For this great purpose certain political functions are assigned to be performed, under the auspices of the State or federal principle, and certain others under the popular principle. It was the intention of the constitution that these functions should be performed in conformity to its principle. If that principle is in fact a government of a minority, then these functions ought to be performed by a minority. When the federal principle is performing a function, according to this idea, a majority of the States ought to decide. And, by the same mode of reasoning, when the popular principle is performing a function, then a minority of the people ought to decide. This brings us precisely to the question of the amendment. It is the intention of the constitution that the popular principle shall operate in the election of a President and Vice President. It is also the intention of the constitution that the popular principle, in discharging the functions committed to it by the constitution, should operate by a majority and not by a minority. That the majority of the people should be driven, by an unforeseen state of parties, to the necessity of relinquishing their will in the election of one or the other of these officers, or that the principle of majority, in a function confided to the popular will, should be deprived of half its rights, and be laid under a necessity of violating its duty to preserve the other half, is not the intention of the constitution. But the gentleman from Connecticut has leaped over all this ground, and gotten into the House of Representatives, without considering the principles of the constitution, as applicable to the election of President and Vice President by Electors, and distinguishing them from an election by the House of Representatives. And by mingling and interweaving the two modes of electing together, a considerable degree of complexity has been produced. If, however, it is admitted that in an election of a President and Vice President by Electors, the will of the electing majority ought fairly to operate, and that an election by the will of a minority would be an abuse or corruption of the principles of the constitution, then it follows that an amendment, to avoid this abuse, accords with, and is necessary to save these principles. In like manner, had an abuse crept into the same election, whenever it was to be made under the federal principle by the House of Representatives, enabling a minority of States to carry the election, it would not have violated the intention of the constitution to have corrected this abuse, also, by an amendment. For, sir, I must suppose it to have been the intention of the constitution that both the federal principle and the popular principle should operate in those functions respectively assigned to them, perfectly and not imperfectly--that is, the former by a majority of States, and the latter by a majority of the people.