Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v2.djvu/314

298 possess different powers. The object of this difference of formation is a very important one. The design of the House of Representatives is to represent the people of the United States, and to protect their liberties. The design of the Senate is to give stability and energy to the government. A single democratic assembly would be subject to changes and inconstancy incompatible with a regular administration. But the gentlemen carry their amendment further than the power of recall; they say that a rotation in office ought to be established; that the senators may return to the private walks of life, in order to recover their sense of dependence. I cannot agree with them in this. If the senator is conscious that his reelection depends only on the will of the people, and is not fettered by any law, he will feel an ambition to deserve well of the public. On the contrary, if he knows that no meritorious exertions of his own can procure a reappointment, he will become more unambitious, and regardless of the public opinion. The love of power, in a republican government, is ever attended by a proportionable sense of dependence. As the Constitution now stands, I see no possible danger of the senators' losing their attachment to the states; but the amendment proposed would tend to weaken this attachment, by taking away the principal incentives to public virtue. We may suppose two of the most enlightened and eminent men in the state, in whom the confidence of the legislature and the love of the people are united, engaged, at the expiration of their office, in the most important negotiations, in which their presence and agency may be indispensable. In this emergency, shall we incapacitate them? Shall we prohibit the legislature from reappointing them? It might endanger our country, and involve us in inextricable difficulties. Under these apprehensions, and with a full conviction of the imprudence of depriving the community of the services of its most valuable citizens, I feel very strongly the impropriety of this amendment, and hope it may not be adopted.

Mr. Chancellor LIVINGSTON rose to suggest an idea which had not been before expressed. It is necessary, said he, that every government should have the power of continuing itself. It ought never to be destroyed, or fundamentally changed, but by the people who gave it birth; and yet the gentleman's amendment would enable the state