Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/113

Rh all such cases, it is evident they must be rare, and that the rule exists as an exception, rather than as one of familiar practice.

Great care must be always taken to see that the wishes of the constituency are actually consulted, before the American representative is bound, morally even, to respect their will; for there is no pretence that the obligation to regard the wishes of his constituents is more than implied, under any circumstances; the social compact, in a legal sense, leaving him the entire master of his own just convictions. The instant a citizen is elected he becomes the representative of the minority as well as of the majority, and to create any of the implied responsibility that has been named, the opinion of the first, so far as their numbers go, is just as much entitled to respect, as the opinion of the last. The power to decide, in cases of elections, is given to the majority only from necessity, and as the safest practicable general rule that can be used, but, it is by no means the intention of the institutions to disfranchise all those who prefer another to the successful candidate. The choice depends on a hundred considerations that are quite independent of measures, men judging differently from each other, in matters of character. Any other rule than this might be made the means of putting the government in the hands of the minority, as the following case will show.

A, is elected to congress, by a vote of one thousand and one, against a vote of nine hundred and ninety-nine. He has, consequently, two thousand constituents, supposing all to have voted. The majority meet to instruct their representative, and the instructions are carried by a vote of five hundred and one to five hundred. If these instructions are to be received as binding, the government, so far as the particular measure is concerned, may be in the hands of five