The
convention appears to have been attentive to both these points: they
have directed the President to be chosen by select bodies of electors,
to be deputed by the people for that express purpose; and they have
committed the appointment of senators to the State legislatures. This
mode has, in such cases, vastly the advantage of elections by the people
in their collective capacity, where the activity of party zeal, taking
the advantage of the supineness, the ignorance, and the hopes and fears
of the unwary and interested, often places men in office by the votes of
a small proportion of the electors.
As the select assemblies for choosing the President, as well as the
State legislatures who appoint the senators, will in general be composed
of the most enlightened and respectable citizens, there is reason to
presume that their attention and their votes will be directed to those
men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and
virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence. The
Constitution manifests very particular attention to this object. By
excluding men under thirty-five from the first office, and those under
thirty from the second, it confines the electors to men of whom the
people have had time to form a judgment, and with respect to whom they
will not be liable to be deceived by those brilliant appearances of
genius and patriotism, which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead
as well as dazzle.
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