elections of 1800 and of 1824. It was recognized that the work would ordinarily be done through the machinery of the electoral college, and that thus the fear of intrigue between the president and Congress, as it had originally been felt by the convention, might be set aside. To make assurance doubly sure, it was provided that "no person shall be appointed an elector who is a member of the legislature of the United States, or who holds any office of profit or trust under the United States.' It then appeared that the arguments which had been alleged against the eligibility of the president for a second term had lost their force; and he was accordingly made reëligible, while his term of service was reduced from seven years to four.

How to count the votes.

The scheme had thus arrived substantially at its present shape, except that the counting of the electoral vote still remained in the hands of the Senate. On the 6th of September this provision was altered, and it was decided that "the president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." The object of this provision was to take the office of counting away from the Senate alone, and give it to Congress as a whole; and while doing so, to guard against the failure of an election through the disagreement of the two houses. The method of counting was not prescribed, for it was thought that it might safely be left to joint rules established by the two houses of Congress themselves, after analogies supplied by the experience of the several state legislatures.

The case of double returns, sent in by rival governments in the same state, was not contemplated by the convention; and thus the door was left open for a danger considerably greater than many of those over which the delegates were agitated. It may safely be said, however, that not even the wildest license of interpretation can find any support for the ridiculous doctrine suggested by some persons blinded by political passion in 1877, that the business of counting the votes and deciding upon the validity of returns belongs to the president of the Senate. No such idea was for a moment entertained by the convention. Any such idea is completely negatived by their action of the 6th of September. The express purpose of the final arrangement made on that day was to admit the House of Representatives to active participation in the office of determining who should have been elected president. It was expressly declared that this work was too important to be left to the Senate alone. What, then, would the convention have said to the preposterous notion that this work might safely be left to the presiding officer of the Senate? The convention were keenly alive to any imaginable grant of authority that might enable the Senate to grow into an oligarchy. What would they have said to the proposal to create a monocrat ad hoc, an official permanently endowed by virtue of his office with the function of king-maker?

In this connection it is worth our while to ob serve that in no respect has the actual working of the Constitution departed so far from the intentions of its framers as in the case of their provi

The convention foresaw imaginary dangers, but not the real ones.

sions concerning the executive. Against a host of possible dangers they guarded most elaborately, but the dangers and inconveniences against which we have actually had to contend they did not foresee. It will be observed that Wilson's proposal for a direct election of the president by the people found little favour in the convention. The schemes that were seriously considered oscillated back and forth between an election by the national legislature and an election by a special college of electors. The electors might be chosen by a popular vote, or by the state legislatures, or in any such wise as each state might see fit to determine for itself. In point of fact, electors were chosen by the legislature in New Jersey till 1816; in Connecticut till 1820; in New York, Delaware, and Vermont, and with one exception in Georgia, till 1824; in South Carolina till 1868. Massachusetts adopted various plans, and did not finally settle down to an election by the people until 1828. Now there were several reasons why the Federal Convention was afraid to trust the choice of the president directly to the people. One was that very old objection, the fear of the machinations of demagogues. since people were supposed to be so easily fooled. As already observed, the democratic sentiment in the convention was such as we should now call weak. Another reason shows vividly how wide the world seemed in those days of slow coaches and mail-bags carried on horseback. It was feared that people would not have sufficient data wherewith to judge of the merits of public men in states

remote from their own. The electors, as eminent men exceptionally well informed, and screened from the sophisms of demagogues, might hold little conventions and select the best possible candidates, using in every case their own unfettered judgment. In this connection the words of Hamilton are worth quoting. In the sixty-eighth number of the "Federalist" he says: "The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these who has appeared in print has even deigned to admit that the election of the president is well guarded. . . . It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. . . . It was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favourable to deliberation and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements that were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellowcitizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to so complicated an investigation. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government."

Actual working of the electoral

scheme.

Such was the theory as set forth by a thinke/ endowed with rare ability to follow out in imagina tion the results of any course of political action. It is needless to say that the actual working of the scheme has been very different from what was expected. In our very first great struggle of parties, in 1800, the electors divided upon party lines, with little heed to the "complicated investigation" for which they were supposed to be chosen. Quite naturally, for the work of electing a candidate presupposes a state of mind very different from that of serene deliberation. In 1800 the electors acted simply as automata recording the victory of their party, and so it has been ever since. In our own time presidents and vice-presidents are nominated, not without elaborate intrigue, by special conventions quite unknown to the Constitution; the people cast their votes for the two or three pairs of candidates thus presented, and the electoral college simply registers the results. The system is thus fully exposed to all the dangers which our forefathers dreaded from the frequent election of a chief magistrate by the people. Owing to the great good-sense and goodnature of the American people, the system does not work so badly as might be expected. It has, indeed, worked immeasurably better than any one would have ventured to predict. It is nevertheless open to grave objections. It compels a change of administration at stated astronomical periods, whether any change of policy is called for or not; it stirs up the whole country every fourth year with a furious excitement that is often largely factitious;