Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/465

 furnished by the interval between the first and second meeting, the danger of having one electoral body played off against another, by artful misrepresentations rapidly transmitted, a danger not to be avoided, would be at least doubled.

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March 18, 1824.

The dangers to which experience had shown that the election of Executive Chiefs are liable; dangers which had led other nations to prefer hereditary to elective Executives, were, without doubt, well considered by the members of the General Convention, who, nevertheless, did indulge the hope, by apportioning, limiting, and confining the Electors within their respective States, and by the guarded manner of giving and transmitting the ballots of the Electors to the Seat of Government, that intrigue, combination, and corruption, would be effectually shut out, and a free and pure election of the President of the United States made perpetual.…

The House of Representatives is composed on the basis of the numbers of the respective States, the small States here yielding to the large ones, and the Senate is composed on the basis of the equality of the States, the larger States here, in turn, deferring to the small ones. The Executive is chosen by neither rule, but by the influence of both rules united; it is well known that the small States would not have consented to the choice by Electors, a mode favorable to the large States; but, upon the consent of the large States, on the failure of the choice of the President by the Electors on the first trial, that the House of Representatives voting by States, the representation from each State having one vote, shall choose the President, not from those they deem the most worthy, but from the persons having the highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list of those voted for by the Electors, thereby restricting the choice of the House of Representatives to the three highest candidates nominated by the large States. To this adjustment, which was brought about by compromise between the States, no objections were made at the period when the Constitution was afterwards under the discussion of the several States. Though great difficulties occurred in the debates of the State conventions on other portions of the Constitution of the United States, no opposition appeared to the provisions of the Constitution respecting the manner of electing the President, and no such objection occurred until the fourth