which we act. Never was there a human assembly invoked by higher considerations, to act with disinterested magnanimity. The destiny, not only of the rising millions that are to come after us here, but that of the whole civilized world, hangs trembling on the issue of our deliberations. No nation on earth has ever exerted so extensive an influence on human affairs, as this will certainly exercise, if we preserve our glorious system of government in its purity. The liberty of this country is a sacred depository-a vestal fire, which Providence has committed to us for the general benefit of mankind. It is the world's last hope. Extinguish it, and the earth will be covered with eternal darkness. "But once put out that light, I know not where is that Promethean heat, that can that light relumine."

SPEECH OF HENRY R. STORRS.

DELIVERED

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

OF THE UNITED

STATES, FEBRUARY 17, 1826,

On the following resolutions, "Resolved, That, for the purpose of electing the President and Vice President of the United States, the constitution ought to be so amended, that a uniform system of voting by districts, shall be established in all the states; and that the constitution ought to be further amended, in such manner as will prevent the election of the aforesaid officers from devolving upon the respective Houses of Congress.

"Resolved, That a select committee be appointed, with instructions to prepare and report a joint resolution, embracing the aforesaid objects."

MR. CHAIRMAN,

THE propositions to amend the constitution, now be fore us, which have been submitted by the honorable gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. M'Duffie,) are not altogether new to our deliberations. So much of them as proposes to change the present mode of electing the President and Vice President, by establishing within the several states a uniform system of voting by districts, was introduced into this House at the last session of the sixteenth Congress and finally rejected. The other branch of the amendment, which takes the second election from Congress, is now for the first time, at least since I have had the honor of a seat here, presented for examination.

It becomes us, sir, in my humble opinion, to approach this subject with the profoundest reverence for this constitution, as the work of that illustrious body of patriots and statesmen, who seem to have been raised up by Providence, at that peculiarly eventful period, to guide by their eminent wisdom and exalted public virtue, the councils of that convention, the result of

whose deliberations was to fix the future destinies of this great empire of freedom. They were men originally highly gifted by nature and deeply versed in political knowledge; they had been educated in the principles of civil liberty, and well understood the temper and genius of their country, its interests and the spirit of its institutions. They justly considered that the government, which was then to be framed, was to be adapted to an educated and enlightened country, and to be sustained by moral sentiment and the political virtue and justice of the people. The lights of experience and history, which these men followed, were neither "few, faint, or glimmering" in their eyes; and I might, perhaps, with rather more justice than was shown by the honorable gentleman from South Carolina, reverse the opinion which he pronounced on their comparative merits, and say, that the most ordinary member of that convention knew more of the true principles of the constitution than the whole common mass of politicians in our day. The well known encomium recorded in history, which the virtues of this class of men elicited, during the revolution, from a British senate, was no less just and candid than honorable to them, as the testimony of the first statesman of that age and country. They were men who made no extraordinary or officious pretensions to patriotism, but are best known to our generation by their works and the blessings which this great and prosperous nation now enjoys. For sound views of the theory of government, just application of political principles and as the purest models of cloquence, the public papers of the statesmen of our revolution have never been excelled and will long remain unrivalled.

The times, too, were auspicious to the work before them. The pressure of public calamity had purified the souls of men; the common dangers of the revolution had bound the country together as brethren of one family; its sufferings had taught them the value of liberty, the necessity of union, and mutual forbearance with each other, and the preciousness of the in

heritance which was to descend to us, their children. No selfish passions or unhallowed purposes of ambition tainted the hearts of those who were called to that convention by their countrymen. The wisdom and the works of such men are not to be handled with temerity, and I may surely be permitted to speak for myself, as one of many yet scarcely in the seventh year of an apprenticeship here, when I say, that instead of flattering ourselves that we have become wiser than they, we should rather distrust our own political knowledge, as well as our ability to add any substantial or valuable improvement to a system of government, which came from the hands of men who seem to have been moved by the influence of inspiration itself. I trust that, on an occasion so serious as this, we shall lay aside all prejudices and feeling, and remember that, when we tread this sacred path, we move on holy ground.

It would have been more satisfactory and we might have formed a better opinion of the operation of the plan which the honorable mover of this amendment intends finally to introduce, had he furnished us at once with all the details of his system. The naked propositions, which alone are involved in the resolutions as they now stand, might then have been entitled, perhaps, to more comparative merit than can be allowed to them as merely insulated principles. They may descrve more or less favor in our judgments, as they may or may not be connected with distributions of the electoral power, which shall preserve more or less of the original political system of the constitution. As the honorable gentleman has not favored us with any particular details, we must consider these propositions chiefly on the intrinsic merits which they deserve as operating to expunge these particular features of the constitution; and in this view of their expediency, they propose an entire and radical change of the principles on which the whole structure of the political system of the general government is founded. The most difficult question, which presented itself for adjustment to the fede

ral convention, was this distribution of the electoral power in the choice of the executive. The peculiar difficulties, which pressed the convention on this delicate point, were at last overcome and it was finally arranged on principles much more satisfactory than the best friends of the constitution, at one time, supposed the form of the confederacy would admit of among them, consistently with the separate sovereignty of the states and the preservation of the just relative influence and interests of each. This part of the plan of the federal government was received in the state conventions with less objection than almost any other. The state conventions well understood the basis and principles of union on which the government rested, and in all the discussions which the constitution produced in these conventions, it was scarcely denied or questioned by any, that in this particular the plan was the wisest and best which the convention could have devised to secure the objects of the union. It can hardly be inferred that those conventions could have mistaken their own views, or that the future operations of this part of the system were not clearly foreseen and well understood.

The structure of this part of the constitution has also been revised and amended under the administration and influence of many of those who first put the government into operation. It is well worth our notice, too, that this revision and amendment took place at a period immediately succeeding the contingency which devolved the election of a President on the House of Representatives, and when the evils of an election by that body, whatever they may have been, were directly in the view of those who proposed that amendment. It was also a time when the prevailing doctrines were peculiarly auspicious to the success of any fancied improvement which should infuse into the system a larger portion of popular power in the presidential election, if such an object was more consonant to its original principles. The professed object of the Congress of 1802, was also not so much