Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/117

Rh. The constitution requires that the representative should reside in the state from which he is sent, expressly to identify him with its particular interests, and in order to prevent that concentration which exists in other countries. Half the French deputies are from Paris, and a large portion of the English members of parliament are virtually from the capital. Their systems are peculiarly systems of concentration, but ours is as peculiarly a system of diffusion. It may be questioned, therefore, how far the American representative ought to sacrifice the good of his particular state, in order to achieve the general good. Cases may certainly occur, in which the sacrifice ought to be made, but the union of these states is founded on an express compromise, and it is not its intention to reach a benefit, however considerable, by extorting undue sacrifices from particular members of the confederacy. All cases to the contrary should be clear, and the necessary relations between the good and evil, beyond cavil.

In identified governments, the principle that a few shall be sacrificed to the general good, must always, in a greater or less degree, prevail; but it is not the intention of the American compact that any one state should ruin itself, or even do itself any great and irreparable injury, that the rest of the Union should become more prosperous. In this sense, then, the member of congress represents his immediate constituents, or perhaps it would be better to say his immediate state, and although he has no right to further its interests at the expense of the interests of other states, he is not called on to sacrifice them for the benefit of the sisters of the Union. This is one of the cases in which the doctrines of English representation do not apply to the American system. The difference arises from the circumstance that, in the one case,