TIONS, except as to the PLACES of choosing
senators."(1) This provision has not only been declaimed against
by those who condemn the Constitution in the gross, but it has been
censured by those who have objected with less latitude and greater
moderation; and, in one instance it has been thought exceptionable by a
gentleman who has declared himself the advocate of every other part of
the system.

I am greatly mistaken, notwithstanding, if there be any article in the
whole plan more completely defensible than this. Its propriety rests
upon the evidence of this plain proposition, that EVERY GOVERNMENT
OUGHT TO CONTAIN IN ITSELF THE MEANS OF ITS OWN PRESERVATION. Every just
reasoner will, at first sight, approve an adherence to this rule, in
the work of the convention; and will disapprove every deviation from
it which may not appear to have been dictated by the necessity of
incorporating into the work some particular ingredient, with which a
rigid conformity to the rule was incompatible. Even in this case, though
he may acquiesce in the necessity, yet he will not cease to regard and
to regret a departure from so fundamental a principle, as a portion of
imperfection in the system which may prove the seed of future weakness,
and perhaps anarchy.

It will not be alleged, that an election law could have been framed and
inserted in the Constitution, which would have been always applicable
to every probable change in the situation of the country; and it will
therefore not be denied, that a discretionary power over elections ought
to exist somewhere. It will, I presume, be as readily conceded,
that there were only three ways in which this power could have been
reasonably modified and disposed: that it must either have been lodged
wholly in the national legislature, or wholly in the State legislatures,
or primarily in the latter and ultimately in the former. The last mode
has, with reason, been preferred by the convention. They have submitted
the regulation of elections for the federal government, in the first
instance, to the local administrations; which, in ordinary cases, and
when no improper views prevail, may be both more convenient and more
satisfactory; but they have reserved to the national authority a right
to interpose, whenever extraordinary circumstances might render that
interposition necessary to its safety.

Nothing can be more evident, than that an exclusive power of regulating
elections for the national governme