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1787.] difference of interests. There will be creditors and debtors; farmers, merchants, and manufacturers. There will be, particularly, the distinction of rich and poor. It was true, as had been observed, (by Mr. Pinckney,) we had not among us those hereditary distinctions of rank which were a great source of the contests in the ancient governments, as well as the modern states, of Europe; nor those extremes of wealth or poverty which characterize the latter. We cannot, however, be regarded, even at this time, as one homogeneous mass, in which every thing that affects a part will affect in the same manner the whole. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this country; but symptoms of a levelling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared, in a certain quarter, to give notice of the future danger. How is this danger to be guarded against, on the republican principles; how is the danger, in all cases of interested coalitions, to oppress the minority, to be guarded against? Among other means, by the establishment of a body, in the government, sufficiently respectable for its wisdom and virtue to aid, on such emergencies, the preponderance of justice, by throwing its weight into that scale. Such being the objects of the second branch in the proposed government, he thought a considerable duration ought to be given to it. He did not conceive that the term of nine years could threaten any real danger; but, in pursuing his particular ideas on the subject, he should require that the long term allowed to the second branch should not commence till such a period of life as would render a perpetual disqualification to be reëlected, little inconvenient, either in a public or private view. He observed, that, as it was more than probable we were now digesting a plan which, in its operation, would decide forever the fate of republican government, we ought, not only to provide every guard to liberty that its preservation could require, but be equally careful to supply the defects which our own experience had particularly pointed out.$142$

Mr. SHERMAN. Government is instituted for those who live under it. It ought, therefore, to be so constituted as not to be dangerous to their liberties. The more permanency it has, the worse, if it be a bad government. Frequent elections are necessary to preserve the good behavior of rulers. They also tend to give permanency to the government, by preserving that good behavior, because it insures their reëlection. In Connecticut, elections have been very frequent, yet great stability and uniformity, both as to persons and measures, have been experienced from its original establishment to the present time—a period of more than a hundred and thirty years. He wished