Election Of The President By Popular Choice Became A Necessity." The Meaning Of This Is, That In Regard To Their Presidential Elections The United States Drifted Into Universal Suffrage.

I do not know that his theory is one more comfortable for his country than my own.

Whether or no any backward step can now be taken - whether these elections can again be put into the hands of men fit to exercise a choice in such a matter - may well be doubted. Facilis descensus Averni. But the recovery of the downward steps is very difficult. On that subject, however, I hardly venture here to give an opinion. I only declare what has been done, and express my belief that it has not been done in conformity with the wishes of the people, as it certainly has not been done in conformity with the intention of the Constitution.

In another matter a departure has been made from the conservative spirit of the Constitution. This departure is equally grave with the other, but it is one which certainly does admit of correction. I allude to the present position assumed by many of the Senators, and to the instructions given to them by the State legislatures as to the votes which they shall give in the Senate. An obedience on their part to such instructions is equal in its effects to the introduction of universal suffrage into the elections. It makes them hang upon the people, divests them of their personal responsibility, takes away all those advantages given to them by a six years' certain tenure of office, and annuls the safety secured by a conservative method of election. Here again I must declare my opinion that this democratic practice has crept into the Senate without any expressed wish of the people. In all such matters the people of the nation has been strangely undemonstrative. It has been done as part of a system which has been used for transferring the political power of the nation to a body of trading politicians who have become known and felt as a mass, and not known and felt as individuals. I find it difficult to describe the present political position of the States in this respect. The millions of the people are eager for the Constitution, are proud of their power as a nation, and are ambitious of national greatness. But they are not, as I think, especially desirous of retaining political influences in their own hands. At many of the elections it is difficult to induce them to vote. They have among them a half-knowledge that politics is a trade in the hands of the lawyers, and that they are the capital by which those political tradesmen carry on their business. These politicians are all lawyers. Politics and law go together as naturally as the possession of land and the exercise of magisterial powers do with us. It may be well that it should be so, as the lawyers are the best-educated men of the country, and need not necessarily be the most dishonest.

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