The solution of this effect exists in the species of political craft similar to priestcraft. Mankind were anciently deprived of their religious liberty by a dissemination of a fanatical zeal for some idol; in times of ignorance, this idol was of physical structure; and when that fraud was detected, a metaphysical idol in the shape of a tenet or dogma was substituted for it, infinitely more pernicious in its effects, because infinitely more difficult of detection. The same system has been pursued by political craft. It has ever labored to excite the same species of idolatry and superstition for the same reason, namely, to conceal its own frauds and vices. Sometimes it sets up a physical, at others a metaphysical idol, as the object of vulgar superstition. Of one, the former “Grand Monarch of France;” of the other, the present “Church and State” tenet of England is an evidence. And if our constitution is to be made like the “Church and State” tenet of England, a metaphysical political idol, which it will be sacrilege to amend, even for the sake of saving both that and the national liberty; and if, like that tenet, it is to be exposed to all the means which centuries may suggest to vicious men for its substantial destruction, it is not hard to imagine that it also may become a monument of the inefficacy of unalterable forms of political law to correct avarice and ambition in the new and multifarious shapes they are for ever assuming. It has been urged, sir, by the gentlemen in opposition, in a mode, as if they supposed we wished to conceal or deny it, that one object of this amendment is to bestow upon the majority a power to elect a Vice President. Sir, I avow it to be so. This is one object of the amendment; and the other, as to which I have heretofore expressed my sentiments, is to enable the Electors, by perfecting the election of a President, to keep it out of the House of Representatives. Are not both objects correct, if, as I have endeavored to prove, the constitution, in all cases where it refers elections to the popular principle, intended that principle to act by majorities? Did the constitution intend that any minor faction should elect a Vice President? If not, then an amendment to prevent it accords with, and is representative of, the constitution. Permit me here again to illustrate by an historical case. England, in the time of Charles the Second, was divided into two parties--Protestants and Papists--and the heir to the throne was a Papist. The Protestants, constituting the majority of the nation, passed an exclusion bill, but it was defeated, and the minor Papist faction, in the person of the Duke of York, got possession of executive power. The consequences were, domestic oppressions and rebellions, foreign wars occasionally for almost a century, and the foundation of a national debt, under which the nation has been ever since groaning, and under which the Government will finally expire.