This would create a dependence contrary to the end proposed. Secondly, by the national executive. This is a stride towards monarchy that few will think of. Thirdly, by the people. The people have two great interests, the landed interest, and the commercial, including the stockholders. To draw both branches from the people will leave no security to the latter interest; the people being chiefly composed of the landed interest, and erroneously supposing that the other interests are adverse to it. Fourthly, by the individual legislatures. The elections being carried through this refinement, will be most like to provide some check in favor of the commercial interest against the landed; without which, oppression will take place; and no free government can last long where that is the case. He was therefore in favor of this last.
Mr. DICKINSON.[1] The preservation of the states in a certain degree of agency is indispensable. It will produce that collision between the different authorities which should be wished for in order to check each other. To attempt to abolish the states altogether, would degrade the councils of our country, would be impracticable, would be ruinous. He compared the proposed national system to the solar system, in which the states were the planets, and ought to be left to move freely in their proper orbits. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Wilson) wished, he said, to extinguish these planets. If the state governments were excluded from all agency in the national one, and all power drawn from the people at large, the consequence would be, that the national government would move in the same direction as the state governments now do, and would run into all the same mischiefs. The reform would only unite the thirteen small streams into one great current, pursuing the same course without any opposition whatever. He adhered to the opinion that the Senate ought to be composed of a large number, and that their influence, from family weight and other causes, would be increased thereby. He did not admit that the tribunes lost their weight in proportion as their number was augmented, and gave an historical sketch of this institution. If the reasoning (of Mr. Madison) was good, it would prove that the number of the Senate ought to be reduced below ten, the highest number of the tribunitial corps.
Mr. WILSON. The subject, it must be owned, is surrounded with doubts and difficulties. But we must surmount them. The British government cannot be our model. We have no materials for a similar one. Our manners, our laws, the abolition of entails and of primogeniture, the whole genius of the people, are opposed to it. He did not see the danger of the states being devoured by the national government. On the contrary, he wished to keep them from
- ↑ It will throw light on this discussion to remark, that an election by the state legislatures involved a surrender of the principle insisted on by the large states, and dreaded by the small ones—namely, that of a proportional representation in the Senate. Such a rule would make the body too numerous, as the smallest state must elect one member at least.
