It is always to be lamented when men are driven to search into the
foundations of the commonwealth. It is certainly necessary to
resort to the theory of your government whenever you propose any
alteration in the frame of it, whether that alteration means the
revival of some former antiquated and forsaken constitution of
state, or the introduction of some new improvement in the
commonwealth. The object of our deliberation is, to promote the
good purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to
prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequent elections
attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling
inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution
would sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to
be suited to your disease--your present disease, and to your whole
disease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks
weakly and delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, who
believes that it can make any sort of approach to perfection. There
is not, there never was, a principle of government under heaven,
that does not, in the very pursuit of the good it proposes,
naturally and inevitably lead into some inconvenience, which makes
it absolutely necessary to counterwork and weaken the application of
that first principle itself; and to abandon something of the extent
of the advantage you proposed by it, in order to prevent also the
inconveniences which have arisen from the instrument of all the good
you had in view.

To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of
the people is a great and glorious object of government. This
object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular
election, and popular election is a mighty evil. It is such, and so
great an evil, that though there are few nations whose monarchs were