the elector votes. But an elector having no property qualification is entitled to vote if he has resided during the six months preceding the election, and been registered in the previous year, and has also paid a tax of one dollar, or been enrolled and served in the militia. Naturalised citizens must have the freehold qualification above required; and no person can vote to impose a tax or expend money in any city or town unless he shall have paid a tax within the year preceding, upon property valued at 134 dollars.

"These provisions, together with that relating to the judicial tenure and compensation, render the aspect of the constitution of that State more wise and conservative than any other State constitution recently framed or amended. Indeed, that constitution seems to stand pre-eminent in value over any of the exist ing State constitutions in the guards it introduces against one of the most alarming evils incident in large towns and cities to our democratical establishments-I mean the fraudulent abuse of the right of suffrage."

In North Carolina, the electors of the Senate must be freeholders, and the electors of the House of Commons (the name is

still retained from the colonial period) must have paid public taxes.

In New Jersey, by the law of 1798, the electors must have a clear estate of 50l., and have resided for a year in the country. "But the election law of 1839 has reduced this constitutional check down to worthlessness, for it declares, that every person who has been assessed and paid a State or county tax within two years preceding the election, is to be deemed worth 501. clear estate in the State.""

This almost entire destruction, in so short a period, of all those "constitutional checks and conservative elements" in the franchise of the individual States, which had been regarded by the framers of the Constitution as essential to genuine liberty, has entirely altered the basis on which those able men placed the Constitution, and on which they relied for its continuing to be what their prudence and wisdom left it.

In determining that the Senate of the United States should be elected by the State legislatures, they expected that those legislatures

would be composed, first, of a Senate returned by a class of electors representing the more stable elements of the community; and, secondly, of a House of Representatives resting on similar elements, namely, on the electoral qualifications of property, residence, and the payment of taxes.

The process of change in this short space of time has swept away these expectations; and the Senate of the United States is now elected by State legislatures, based on a franchise unrestricted by any of the above qualifications, except in the very few instances above noticed; and the members of the House of Representa1 tives of the United States are returned by direct election, by voters having, in twenty of the States, no property qualification at all, and in nine next to none, the remaining two only having retained any valid qualification.

It will, I imagine, be readily granted that this great change in the basis of power cannot have taken place without impressing upon the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States a quality and direction to

a very

considerable extent in accordance with it; and therefore much more directly amenable to popular impulses than the legislative body contemplated by the framers of the Constitution.

But the above great change is far from being the only proof of the progress of ultra-democratical opinions which the legislation of that country has afforded of late years. Among the most remarkable has been the adoption, in more than two-thirds of the States, of the practice of electing the Judges, by popular vote and for short periods only; thus striking at the root of their independence, and violating a principle which has ever been held to be among the first elements of freedom, and of protection to life and property. The fact has been already touched upon; the extent to which the practice has been carried will be noticed in its proper place.

It is a common answer in the United States, in reply to questions as to the prospects of sober and temperate government, and the preservation of the just and equal rights of all, that

the democratic influence is extending itself in other countries besides the United States, and that it has made itself much more felt in this country during the last fifty years than it had ever done before. There is, however, between the constitutional changes that have taken place in this country and those of the United States, this marked difference, that their changes are departures from the principles of their Constitution; ours have been in accordance with our constitutional principles, enlarging their scope so as to embrace a greater number of individuals, but preserving, with all the guards that cautious wisdom could devise, the principles themselves, as the best guarantees of freedom, of safe and satisfactory progress, of high civilisation, and national honour.

There is another subject which requires to be noticed under this head of the elections in the United States, namely, the mode of giving the votes, which, as has been seen (p. 106), is in some States appointed to be vivá voce, in others by "ballot."