Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/384

358 New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina, ay, 5; Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, no, 5.

The question being lost by an equal division of votes, it was agreed, ''nem. con.'', that the committee should consist of five members, to be appointed to-morrow.

Adjourned. 

, July 24.

In Convention.—The appointment of the executive by electors being reconsidered,—

Mr. HOUSTON moved, that he be appointed by the national legislature, instead of "electors appointed by the state legislatures," according to the last decision of the mode. He dwelt chiefly on the improbability that capable men would undertake the service of electors from the more distant states.

Mr. SPAIGHT seconded the motion.

Mr. GERRY opposed it. He thought there was no ground to apprehend the danger urged by Mr. Houston. The election of the executive magistrate will be considered as of vast importance, and will create great earnestness. The best men, the governors of the states, will not hold it derogatory from their character to be the electors. If the motion should be agreed to, it will be necessary to make the executive ineligible a second time, in order to render him independent of the legislature; which was an idea extremely repugnant to his way of thinking.

Mr. STRONG supposed that there would be no necessity, if the executive should be appointed by the legislature, to make him ineligible a second time; as new elections of the legislature will have intervened; and he will not depend, for his second appointment, on the same set of men that his first was received from. It had been suggested that gratitude for his past appointment would produce the same effect as dependence for his future appointment. He thought very differently. Besides, this objection would lie against the electors, who would be objects of gratitude as well as the legislature. It was of great importance not to make the government too complex, which would be the case if a new set of men, like the electors, should be introduced into it. He thought, also, that the first characters in the states would not feel sufficient motives to undertake the office of electors.

Mr. WILLIAMSON was for going back to the original ground, to elect the executive for seven years, and render him ineligible a second time. The proposed electors would certainly not be men of the first, nor even of the second, grade in the states. These would all prefer a seat in the Senate, or the other branch of the legislature. He did not like the unity in the executive. He had wished the executive power to be lodged in three men, taken from three districts, into which the states should be divided. As the executive is to have a kind of veto on the laws, and there is an essential difference of interests between the Northern and Southern States, particularly in 