Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/289

 CH. XI.] favourites from office. They might modify the right of election, as they please; they might regulate the number of votes by the quantity of property, without involving any repugnancy to the constitution. These, and other suggestions of a similar nature, calculated to spread terror and alarm among the people, were dwelt on with peculiar emphasis.

§ 814. In answer to all such reasoning, it was urged, that there was not a single article in the whole system more completely defensible. Its propriety rested upon this plain proposition, that every government ought to contain, in itself the means of its own preservation. If, in the constitution, there were some departures from this principle, (as it might be admitted there were,) they were matters of regret, and dictated by a controlling moral or political necessity; and they ought not to be extended. It was obviously impracticable to frame, and insert in the constitution an election law, which would be applicable to all possible changes in the situation of the country, and convenient for all the states. A discretionary power over elections must be vested somewhere. There seemed but three ways, in which it could be reasonably organized. It might be lodged either wholly in the national legislature; or wholly in the state legislatures; or primarily in the latter, and ultimately in the former. The last was the mode adopted by the convention. The regulation of elections is submitted, in the first instance, to the local governments, which, in ordinary cases, and when no improper views prevail, may both conveniently and satisfactorily 36