If experience be called
for, appeal to that of our fifteen or twenty governments for forty
years, and show me where the people have done half the mischief in these
forty years, that a single despot would have done in a single year;
or show half the riots and rebellions, the crimes and the punishments,
which have taken place in any single nation, under Kingly government,
during the same period. The true foundation of republican government
is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and
in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our
constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people.
Reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full, but orderly
discussion. Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and
equal right in their election. Submit them to approbation or rejection
at short intervals. Let the executive be chosen in the same way, and for
the same term, by those whose agent he is to be; and leave no screen of
a council behind which to skulk from responsibility. It has been thought
that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law.
But I do not know that this is true, and if doubtful, we should follow
principle. In this, as in many other elections, they would be guided by
reputation, which would not err oftener, perhaps, than the present mode
of appointment. In one State of the Union, at least, it has been long
tried, and with the most satisfactory success.
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