NGLE MEMBER for the
executive council. This is the case in all the other counties of the
State.

Are not these facts the most satisfactory proofs of the fallacy which
has been employed against the branch of the federal government under
consideration? Has it appeared on trial that the senators of New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, or the executive council of
Pennsylvania, or the members of the Assembly in the two last States,
have betrayed any peculiar disposition to sacrifice the many to the
few, or are in any respect less worthy of their places than the
representatives and magistrates appointed in other States by very small
divisions of the people?

But there are cases of a stronger complexion than any which I have yet
quoted. One branch of the legislature of Connecticut is so constituted
that each member of it is elected by the whole State. So is the governor
of that State, of Massachusetts, and of this State, and the president of
New Hampshire. I leave every man to decide whether the result of any
one of these experiments can be said to countenance a suspicion, that
a diffusive mode of choosing representatives of the people tends to
elevate traitors and to undermine the public liberty.

PUBLIUS

FEDERALIST No. 58

Objection That The Number of Members Will Not Be Augmented as the
Progress of Population Demands.

Considered For the Independent Journal Wednesday, February 20, 1788.

MADISON

To the People of the State of New York:

THE remaining charge against the House of Representatives, which I am
to examine, is grounded on a supposition that the number of members will
not be augmented from time to time, as the progress of population may
demand.

It has been admitted, that this objection, if well supported, would have
great weight. The following observations will show that, like most other
objections against the Constitution, it can only proceed from a partial
view of the subject, or from a jealousy which discolors and disfigures
every object which is beheld.

1. Those who urge the objection seem not to have recollected that the
federal Constitution will not suffer by a comparison with the State
constitutions, in the security provided for a gradual augmentation of
the number of representatives. The number which is to prevail in the
first instance is declared to be temporary. Its duration is limited to
the short term of three years.

Within every successive term of ten years a census of