Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/414

398 In England, the proceedings are openly transacted. They deliver their opinions freely and openly. They do not fear all Europe. Compare it to this. You cannot detect the guilty. The publication from time to time is merely optional in them. They may prolong the period, or suppress it altogether, under pretence of its being necessary to be kept secret. The yeas and nays will avail nothing. Is the publication daily? It may be a year, or once in a century. I know this would be an unfair construction in the common concerns of life. But it would satisfy the words of the Constitution. It would be some security were it once a year, or even once in two years. When the new election comes on, unless you detect them, what becomes of your responsibility? Will they discover their guilt when they wish to be reelected? This would suppose them to be not only bad, but foolish men, in pursuit of responsibility. Have you a right to scrutinize into the conduct of your representatives? Can any man, who conceives himself injured, go and demand a sight of their journals? But it will be told that I am suspicious. I am answered, to every question, that they will be good men. In England, they see daily what is doing in Parliament. They will hear from their Parliament in one thirty-ninth part of the time that we shall hear from Congress in this scattered country. Let it be proposed, in England, to lay a poll tax, or enter into any measure, that will injure one part and produce emoluments to another, intelligence will fly quickly as the rays of light to the people. They will instruct their representatives to oppose it, and will petition against it, and get it prevented or redressed instantly. Impeachment follows quickly a violation of duty. Will it be so here? You must detect the offence, and punish the defaulter. How will this be done when you know not the offender, even though he had a previous design to commit the misdemeanor? Your Parliament will consist of sixty-five. Your share will be ten out of the sixty-five. Will they not take shelter, by saying they were in the minority—that the men from New Hampshire and Kentucky outvoted them? Thus will responsibility, that great pillar of a free government, be taken away.

The honorable gentleman wished to try the experiment. Loving his country as he does, he would not surely wish to trust his happiness to an experiment, from which much harm, but no good, may result.