Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

      "The evil of a want of uniformity in the choice of presidential electors, is not limited to its disfiguring effect upon the face of our government, but goes to endanger the rights of the people, by permitting sudden alterations on the eve of an election, and to annihilate the right of the small States, by enabling the large ones to combine, and to throw all their votes into the scale of a particular candidate. These obvious evils make it certain that any uniform rule would be preferable to the present state of things. But, in fixing on one, it is the duty of statesmen to select that which is calculated to give to every portion of the Union its due share in the choice of the Chief Magistrate, and to every individual citizen, a fair opportunity of voting according to his will. This would be effected by adopting the District System. It would divide every State into districts, equal to the whole number of votes to be given, and the people of each district would be governed by its own majority, and not by a majority existing in some remote part of the State. This would be agreeable to the rights of individuals: for, in entering into society, and submitting to be bound by the decision of the majority, each individual retained the right of voting for himself wherever it was practicable, and of being governed by a majority of the vicinage, and not by majorities brought from remote sections to overwhelm him with their accumulated numbers. It would be agreeable to the interests of all parts of the States; for each State may have different interests in different parts; one part may be agricultural, another manufacturing, another commercial; and it would be unjust that the strongest should govern, or that two should combine and sacrifice the third. The district system would be agreeable to the intention of our present constitution, which, in giving to each elector a separate vote, instead of giving to each State a consolidated vote, composed of all its electoral suffrages, clearly intended that each mass of persons entitled to one elector, should have the right of giving one vote, according to their own sense of their own interest.

      "The general ticket system now existing in ten States, was the offspring of policy, and not of any disposition to give fair play to the will of the people. It was adopted by the leading men of those States, to enable them to consolidate the vote of the State. It would be easy to prove this by referring to facts of historical notoriety. It contributes to give power and consequence to the leaders who manage the elections, but it is a departure from the intention of the constitution; violates the rights of the minorities, and is attended with many other evils. The intention of the constitution is violated, because it was the intention of that instrument to give to each mass of persons, entitled to one elector, the power of giving an electoral vote to any candidate they preferred. The rights of minorities are violated, because a majority of one will carry the vote of the whole State. This principle is the same, whether the elector is chosen by general ticket or by legislative ballot; a majority of one, in either case, carries the vote of the whole State. In New-York, thirty-six electors are chosen; nineteen is a majority, and the candidate receiving this majority is fairly entitled to count nineteen votes; but he counts in reality, thirty-six: because the minority of seventeen are added to the majority. Those seventeen votes belong to seventeen masses of people, of 40,000 souls each, in all 680,000 people, whose votes are seized upon, taken away, and presented to whom the majority pleases. Extend the calculation to the seventeen States now choosing electors by general ticket or legislative ballot, and it will show that three millions of souls, a population equal to that which carried us through the Revolution, may have their votes taken from them in the same way. To lose their votes, is the fate of all minorities, and it is their duty to submit; but this is not a case of votes lost, but of votes taken away, added to those of the majority, and given to a person to whom the minority was opposed.

      "He said, this objection (to the direct vote of the people) had a weight in the year 1787, to which it is not entitled in the year 1824. Our government was then young, schools and colleges were scarce, political science was then confined to few, and the means of diffusing intelligence were both inadequate and uncertain. The experiment of a popular government was just beginning; the people had been just released from subjection to an hereditary king, and were not yet practised in the art of choosing a temporary chief for themselves. But thirty-six years have reversed this picture. Thirty-six years, which have produced so many wonderful changes in America, have accomplished the work of many centuries upon the intelligence of its inhabitants. Within that period, school, colleges, and universities have multiplied to an amazing extent. The means of diffusing intelligence have been wonderfully augmented by the establishment of six hundred newspapers, and upwards of five thousand post-offices. The whole course of an American's life, civil, social, and religious, has become one continued scene of intellectual and of moral improvement. Once in every week, more than eleven thousand men, eminent for learning and for piety, perform the double duty of amending the hearts, and enlightening the understandings, of more than eleven thousand congregations of people. Under the benign influence of a free government, both our public institutions and private pursuits, our juries, elections, courts of justice, the liberal professions and the mechanic arts, have each become a school of political science and of mental improvement. The federal legislature, in the annual message of the President, in reports from heads of departments, and committees of Congress, and speeches of members, pours forth a flood of intelligence which carries its waves to the remotest confines of the republic. In the different States, twenty-four State executives and State legislatures are annually repeating the same process within a more limited sphere. The habit of universal travelling, and the practice of universal interchange of thought, are continually circulating the intelligence of the country, and augmenting its mass. The face of our country itself, its vast extent, its grand and varied features, contribute to expand the human intellect, and to magnify its power. Less than half a century of the enjoyment of liberty has given practical evidence of the great moral truth, that, under a free government, the power of the intellect is the only power which rules the affairs of men; and virtue and intelligence the only durable passports to honor and preferment. The conviction of this great truth has created an universal taste for learning and for reading, and has convinced every parent that the endowments of the mind, and the virtues of the heart, are the only imperishable, the only inestimable riches which he can leave to his posterity.

      "This objection (the danger of tumults and violence at the elections) is taken from the history of the ancient republics; from the tumultuary elections of Rome and Greece. But the justness of the example is denied. There is nothing in the laws of physiology which admits a parallel between the sanguinary Roman, the volatile Greek, and the phlegmatic American. There is nothing in the state of the respective countries, or in their manner of voting, which makes one an example for the other. The Romans voted in a mass, at a single voting place, even when the qualified voters amounted to millions of persons. They came to the polls armed, and divided into classes, and voted, not by heads, but by centuries. In the Grecian Republics all the voters were brought together in one great city, and decided the contest in one great struggle. In such assemblages, both the inducement to violence, and the means of committing it, were prepared by the government itself. In the United States all this is different. The voters are assembled in small bodies, at innumerable voting places, distributed over a vast extent of country. They come to the polls without arms, without odious distinctions, without any temptation to violence, and with every inducement to harmony. If heated during the day of election, they cool off upon returning to their homes, and resuming their ordinary occupations.

      "But let us admit the truth of the objection. Let us admit that the American people would be as tumultuary at their presidential elections, as were the citizens of the ancient republics at the election of their chief magistrates. What then? Are we thence to infer the inferiority of the officers thus elected, and the consequent degradation of the countries over which they presided? I answer no. So far from it, that I assert the superiority of these officers over all others ever obtained for the same countries, either by hereditary succession, or the most select mode of election. I affirm those periods of history to be the most glorious in arms, the most renowned in arts, the most celebrated in letters, the most useful in practice, and the most happy in the condition of the people, in which the whole body of the citizens voted direct for the chief officer of their country. Take the history of that commonwealth which