e of the candidates you add
a thousand a year in places for himself, and a power of giving away as
much among others, one must, or there is no truth in arithmetical
demonstration, ruin his adversary, if he is to meet him and to fight
with him every third year. It will be said I do not allow for the
operation of character: but I do; and I know it will have its weight in
most elections,--perhaps it may be decisive in some; but there are few
in which it will prevent great expenses. The destruction of independent
fortunes will be the consequence on the part of the candidate. What will
be the consequence of triennial corruption, triennial drunkenness,
triennial idleness, triennial lawsuits, litigations, prosecutions,
triennial frenzy,--of society dissolved, industry interrupted,
ruined,--of those personal hatreds that will never be suffered to
soften, those animosities and feuds which will be rendered immortal,
those quarrels which are never to be appeased,--morals vitiated and
gangrened to the vitals? I think no stable and useful advantages were
ever made by the money got at elections by the voter, but all he gets is
doubly lost to the public: it is money given to diminish the general
stock of the community, which is in the industry of the subject. I am
sure that it is a good while before he or his family settle again to
their business. Their heads will never cool; the temptations of
elections will be forever glittering before their eyes. They will all
grow politicians; every one, quitting his business, will choose to
enrich himself by his vote. They will all take the gauging-rod; new
places will be made for them; they will run to the custom-house quay;
their looms and ploughs will be deserted.

So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, though
those of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but faction,
bribery, bread, and stage-plays, to debauch them: we have the
inflammation of liquor superadded, a fury hotter than any of them. There
the contest was only between citizen and citizen: here you have the
contests of ambitious citizens of one side supported by the crown to
oppose to the efforts (let it be so) of private and unsupported ambition
on the other. Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge of
elections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to the
people. I think, therefore, the independent candidate and elector may
each be destroyed by it, the whole body of the commu