Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/359

 of congress may be best qualified to fill, from his knowledge of public affairs acquired by being a member, such as minister to foreign courts, &c., and on accepting any other office his seat in congress will be vacated, and no member is eligible to any office that shall have been instituted or the emoluments increased while he was a member.

ⅭⅭⅩⅩⅩⅦ.

Charleston, January 26, 1789.

You know I always preferred the election by the legislature, to that of the people, & I will now venture to pronounce that the mode which you & Madison & some others so thoroughly contended for & ultimately carried is the greatest blot in the constitution —of this however more hereafter.

ⅭⅭⅩⅩⅩⅧ.

Charleston March 28: 1789.

Are you not, to use a full expression, abundantly convinced that the theoretical nonsense of an election of the members of Congress by the people in the first instance, is clearly and practically wrong. —that it will in the end be the means of bringing our councils into contempt & that the legislature are the only proper judges of who ought to be elected?——

Are you not fully convinced that the Senate ought at least to be double their number to make them of consequence & to prevent their falling into the same comparative state of insignificance that the state Senates have, merely from their smallness?—

ⅭⅭⅩⅩⅩⅨ.

May 13, 1789.

I conceive the constitution, in this particular, was formed in order that the Government, whilst it was restrained from laying a total prohibition, might be able to give some testimony of the sense of America with respect to the African trade. We have liberty to impose a tax or duty upon the importation of such persons, as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit; and this liberty was granted, I presume, upon two considerations: The first