Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/88

 80 measures. A new election might intervene before there had been an opportunity to interchange opinions and acquire the information indispensable for wise and salutary action. Much of the business of the national legislature must necessarily be postponed beyond a single session; and if new men are to come every year, a great part of the information already accumulated will be lost, or be unavoidably open for re-examination before any vote can be properly had.

§ 600. In the next place, however well founded the maxim might be, that where no other circumstances affect the case, the greater the power is, the shorter ought to be its duration; and conversely, the smaller the power, the more safely its duration may be protracted; that maxim, if it applied at all to the government of the Union, was favourable to the extension of the period of service beyond that of the state legislatures. The powers of congress are few and limited, and of a national character; those of the state legislatures are general, and have few positive limitations. If annual elections are safe for a state; biennial elections would not be less safe for the United States. No just objection, then, could arise from this source, upon any notion, that there would be a more perfect security for public liberty in annual than in biennial elections.

§ 601. But a far more important consideration grows out of the nature and objects of the powers of congress. The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first, to obtain for rulers men, who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of society; and, in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them