Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not
obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will
be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.
Such will be the relation between the House of Representatives and their
constituents. Duty, gratitude, interest, ambition itself, are the chords
by which they will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great
mass of the people. It is possible that these may all be insufficient
to control the caprice and wickedness of man. But are they not all that
government will admit, and that human prudence can devise? Are they not
the genuine and the characteristic means by which republican government
provides for the liberty and happiness of the people? Are they not the
identical means on which every State government in the Union relies for
the attainment of these important ends? What then are we to understand
by the objection which this paper has combated? What are we to say to
the men who profess the most flaming zeal for republican government,
yet boldly impeach the fundamental principle of it; who pretend to be
champions for the right and the capacity of the people to choose their
own rulers, yet maintain that they will prefer those only who will
immediately and infallibly betray the trust committed to them?
Were the objection to be read by one who had not seen the mode
prescribed by the Constitution for the choice of representatives, he
could suppose nothing less than that some unreasonable qualification
of property was annexed to the right of suffrage; or that the right of
eligibility was limited to persons of particular families or fortunes;
or at least that the mode prescribed by the State constitutions was in
some respect or other, very grossly departed from. We have seen how far
such a supposition would err, as to the two first points. Nor would
it, in fact, be less erroneous as to the last. The only difference
discoverable between the two cases is, that each representative of the
United States will be elected by five or six thousand citizens; whilst
in the individual States, the election of a representative is left to
about as many hundreds. Will it be pretended that this difference is
sufficient to justify an attachment to the State governments, and an
abhorrence to the federal government? If this be the point on which the
objection turns, it deserves to be examined.
Is it supported by REASON? This cannot be said, without maintaining
that five or six thousand citizens are less capable of choosing a fit
representative, or more liable to be corrupted by an unfit one, than
five or six hundred. Reason, on the contrary, assures us, that as in so
great a number a fit representative would be most likely to be found, so
the choice would be less likely to be diverted from him by the intrigues
of the ambitious or the ambitious or the bribes of the rich.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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