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MODE OF ELECTION.
Skill of the American Legislators shown in the Mode of Election adopted by them—Creation of a special electoral Body.—Separate Votes of these Electors.—Case in which the House of Representatives is called upon to choose the President.—Results of the twelve Elections which have taken Place since the Constitution has been established.
Beside the dangers which are inherent in the system, many other difficulties may arise from the mode of election, which may be obviated by the precaution of the legislator. When a people met in arms on some public spot to choose its head, it was exposed to all the chances of civil war resulting from so martial a mode of proceeding, beside the dangers of the elective system in itself. The Polish laws, which subjected the election of the sovereign to the veto of a single individual, suggested the murder of that individual, or prepared the way to anarchy.
In the examination of the institutions, and the political as well as the social condition of the United States, we are struck by the admirable harmony of the gifts of fortune and the efforts of man. That nation possessed two of the main causes of internal peace; it was a new country, but it was inhabited by a people grown old in the exercise of freedom. America had no hostile neighbours to dread ; and the American legislators, profiting by these favourable circumstances, created a weak and subordinate executive power, which could without danger be made elective.
It then only remained for them to choose the least dangerous of the various modes of election ; and the rules which they laid down upon this point admirably complete the securities which the physical and political constitution of the country already afforded. Their object was to find the mode of election which would best express the choice of the people with the least possible excitement and suspense. It was admitted in the first place that the simple majority should be decisive ; but the difficulty was to obtain this majority without an interval of delay which it was most important to avoid. It rarely happens that an individual can at once collect the majority of the suffrages of a great people ; and this difficulty is enhanced in a republic of confederate states, where local influences are apt to preponderate. The means by which it was proposed to obviate
