Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/320

304 chimerical!—the election will be merely virtual." When the Constitution determines that the state legislatures are to elect, he exclaims, "The people's rights are invaded!—the election should be immediately by them, and not by their representatives." How, then, can we satisfy him, as he is determined to censure, in this Constitution, that mode of election which he so highly approves in the old Confederation? The reason why our present state Constitution, made in 1778, changed the mode of electing senators from the mode prescribed by our first constitution, passed in 1776, was because, by the first, the senators were elected by this house, and therefore, being their mere creatures, they could not be supposed to have that freedom of will as to form a proper check on its proceedings; whereas, in the general Constitution, the House of Representatives will be elected immediately by the people, and represent them and their personal rights individually; the Senate will be elected by the state legislatures, and represent the states in their political capacity; and thus each branch will form a proper and independent check on the other, and the legislative powers will be advantageously balanced.

With regard to the objection that had been made to the mode electing the President of the United States, General Pinckney asked what other mode would have been so proper. If he was to be elected by the House of Representatives and the Senate, as one of them have the power of impeaching and the other of trying him, he would be altogether their creature, and would not have independence enough to exercise with firmness the revisionary power and other authorities with which he is invested by the Constitution. This want of independence might influence his conduct, in some degree, if he was to be elected by one branch of the legislature alone; but as he is to be elected by the people, through the medium of electors chosen particularly for that purpose, and he is in some measure to be a check on the Senate and House of Representatives, the election, in my opinion, could not have been placed so well if it had been made in any other mode.

In all elections of a chief magistrate, foreign influence is to be guarded against. Here it is very carefully so; and it is almost impossible for any foreign power to influence thirteen different sets of electors, distributed throughout the