Under this view of the subject, the amendment ought to be considered. Then the question will be, whether it is calculated or not to cause the popular principle, applied by the constitution in the first instance, to operate perfectly, and to prevent the abuse of an election by a minority? If it is, it corresponds with the intention, diminishes nothing of the rights of the smaller States, and, of course, affords them no cause of jealousy. Sir, it could never have been the intention of the constitution to produce a state of things by which a majority of the popular principle should be under the necessity of voting against its judgment to secure a President, and by which a minor faction should acquire a power capable of defeating the majority in the election of President, or of electing a Vice President contrary to the will of the electing principle. To permit this abuse would be a fraudulent mode of defeating the operation of the popular principle in this election, in order to transfer it to the federal principle--to disinherit the people for the sake of endowing the House of Representatives; whereas it was an accidental and not an artificial disappointment in the election of a President, against which the constitution intended to provide. A fair and not an unfair attempt to elect was previously to be made by the popular principle, before the election was to go into the House of Representatives. And if the people of all the States, both large and small, should, by an abuse of the real design of the constitution, be bubbled out of the election of executive power, by leaving to them the nominal right of an abortive effort, and transferring to the House of Representatives the substantial right of a real election, nothing will remain but to corrupt the election in that House by some of those abuses of which elections by diets are susceptible, to bestow upon executive power an aspect both formidable and inconsistent with the principles by which the constitution intended to mould it.