Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/395

1787.] recommend him to the states at large. Seventhly, among other expedients, a lottery has been introduced. But as the tickets do not appear to be in much demand, it will probably not be carried on, and nothing therefore need be said on that subject. After reviewing all these various modes, he was led to conclude, that an election by the national legislature, as originally proposed, was the best. If it was liable to objections, it was liable to fewer than any other. He conceived, at the same time, that a second election ought to be absolutely prohibited. Having for his primary object—for the polar star of his political conduct—the preservation of the rights of the people, he held it as an essential point, as the very palladium of civil liberty, that the great officers of state, and particularly the executive, should at fixed periods return to that mass from which they were at first taken, in order that they may feel and respect those rights and interests which are again to be personally valuable to them. He concluded with moving, that the constitution of the executive, as reported by the committee of the whole, be reinstated, viz., "that the executive be appointed for seven years, and be ineligible a second time."

Mr. DAVIE seconded the motion.

Dr. FRANKLIN. It seems to have been imagined by some, that the returning to the mass of the people was degrading the magistrate. This, he thought, was contrary to republican principles. In free governments, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors and sovereigns. For the former, therefore, to return among the latter, was not to degrade, but to promote, them. And it would be imposing an unreasonable burden on them, to keep them always in a state of servitude, and not allow them to become again one of the masters.

On the question on Col. Mason's motion, as above, it passed in the affirmative.

New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, ay, 7; Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, no, 3; Massachusetts, not on the floor.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS was now against the whole paragraph. In answer to Col. Mason's position, that a periodical return of the great officers of the state into the mass of the people was the palladium of civil liberty, he would observe, that on the same principle the judiciary ought to be periodically degraded—certain it was, that the legislature ought, on every principle, yet no one had proposed, or conceived, that the members of it should not be reëligible. In answer to Dr. Franklin, that a return into the mass of the people would be a promotion instead of a degradation, he had no doubt that our executive, like most others, would have too much patriotism to shrink from the burden of his office, and too much modesty not to be willing to decline the promotion.

On the question on the whole resolution, as amended, in the words following:—

"That a national executive be instituted, to consist of a single person, to be chosen 47