Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/190

164 by the people would be a better guard against bad measures than by the legislatures. A majority of the people in South Carolina were notoriously for paper money as a legal tender; the legislature had refused to make it a legal tender. The reason was, that the latter had some sense of character, and were restrained by that consideration. The state legislatures, also, he said, would be more jealous, and more ready to thwart the national government, if excluded from a participation in it. The idea of abolishing these legislatures would never go down.

Mr. WILSON would not have spoken again, but for what had fallen from Mr. Read; namely, that the idea of preserving the state governments ought to be abandoned. He saw no incompatibility between the national and state governments, provided the latter were restrained to certain local purposes; nor any probability of their being devoured by the former. In all confederated systems, ancient and modern, the reverse had happened; the generality being destroyed gradually by the usurpations of the parts composing it.

On the question for electing the first branch by the state legislatures, as moved by Mr. PINCKNEY, it was negatived.

Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, ay, 3; Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, no, 8.$95$

Mr. WILSON moved to reconsider the vote excluding the judiciary from a share in the revision of the laws, and to add, after "national executive," the words "with a convenient number of the national judiciary;" remarking the expediency of reënforcing the executive with the influence of that department.

Mr. MADISON seconded the motion. He observed, that the great difficulty in rendering the executive competent to its own defence arose from the nature of republican government, which could not give to an individual citizen that settled preeminence in the eyes of the rest, that weight of property, that personal interest against betraying the national interest, which appertain to an hereditary magistrate. In a republic, personal merit alone could be the ground of political exaltation; but it would rarely happen that this merit would be so preëminent as to produce universal acquiescence. The executive magistrate would be envied and assailed by disappointed competitors, his firmness therefore would need support. He would not possess those great emoluments from his station, nor that permanent stake in the public interest, which would place him out of the reach of foreign corruption. He would stand in need, therefore, of being controlled as well as supported. An association of the judges in his revisionary function would both double the advantage and diminish the danger. It would also enable the judiciary department the better to defend itself against legislative encroachments. Two objections had been made: first, that the judges ought not to be subject to the bias which a participation in the making of laws might give in the exposition of them; secondly, that the judiciary department ought to be separate and distinct from the other great departments. The first objection