d the
primary assembly, so as to render him, as I have said, an ambassador of
a state, and not the representative of the people within a state. By
this the whole spirit of the election is changed; nor can any corrective
your Constitution-mongers have devised render him anything else than
what he is. The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce a
confusion, if possible, more horrid than the present. There is no way to
make a connection between the original constituent and the
representative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the candidate
to apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in order that by
their authoritative instructions (and something more perhaps) these
primary electors may force the two succeeding bodies of electors to make
a choice agreeable to their wishes. But this would plainly subvert the
whole scheme. It would be to plunge them back into that tumult and
confusion of popular election, which, by their interposed gradation of
elections, they mean to avoid, and at length to risk the whole fortune
of the state with those who have the least knowledge of it and the
least interest in it. This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are
thrown by the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they have
chosen. Unless the people break up and level this gradation, it is plain
that they do not at all substantially elect to the Assembly; indeed,
they elect as little in appearance as reality.

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes,
you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and
then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or
dependence. For what end are these primary electors complimented, or
rather mocked, with a choice? They can never know anything of the
qualities of him that is to serve them, nor has he any obligation
whatsoever to them. Of all the powers unfit to be delegated by those who
have any real means of judging, that most peculiarly unfit is what
relates to a _personal_ choice. In case of abuse, that body of primary
electors never can call the representative to an account for his
conduct. He is too far removed from them in the chain of representation.
If he acts improperly at the end of his two years' lease, it does not
concern him for two years more. By the new French Constitution the best
and the wisest representatives go equally with the worst into this
_Limbus Patrum_. Their bottoms are suppose