Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/69

 CH. IX.] was assembled. The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded, as a fundamental article of a republican government. It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of congress would have been improper, for the reason just mentioned. To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the states, would have been improper, for the same reason; and for the additional reason, that it would have rendered too dependent on the state governments, that branch of the federal government, which ought to be dependent on the people alone. Two modes of providing for the right of suffrage in the choice of representatives were presented to the consideration of that body. One was to devise some plan, which should operate uniformly in all the states, on a common principle; the other was to conform to the existing diversities in the states, thus creating a mixed mode of representation. In favour of the former course, it might be urged, that all the states ought, upon the floor of the house of representatives, to be represented equally; that this could be accomplished only by the adoption of a uniform qualification of the voters, who would thus express the same public opinion of the same body of citizens throughout the Union; that if freeholders alone in one state chose the representatives; and in another all male citizens of competent age; and in another all freemen of particular towns or corporations; and in another all taxed inhabitants; it would be obvious, that different interests and classes would obtain exclusive representations in different states; and thus the great objects of the