The joint result of
these circumstances would be, that a temporary combination of a few
States to intermit the appointment of senators, could neither annul the
existence nor impair the activity of the body; and it is not from a
general and permanent combination of the States that we can have any
thing to fear. The first might proceed from sinister designs in the
leading members of a few of the State legislatures; the last would
suppose a fixed and rooted disaffection in the great body of the people,
which will either never exist at all, or will, in all probability,
proceed from an experience of the inaptitude of the general government
to the advancement of their happiness in which event no good citizen
could desire its continuance.
But with regard to the federal House of Representatives, there is
intended to be a general election of members once in two years. If the
State legislatures were to be invested with an exclusive power of
regulating these elections, every period of making them would be a
delicate crisis in the national situation, which might issue in a
dissolution of the Union, if the leaders of a few of the most important
States should have entered into a previous conspiracy to prevent an
election.
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