Hence it
must appear, that objections to the particular modification of the
federal power of regulating elections will, in substance, apply with
equal force to the modification of the like power in the constitution of
this State; and for this reason it will be impossible to acquit the one,
and to condemn the other. A similar comparison would lead to the same
conclusion in respect to the constitutions of most of the other States.
If it should be said that defects in the State constitutions furnish no
apology for those which are to be found in the plan proposed, I answer,
that as the former have never been thought chargeable with inattention
to the security of liberty, where the imputations thrown on the latter
can be shown to be applicable to them also, the presumption is that they
are rather the cavilling refinements of a predetermined opposition, than
the well-founded inferences of a candid research after truth. To those
who are disposed to consider, as innocent omissions in the State
constitutions, what they regard as unpardonable blemishes in the plan of
the convention, nothing can be said; or at most, they can only be asked
to assign some substantial reason why the representatives of the people
in a single State should be more impregnable to the lust of power, or
other sinister motives, than the representatives of the people of the
United States? If they cannot do this, they ought at least to prove to
us that it is easier to subvert the liberties of three millions of
people, with the advantage of local governments to head their
opposition, than of two hundred thousand people who are destitute of
that advantage.
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