s of that city speedily become the only
electors of the members both of the Senate and Assembly for that county
and district? Can we imagine that the electors who reside in the remote
subdivisions of the counties of Albany, Saratoga, Cambridge, etc., or in
any part of the county of Montgomery, would take the trouble to come to
the city of Albany, to give their votes for members of the Assembly
or Senate, sooner than they would repair to the city of New York,
to participate in the choice of the members of the federal House of
Representatives? The alarming indifference discoverable in the exercise
of so invaluable a privilege under the existing laws, which afford
every facility to it, furnishes a ready answer to this question. And,
abstracted from any experience on the subject, we can be at no loss
to determine, that when the place of election is at an INCONVENIENT
DISTANCE from the elector, the effect upon his conduct will be the same
whether that distance be twenty miles or twenty thousand miles. Hence
it must appear, that objections to the particular modification of the
federal power of regulating elections will, in substance, apply with
equal force to the modification of the like power in the constitution of
this State; and for this reason it will be impossible to acquit the one,
and to condemn the other. A similar comparison would lead to the same
conclusion in respect to the constitutions of most of the other States.

If it should be said that defects in the State constitutions furnish no
apology for those which are to be found in the plan proposed, I answer,
that as the former have never been thought chargeable with inattention
to the security of liberty, where the imputations thrown on the latter
can be shown to be applicable to them also, the presumption is that they
are rather the cavilling refinements of a predetermined opposition, than
the well-founded inferences of a candid research after truth. To
those who are disposed to consider, as innocent omissions in the State
constitutions, what they regard as unpardonable blemishes in the plan of
the convention, nothing can be said; or at most, they can only be asked
to assign some substantial reason why the representatives of the people
in a single State should be more impregnable to the lust of power, or
other sinister motives, than the representatives of the people of the
United States? If they cannot do this, they ought at least to prove
to us that it is easier t