Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/257

1787.] undertake the legislative service. Genius and virtue, it may be said, ought to be encouraged. Genius, for aught he knew, might; but that virtue should be encouraged by such a species of venality, was an idea that at least had the merit of being new.

Mr. KING remarked that we were refining too much in this business; and that the idea of preventing intrigue and solicitation of offices was chimerical. You say, that no member shall himself be eligible to any office. Will this restrain him from availing himself of the same means which would gain appointments for himself, to gain them for his son, his brother, or any other object of his partiality? We were losing, therefore, the advantages on one side, without avoiding the evils on the other.

Mr. WILSON supported the motion. The proper cure, he said, for corruption in the legislature, was to take from it the power of appointing to offices. One branch of corruption would, indeed, remain,—that of creating unnecessary offices, or granting unnecessary salaries, and for that the amendment would be a proper remedy. He animadverted on the impropriety of stigmatizing with the name of venality the laudable ambition of rising into the honorable offices of the government,—an ambition most likely to be felt in the early and most incorrupt period of life, and which all wise and free governments had deemed it sound policy to cherish, not to check. The members of the legislature have, perhaps, the hardest and least profitable task of any who engage in the service of the state. Ought this merit to be made a disqualification?

Mr. SHERMAN observed that the motion did not go far enough. It might be evaded by the creation of a new office, the translation to it of a person from another office, and the appointment of a member of the legislature to the latter. A new embassy might be established to a new Court, and an ambassador taken from another, in order to create a vacancy for a favorite member. He admitted that inconveniences lay on both sides. He hoped there would be sufficient inducements to the public service without resorting to the prospect of desirable offices; and, on the whole, was rather against the motion of Mr. Madison.

Mr. GERRY thought there was great weight in the objection of Mr. Sherman. He added, as another objection against admitting the eligibility of members in any case, that it would produce intrigues of ambitious men for displacing proper officers, in order to create vacancies for themselves. In answer to Mr. King, he observed, that, although members, if disqualified themselves, might still intrigue and cabal for their sons, brothers, &c., yet as their own interests would be dearer to them than those of their nearest connections, it might be expected they would go greater lengths to promote them.

Mr. MADISON had been led to this motion, as a middle ground between an eligibility in all cases and an absolute disqualification. He admitted the probable abuses of an eligibility of the members to