As long as this interest
prevails in most of the State legislatures, so long it must maintain a
correspondent superiority in the national Senate, which will generally
be a faithful copy of the majorities of those assemblies. It cannot
therefore be presumed, that a sacrifice of the landed to the mercantile
class will ever be a favorite object of this branch of the federal
legislature. In applying thus particularly to the Senate a general
observation suggested by the situation of the country, I am governed by
the consideration, that the credulous votaries of State power cannot,
upon their own principles, suspect, that the State legislatures would be
warped from their duty by any external influence. But in reality the
same situation must have the same effect, in the primative composition
at least of the federal House of Representatives: an improper bias
towards the mercantile class is as little to be expected from this
quarter as from the other.
In order, perhaps, to give countenance to the objection at any rate, it
may be asked, is there not danger of an opposite bias in the national
government, which may dispose it to endeavor to secure a monopoly of the
federal administration to the landed class? As there is little
likelihood that the supposition of such a bias will have any terrors for
those who would be immediately injured by it, a labored answer to this
question will be dispensed with.
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