understandings than to violate the liberty of their fellow-subjects.
Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights and privileges of
the people. But our duty, if we are qualified for it as we ought,
is to give them information, and not to receive it from them; we are
not to go to school to them to learn the principles of law and
government. In doing so we should not dutifully serve, but we
should basely and scandalously betray, the people, who are not
capable of this service by nature, nor in any instance called to it
by the Constitution. I reverentially look up to the opinion of the
people, and with an awe that is almost superstitious. I should be
ashamed to show my face before them, if I changed my ground, as they
cried up or cried down men, or things, or opinions; if I wavered and
shifted about with every change, and joined in it, or opposed, as
best answered any low interest or passion; if I held them up hopes,
which I knew I never intended, or promised what I well knew I could
not perform. Of all these things they are perfect sovereign judges
without appeal; but as to the detail of particular measures, or to
any general schemes of policy, they have neither enough of
speculation in the closet, nor of experience in business, to decide
upon it. They can well see whether we are tools of a court, or
their honest servants. Of that they can well judge; and I wish that
they always exercised their judgment; but of the particular merits
of a measure I have other standards. That the frequency of
elections proposed by this bill has a tendency to increase the power
and consideration of the electors, not lessen corruptibility, I do
most readily allow; so far as it is desirable, this is what it has;
I will tell you now what it has not: 1st. It has no sort of
tendency to increase their integrity and public spirit, unless an
increase of power has an operation upon voters in elections, that it
has in no other situation in the world, and upon no other part of