Page:Federalist, Dawson edition, 1863.djvu/569

 the only electors of the members both of the Senate and Assembly for that county and district? Can we imagine, that the electors who reside in the remote subdivisions of the counties of Albany, Saratoga, Cambridge, &c., or in any part of the county of Montgomery, would take the trouble to come to the city of Albany, to give their votes for members of the Assembly or Senate sooner than they would repair to the city of New York to participate in the choice of the members of the Fœderal House of Representatives? The alarming indifference discoverable in the exercise of so invaluable a privilege under the existing laws, which afford every facility to it, furnishes a ready answer to this question. And, abstracted from any experience on the subject, we can be at no loss to determine, that when the place of election is at an inconvenient distance from the elector, the effect upon his conduct will be the same, whether that distance be twenty miles, or twenty thousand miles. Hence it must appear, that objections to the particular modification of the Fœderal power of regulating elections, will, in substance, apply with equal force to the modification of the like power in the Constitution of this State; and for this reason it will be impossible to acquit the one, and to condemn the other. A similar comparison would lead to the same conclusion, in respect to the Constitutions of most of the other States.

If it should be said, that defects in the State Constitutions furnish no apology for those which are to be found in the plan proposed, I answer, that as the former have never been thought chargeable with inattention to the security of liberty, where the imputations thrown on the latter can be shown to be applicable to them also, the presumption is, that they are rather the cavilling refinements of a predetermined opposition, than the well-founded inferences of a candid research after truth. To those who are disposed to consider, as