champions of liberty; in action, they are the veriest tyrants imaginable. When out of power, they are always working and intriguing against the government, without any regard to truth, justice, or common honesty, or the welfare of their country. In popular governments, where the election of representatives too frequently recurs, such pernicious men have too many opportunities of mischief, in working upon, deceiving, and corrupting the minds of the people, in order to inflame them against those who have the management of public affairs for the time being; and thus, eventually, are enabled to ripen the discontents of the deluded multitude into violent and seditious movements. Such are some of the evil consequences invariably resulting from the too frequent recurrence of elections, which also (it may be remarked) necessarily incapacitates the representative from acquiring an adequate acquaintance with the public business and real interests of his country, owing to the short duration of his term of service.

There are likewise some other imperfections grafted into the system of election throughout the States, which deserve notice. The voting by ballot, instead of viva voce, is accounted a wonderful improvement; whereas, it excludes the open, wholesome influence of talent and property at the elections; and encourages a perpetual course of intrigue and fraud, by enabling the cunning demagogue to impose upon the credulity of the weak and ignorant. Indeed, the frauds practised by the substitution of one set of ballots for another, in every electioneering campaign throughout the country, are in themselves innumerable and shameless; and the success of elections, generally, depends on the adroitness of intrigue exhibited by the more active political partisans.

Universal suffrage, also, is a favourite feature in our republican system, except in the State of Virginia, ere a respectable property in land is the prescribed 'fication of a voter: in some of the states, no prov qualification, either in personal or real estate, ed, and in the rest (save Virginia) much too

qual. prietar is requir

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small a possession of property, whether real or personal, is suffered to qualify the electors. Now, universal suffrage is full of evil, without any alloy of good; for it gives efficiency and perpetuity to the anti-social conspiracy of poverty against wealth, of cunning against wisdom, of knavery against integrity, and of confusion against order; the necessary tendencies of which are, to exclude the great talents, high character, and large property of the community, from the administration of government; which, under such circumstances, is too apt to exhibit a scene of folly and oppression at home, and to become an object of contempt and scorn abroad. The only stable government, which can at once secure prosperity to its own people, and command the respect of foreign nations, must lay its foundations in the preservation and ascendency of property. No man ought to be allowed to vote, who is not possessed of a freehold in land, that those who have the deepest stake in the soil may have the most influence in the country.

The states, however, generally require a qualification, both of property and of age, in the elected; which seems to be quite useless; since it is fair to presume that a man must have already acquired some considerable standing in the community before his fellow-citizens will hold him up as a candidate for election, in either branch of the legislature, whether state or federal, more especially if the electors are required to possess a proprietary qualification. Still less should there be any limitation as to age; for as soon as a man fairly distinguishes himself by his talents and character, demonstrating in him a capacity for public service, so soon has he the passport of God and nature to the trust and confidence of the community. How much of zeal and talent, displayed in her service, would England have lost, if Charles Fox and William Pitt had been denied admittance into the House of Commons until they had reached their thirtieth year, instead of obtaining an entrance into parliament as soon as they had passed the age of twenty-one!

It is somewhat singular, that a republic professing to establish full toleration, and give equal political rights to every religious sect, should in so many instances exclude the clergy from a seat in the legislature. This exclusion occurs in the constitutions of New-York, Maryland, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana.

Mr. Smith, in his Comparative View of the Constitutions, makes some very sensible and spirited observations on the exclusion of the clergy from all official and legislative privileges, as well as on all the prominent features of the federal and state constitutions, which existed in the year 1796.

The disqualification of the clergy in so many states seems either a remnant of the old Gothic policy, transmitted from times when ecclesiastics were immured in monasteries; though even then ecclesiastics did greatly guide the political movements of nations; or, perhaps it is copied from the practice of the British government, (some years since, backed by a statute passed in order to keep Horne Tooke out of Parliament) which excludes them from a seat in the House of Commons, under pretence of their being represented in convocation, although both the upper and lower Houses of Convocation have been abolished for more than a century, and the bishops are allowed to sit in the House of Lords: wherefore, according to the well-known maxim, cessante ratione, cessat et ipsa lex, as the English clergy are not now represented in convocation, they ought to be represented in parliament; or, lastly, their disqualification in the states is the offspring of a misguided jealousy towards the clerical order, on the part of the laity.

The expediency of admitting into the legislature the clergy ought to be left to their own sense of propriety, to the feelings and wishes of their congregations, to the rules and ordinances of the religious body to which they belong, and to the good sense, discretion, and opinion of the electors. When the laity undertake to exclude the clergy by constitutional regulations, the exclusion

savours strongly of political intolerance; it is, in fact, disfranchising the whole of a very respectable and important class of the community. The constitution of the United States contains no such exclusion; and the experience of nearly thirty years has not demonstrated either its necessity or its use. After all, perhaps the exercise of the religious duties of ecclesiastical life are not quite compatible with the incessant agitations of active politics; and, doubtless, the Saviour of the world himself delivered an awful lesson of denunciation against earthly avarice and ambition, when he emphatically declared, that his kingdom is not of this world. Nevertheless, the admission into the legislative councils of their country ought to be left to the individual discretion of the clergy themselves, and of those with whom they are connected: they ought not to be disfranchised of a great political right, to which they are justly entitled, in common with all the rest of their fellow-citizens, by any municipal regulations of a free and popular government.

The Senate of the United States is composed of two senators from each state, chosen by its legislature for six years: each senator has one vote. They are divided into three classes. The seats of the senators of the first class are vacated at the expiration of the second; of the second class, at the expiration of the fourth; of the third class at the expiration of the sixth year; so that one-third of the senate is chosen every second year. If any vacancy happen, during the recess of a state legislature, the state executive may make a temporary appointment, until the next meeting of the legislature, which then fills up the vacancy, either by a new appointment, or by sanctioning that of the executive. Â ́senator must be thirty years old, have been nine years a citizen of the United States, and be an inhabitant of the state for which he is chosen. The Vice-President of the United States is president of the senate, but has no vote, unless the House is equally divided. The senate chooses its other officers, and a president pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice-President; or when he exercises the office of President of the United States. The

senate tries all impeachments, and when so sitting is on its oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice of the United States presides: the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present is necessary to conviction. In cases of impeachment, judgment only extends to removal from the existing office, and disqualification for any other office of honour, trust, or profit, under the United States; leaving the party convicted liable to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment, according to law.

The modes of appointing the senators of the United States vary in different states: they are generally regulated by state statute. In some, one house nominates to the other till both concur; in others, both houses unite in convention, and make a joint choice; the first is called a concurrent, the last a joint vote. Both modes are either vivá voce, or by ballot. In the first mode, the senate possesses the same equal power with the House of Representatives, which they have in every other legislative act, and of which they ought not to be deprived in so important a measure as this. In the last mode, their numbers being always smaller than those of the lower house, their influence is, of course, proportionally smaller. The mode by joint vote, and joint ballot, is the most prevalent; the representatives, being the more popular branch, too generally carry their point against the senate.

The duration of the senators of the United States for six years is well calculated to give system and stability to this important branch of the general government, more especially as it acts a judicial part in the trial of impeachments; and discharges executive functions, in appointing public officers, and in making treatise with foreign powers. In many of the state constitutions, pecuniary qualifications are required in all candidates for public office; in the federal constitution none is required, either in the representatives, senators, or president. Perhaps it would be always most prudent to throw the proprietary qualification upon the elector, the person who votes; because men without property, generally, not only feel less solicitude for the public tranquillity and