a duty as to have borne it faithfully. If some termination to the services of the Chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance. Believing that a representative government responsible at short periods of election is that which produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind, I feel it a duty to do no act which shall substantially impair that principle; and I should unwillingly be the first person who, disregarding the sound precedent set by an illustrious predecessor, should furnish the first example of prolongation beyond the second term of office."

6 Vol. XXXVIII. 50. " The Succession of the Vice-President under the Constitution. An Interrogation."

From this time the propriety of principle was generally recognized. McMaster does indeed think that Jackson's popularity was great enough to have secured him a third term had he been willing to break the rule. As is well known strenuous but futile efforts were made to secure a third nomination for Grant.

How strong the sentiment might be to giving three or more terms to the same person, so long as not more than two are successive, has never been tested. President Roosevelt upon his election in 1905 declared that, in accordance with the spirit, if not the literal requirements, of the tradition against a third term, he would consider the three years which he served as the successor of McKinley as a first term for himself, and that he would not, therefore, be a candidate for renomination in 1908.

7 In the chapter entitled " The Third Term Tradition " in the volume entitled With the Fathers.