for state representatives, gives you a federal voice. It is a right
you cannot lose, unless you first annihilate the state legislature, and
declare yourself incapable of electing, which is a degree of infatuation
improbable as a second deluge to drown the world.

Your own assemblies are to regulate the formalities of this choice, and
unless they betray you, you cannot be betrayed. But perhaps it may be
said, Congress have a power to control this formality as to the time and
places of electing, and we allow they have: but this objection which at
first looks frightful was designed as a guard to the privileges of the
electors. Even state assemblies may have their fits of madness and
passion, this tho' not probable is possible.

We have a recent instance in the state of Rhode Island, where a desperate
junto are governing contrary to the sense of a great majority of the
people. It may be the case in any other state, and should it happen, that
the ignorance or rashness of the state assemblies, in a fit of jealousy,
should deny you this sacred right, the deliberate justice of the continent
is enabled to interpose and restore you a federal voice. This right is
therefore more inviolably guarded than it can be by the government of your
state, for it is guaranteed by the whole empire. Tho' out of the order in
which the Hon. gentleman proposes his doubts, I wish here to notice some
questions which he makes. The proposed plan among others he tells us
involves these questions: "Whether the several state governments, shall be
so altered as in effect to be dissolved? Whether in lieu of the state
governments the national constitution now proposed shall be substituted?"
I wish for sagacity to see on what these questions are founded. No
alteration in the state governments is even now proposed, but they are to
remain identically the same that they are now. Some powers are to be given
into the hands of your federal representatives, but these powers are all
in their nature general, such as must be exercised by the whole or not at
all, and such as are absolutely necessary; or your commerce, the price of
your commodities, your riches and your safety, will be the sport of every
foreign adventurer. Why are we told of the dissolution of our state
governments, when by this plan they are indissolubly linked? They must
stand or fall, live or die together. The national legislature consists of
two houses, a senate and house of representatives. The sen