Gazette Of The United States

Mr. Fenno,

In the Connecticut Journal, printed at New-Haven, there lately appeared an address 'to the people of Connecticut,' under the signature of Cyrus, on the important subject of Election—the following extract containing general observations on a republican government, and that vital principle of freedom, REPRESENTATION—appears to me worthy of republication.

Yours,
Z.

ON ELECTIONS.

After all the minute speculations of the minute politicians, we seem to rest in this important truth, that popular security, in republics, principally consists in a certain fair division and balance in the branches of the government, and the establishment of a pure and equal system of representation. When you have provided proper checks, that is, when you have so arranged the capital parts of the machine, as that, while it is acting in a right direction, they will move in perfect harmony, and when in a wrong direction, will produce an immediate and mutual resistance; and when you have secured such a frequency and freedom of popular election, as that the democratic branch, in the government shall feel with sensibility the interests of their constituents on the one hand, and their own responsibility on the other; you have fixed the main pillars on which public liberty must rest. When you have done this, you may go on to organize the smaller and dependent parts of the system, multiply the objects of its exercise, and accumulate its powers without limitation.

Power cannot of itself, render a government dangerous; because danger generally arises from irregular operations; and power, so far from producing irregular operations, is, in well constructed machinery, the best preservative against them; as weight, imposed upon a perfect arch, but augments the solidity and security of the structure. That the truth of my comparison may not be mistaken. I must explain it further. In the form of a well adjusted republic, there must be an interior principle of mutual resistance, designed essentially for the security of the people: The stronger this check, the more perfect is this security. Suppose that power has in the political, as in the physical machine, a tendency to strengthen the reciprocal resistance of the parts, and consequently to augment the security of all that depends upon it. The security which power adds to the government itself, is derived from the solidity it gives to the whole, by confirming the union of its parts: The security which it gives to the people, arises from its overcoming all irregular tendencies in the government. The danger to liberty must spring either from the irregular operations of the parts, or from the united and direct operations of the whole government: From the first of these the admirable system of balances, essential in all republics, is an effectual preservative; for the last we have a free system of election, as a still more efficacious and more radical remedy. This is the most irresistible power in a nation; it acts with universal and perpetual influence; it is a spirit, which pervades, invigorates and purifies every part of government; the spirit of political regeneration, which infuses life, health and beauty into the most deformed and debilitated body: It is our final resource in all our painful apprehensions: It is our sweetest solace, the firm foundation of our hope, a relief, ever ready, accompanying the distempers it is designed to cure. Let us cling to our right of election as to the rock of our political safety.

Our Constitution has provided a system of representation calculated on the truest principles of liberty. So ample, that the interest, the feelings and the wants of all parts of the community are expressed in the administration: So equal, that every citizen, whatever may be his rank or fortune, has his voice, and every state its just proportion of influence, in the public measures: so frequently renewed, that the representative cannot lose for a moment the image of his dependence, nor the constituent the pride of his creative authority. It belongs to us to give activity and energy to this beautiful theory, and to maintain in full vigor its inestimable principles.

The design with which I have undertaken to address you, is to point out and urge the extreme importance of your right of election. If some of the remarks I have already made should appear to be foreign to this purpose, I beg you to recollect, that contracting the basis of our security to a small compass, necessarily increases the importance of the parts which compose that basis. If our resources are few, do we not embrace them with proportionable ardor? If there is no danger in bestowing powers, is it not on the ground of the all-powerful influence of election, which, by operating on the prime interests and more steady passions of our rulers, gives a salutary direction to the public measures? Indeed no political axiom appears to my mind more demonstrably true, than that, with a perfect system of elective representation, no power can possibly be dangerous; but that, without such a system, every power, that can be conferred, is pregnant with danger.