It is surprising to hear JUDGE HOPKINSON say, that the hundreds of individuals who compose the State Legislatures, from all parts of their respective states, “have no means of knowing the public sentiments which are not equally open to the Senators; nor are their inducements to conform to them more persuasive and strong.” If this was not an error, it would be perhaps best for the legislatures to delegate their powers to several individuals, and go home. Those wise men, whose judgment is capable of protecting the state from its own errors, and at the same time, know so well public sentiment, and have every inducement to conform to it, would constitute the best legislature. But so much of an error is the first part of the proposition deemed, that the usual and most accurate method of examining into popular sentiment, is by the sentiments of the representatives. Each is supposed best to know and to represent the opinions of his own county or district, and their united will is thought to be as accurate an approximation to the will of the people as human ingenuity can make. There is nothing else which affords us even data for estimating that will. The individual Senator has not probably a better knowledge of the wishes of the people than many of the single individuals who compose the legislature, especially if he is sent from a remote state, and has been long absent. The inducements which the Senator may have to conform to the will of the people, may be as persuasive and strong as those of the members of the state legislature; and if they are, he will obey, unless his inducements to conform to the will of some one else are more persuasive and stronger. A Senator is a great man, and may expect executive promotion if this or that man is President, or this or that measure carried. We must suppose the latter inducements to preponderate, when he frustrates the will of the people, expressed in the only form in which it can reach him.