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I consider it one of the most urgent of my duties to bring to your attention the propriety of amending that part of the Constitution which relates to the election of President and Vice-President. Our system of government was by its framers deemed an experiment, and they therefore consistently provided a mode of remedying its defects.
It has been thought by some that the gap did actually exist, but this idea was founded on an imperfect knowledge of the country. The Bay of Chaleurs seems, in fact, to have been better known to the framers of the proclamation of 1763 and the act of 1774 than to any subsequent authorities, whether British or American.
Measured by present-day conventions of democracy, the Constitution is an undemocratic document. The framers believed in representative government, to which they gave the name "Republicanism" as the antithesis to "democracy."
Hence the Royalists could use the book to justify the despotism of the Stuarts on the ground that the people had chosen them. This part of the book is in direct opposition to Milton's Defense of the English People. It was from Locke that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution drew many of their ideas, and even some of their most striking phrases.
I shall proceed to show under what form and with what adjuncts it exists in England. The framers of the Constitution expected that the vice-president would be elected by the Electoral College as the second wisest man in the country. The vice-presidentship being a sinecure, a second-rate man agreeable to the wire-pullers is always smuggled in.
In his marriage with the noble daughter of the De Courcys he had allowed the framers of the De Courcy settlement to tie him up in such a way that now, even when chance had done so much for him in freeing him from his wife, he was still bound to the De Courcy faction.
These precautions have been considered necessary for every criminal trial, but the framers of the American Constitution, fearful lest popular prejudice some day might cause injustice to those advocating unpopular ideals, prohibited the irremediable penalty of death upon a charge of treason except where the testimony of two reliable witnesses established some overt act, inference not being admissible as evidence.
Another answer is that the framers of the Constitution selected the word "migration," because of its congruity with that of "persons," under which their virtuous shame sought to conceal from posterity the existence of seven hundred thousand slaves amongst a people, who had but recently entered upon their national career, with the solemn declaration, that "all men are created equal."
Their ideas are in some fundamental respects the opposites of each other, and we can only account for it by an antagonism of thought beginning with the early framers of their respective institutions. New England abolished caste; in Virginia they still talk of "quality folks."
This accomplished, it was inevitable that the rivalry between political parties should result in extensions of the suffrage until the House should come to represent, as it does in practice to-day, the sentiment of the English people. The framers of the American Constitution, however, succeeded in erecting barriers which democracy has found it more difficult to overcome.
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