The collective sense of the State
legislatures can never be influenced by extraneous circumstances of that
sort; a consideration which alone ought to satisfy us that the
discrimination apprehended would never be attempted. For what inducement
could the Senate have to concur in a preference in which itself would
not be included? Or to what purpose would it be established, in
reference to one branch of the legislature, if it could not be extended
to the other? The composition of the one would in this case counteract
that of the other. And we can never suppose that it would embrace the
appointments to the Senate, unless we can at the same time suppose the
voluntary co-operation of the State legislatures. If we make the latter
supposition, it then becomes immaterial where the power in question is
placed -- whether in their hands or in those of the Union.
But what is to be the object of this capricious partiality in the
national councils? Is it to be exercised in a discrimination between the
different departments of industry, or between the different kinds of
property, or between the different degrees of property? Will it lean in
favor of the landed interest, or the moneyed interest, or the mercantile
interest, or the manufacturing interest? Or, to speak in the fashionable
language of the adversaries to the Constitution, will it court the
elevation of "the wealthy and the well-born," to the exclusion and
debasement of all the rest of the society?
If this partiality is to be exerted in favor of those who are concerned
in any particular description of industry or property, I presume it will
readily be admitted, that the competition for it will lie between landed
men and merchants.
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