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Defending the Constitution
all assembled; and so numerous as to prevent bribery and undue influence, and so responsible to the people, by frequent and fair elections, as
to prevent their neglecting or sacrificing the views and interests of their
constituents to their own pursuits.
We will now bring the legislature under this Constitution to the test of
the foregoing principles, which will demonstrate that it is deficient in
every essential quality of a just and safe representation.
The House of Representatives is to consist of sixty-five members; that
is one for about every 50,000 inhabitants, to be chosen every two years.
Thirty-three members will form a quorum for doing business, and seventeen of these, being the majority, determine the sense of the house.
The Senate, the other constituent branch of the legislature, consists of
twenty-six members, being two from each State, appointed by their legislatures every six years; fourteen senators make a quorum—the majority of whom, eight, determines the sense of that body, except in judging
on impeachments, or in making treaties, or in expelling a member, when
two-thirds of the Senators present must concur.
The President is to have the control over the enacting of laws, so far as
to make the concurrence of two-thirds of the Representatives and Senators present necessary, if he should object to the laws.
Thus it appears that the liberties, happiness, interests, and great concerns of the whole United States, may be dependent upon the integrity,
virtue, wisdom, and knowledge of twenty-five or twenty-six men. How
inadequate and unsafe a representation! Inadequate, because the sense
and views of three or four millions of people, diffuse over so extensive a
territory, comprising such various climates, products, habits, interests,
and opinions, cannot be collected in so small a body; and besides, it is not
a fair and equal representation of the people even in proportion to its
number, for the smallest State has as much weight in the Senate as the
largest; and from the smallness of the number to be chosen for both
branches of the legislature, and from the mode of election and appointment, which is under the control of Congress, and from the nature of the
thing, men of the most elevated rank in life will alone be chosen. The
other orders in the society, such as farmers, traders, and mechanics, who
all ought to have a competent number of their best informed men in the
legislature, shall be totally unrepresented.