are nations. When several of these are associated for
some ends, and unassociated for others, distinct orders
of political beings exist, created by distinct associations.
Our policy provides organs to bestow efficacy on the opinions of both, because their existence itself can only be
known or preserved by their opinions; and the senate was
made the organ of those moral beings called states, to
prevent the separate social existence of each, from being
swallowed up by a society of all. The people have constituted themselves into two associations; of states, and of
their union. As these moral or political beings, infuse in-
to our government its spirit, one for some purposes, the
rest for others; and as all of them are composed of the
same intellectual beings; a construction which supposes,
that our policy expected both democratical and aristocratical influence to proceed from the same intellectual source,
is as unphilosophical, as to expect hot and cold breath at
the same time, from the same nostril. Separate interests
only, and not national opinion, can furnish a government
with opposite and contending impulses. If the states are
not aristocratical beings, how can they produce an aristocratical being?
It is as foreign to the intention of our policy, to create a monarel as an aristocracy. The president is the compound creature of the equality of states and the equality of man, both of which are infused into the mode of his election, for the purpose of preserving both; and in his legislative capacity, he is equally exposed to the control of the popular and state representatives. Thus doubly subjected to the principle of equality, by which both these bodies are constituted, it would be doubly inconsistent with our policy, should he imagine himself to be a king.
This idea is in some degree violated, by the practices of district or legislative electors; the latter of which makes state will, and the former, general will, the electors of a president; and it is observed with great accuracy, by that of choosing electors by the people of a state, in the mode of