on shows vividly how wide the world seemed in those
days of slow coaches and mail-bags carried on horseback. It was feared
that people would not have sufficient data wherewith to judge of the
merits of public men in states remote from their own. The electors, as
eminent men exceptionally well informed, and screened from the sophisms
of demagogues, might hold little conventions and select the best
possible candidates, using in every case their own unfettered judgment.

In this connection the words of Hamilton are worth quoting. In the
sixty-eighth number of the "Federalist" he says: "The mode of
appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the
only part of the system which has escaped without severe censure, or
which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents.
The most plausible of these who has appeared in print has even deigned
to admit that the election of the president is well guarded.... It was
desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of
the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided.... It was
equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men
capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting
under circumstances favourable to deliberation and to a judicious
combination of all the reasons and inducements that were proper to
govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their
fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess
the information and discernment requisite to so complicated an
investigation.... It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little
opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least
to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate who was to have so
important an agency in the administration of the government."

[Sidenote: Actual working of the electoral scheme.]

Such was the theory as set forth by a thinker endowed with rare ability
to follow out in imagination the results of any course of political
action. It is needless to say that the actual working of the scheme has
been very different from what was expected. In our very first great
struggle of parties, in 1800, the electors divided upon party lines,
with little heed to the "complicated investigation" for which they were
supposed to be chosen. Quite naturally, for the work of electing a
candidate presupposes a state of mind very different from that of serene
delibera