Page:Federalist, Dawson edition, 1863.djvu/618

 the public wishes. And as the Electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the People, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican Government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our Councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the Chief Magistracy of the Union? But the Convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preëxisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the People of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment. And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No Senator, Representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the Electors. Thus without corrupting the body of the People, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias. Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it. The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well