Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/523

Rh To the exclusive power of the senate over the president, to its being a sublimated medium of popular will, and to its being the guarantee of state rights, is to be added its power over the concession of each state's independency to three-fourths of the states, as a new and weighty reason for its being more responsible than a British house of commons. If an abbreviation of representative tenure, would be a wholesome emendation under a monarchical policy, a republican policy, seconded by considerations arising from the peculiar structure and powers of our senate, must loudly demand it. By frequent election or a power of recal, publick opinion will be breathed into the senate, through the lungs of state societies; and then publick opinion, and not the private opinion of thirty or forty individuals, will constitute as it ought and alone can, the restraint of executive power, the protector of state rights, and the judge of amendments to the constitution. These are functions belonging to nations, and to the discharge of which, individuals are incompetent, having a capacity only to convey the publick opinion, which is itself the real power. A body of men, upon which publick opinion cannot effectually stamp its impress, never fail to pass off the false political coin of private opinion, under the forged name of publick. The forgery is discovered, and the counterfeiters are compelled to use armies, superstition, penal laws, and paper corruption, to make the base coin pass. The publick can only become the tutelary guardian of the senate, and the senate the genuine organ of the publick, by means of the power and confidence which an effectual responsibility to the nation, through its state sections, will create.