the mode by electors is unfair, since it misrepresents the popular will. Justice and truth demand its modification or abolition. By this cumbersome and circumlocutory process the electors may be compelled to elect a candidate rejected by the people, or reject a candidate accepted by the people. The defeat of General McClellan was complete, for he carried only three States-Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey. The whole electoral vote was 233, of which a majority necessary for a choice was 117. Now a change in the popular vote of 35,000 from Lincoln's would have changed the vote of every State mentioned below, and carried their full electoral vote. These added to the vote he had received would have elected General McClellan.

The change of 50,000 popular votes in New York in 1848 from Taylor to Cass, or giving one-half of the votes thrown away upon Van Buren to Cass, would have thrown the 36 electoral votes of New York to Cass, and elected him.

We have shown that, by the present electoral system, a person may be made President by receiving a majority of the electoral votes, who is in a minority before the people. We have shown that Lincoln, in 1860, in a popular minority of more than a million of votes, swept the electoral college by an overwhelming majority; that Douglas, who received a popular vote equal to two-thirds of Lincoln's, received only one-fifteenth of his electoral vote; that Breckinridge, who was 500,000 votes behind Douglas, received six times as many votes in the

electoral college, and Bell, who was 800,000 votes of the people behind Douglas, received thrice his number of electoral votes.

Can any demonstration be more complete and satisfactory as to the utter uselessness and impolicy, if not injustice and iniquity, of the present mode of election by electoral colleges?

This defect in the machinery of our government has been long seen by the statesmen of the nation. General Hamilton, one of the framers of the Constitution, acknowledges of this mode that it was objectionable, and when the amendment of 1804 was adopted, he proposed another, as follows:

To divide each State into districts equal to the whole number of senators and representatives from each State in the Congress of the United States, and said districts to be as equal in population as possible, and, if necessary, of parts of counties contiguous to each other, except where there may be some detached portion of territory not sufficient of itself to form a district, which then shall be annexed to some other district.

Thomas H. Benton, during his 30 years in the Senate, again and again brought this subject before Congress.

General Jackson, in his first annual message, urged an amendment to the Constitution, to secure the election of the President by a direct and immediate vote of the people. This he repeated in five subsequent messages. In his message of 1829, he says: "To the people belongs the right of electing their Chief Magistrate. It never was designed that their choice in any case should be defeated, either by the intervention of electorial colleges, or by the agency confided in certain contingencies to the House of Representatives. I, therefore, would recommend such an amendment to the Constitution as may remove all intermediate agency in the election of President and Vice President."

President Johnson, in 1845, when a member of the House, and in 1860, when a Senator in Congress, urged similar views. As President, in a message to Congress, dated July 18, 1868, he fully sets forth the injustice and inequality of the present mode, "as virtually denying the right of every citizen of the United States possessing the constitutional qualification to become a candidate for high office, and also denying the right of each qualified voter in the nation to vote for the person he deems most worthy and well qualified."

Senator Wade, of Ohio, now President of the Senate, at a recent session brought this question as to a direct vote of the people for President before the Senate, and defended the position by an able argument. In a recent debate on Senator Buckalew's amendment, the present mode of electors was denounced by Senator Sumner and others "as cumbersome, effete, and inconvenient." The scene which occurred recently in the counting of the electoral votes in the joint convention of both houses of Congress shows that the system must be altered. Mr. Miller, of Pennsylvania, introduced recently (February 8, 1869) an amendment to the Constitution to allow the qualified voters of the respective States to vote directly for President. The amendment to the Constitution (Article XVI.) of Senator Morton, adopted by the Senate February 9, 1869, is a proposition in the right direction-that the people shall select electors, (and not the Legislatures,) and that Congress shall have the power to prescribe the manner in which such electors shall be chosen by the people.

Connected intimately with this subject, as a useful remedy for the evils of the present system, is the reform proposed by Senator Buckalew, of cumulative voting; which is, that where there are more persons than one to be chosen, the voter shall possess as many votes as there are persons to be chosen, and the voter may bestow his votes at his discretion upon the whole number of persons to be chosen, or upon a less number, cumulating his votes upon one, two, three, or any number less than the whole. The plan introduced into Parliament as early as 1854, by Lord John Russell, is nearly similar; that in certain constituencies which return three members to Parliament, each voter should be allowed only to vote for two. This plan was adopted in 1867, and is now the law of England. Still another plan is urged by John Stuart Mill in his work on " Representative Government," (proposed originally by James Garth Marshall,) that the elector, having his three votes, should be at liberty to give all to one candidate, or two to one and one to another. This is similar to the plan introduced in the Senate (January 13, 1869) by Senator Buckalew, and commended by Earl Grey in his work on "Parliamentary Reform." The more these works are studied, the more clearly will appear the perfect feasibility of the plan and its transcendent advantages.

The allied plan of personal representation has also been highly commended. As presented by Mr. Hare in an elaborate work, it contains another great idea; that those who did not like the local candidates may fill up their ticket by voting for persons of national reputation. This is sometimes done in our country on important occasions of deep interest. In 1835, a convention was called in North Carolina to reform her constitution. It was the first convention for this purpose since 1776, and deeply excited the public mind. The ablest men of the State were chosen without regard to their location or politics.

The natural tendency of representative governments, in the opinion of Mr. Mill, is to collective mediocrity. This will be increased the more the elective franchise is extended. Edmund Burke was repudiated by the electors of Bristol, in 1780, for Parliament, for his advocacy of the cause of the American colonies. He was, however, returned by another constituency, and continued during life in Parliament, contributing to its debates and to the glory of the nation. In contrast to this, William R. Davie, who had been a gallant and successful officer in the war, governor of the State, (1798,) envoy extraordinary to France, (1799,) was defeated in popular elections in North Carolina, when a candidate for Congress and for the Legislature, by individuals without extraordinary merit or talent.

There is hardly a State of our Union in which the congressional districts are not gerrymandered in the interest of party. This adds to the deterioration of our public service, so that Mr. Mill declares "it is an admitted fact that in the American dempcracy, which is constructed on this faulty model, the highly cultivated members of the community, except such as are willing to sacrifice their own judgment and conscience to the behests of party and become the servile echo of those who are inferiors in knowledge, do not allow their names as candidates for Congress or the Legislature, so certain it is they would be defeated."

February, 1869.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT IN ILLINOIS.

A CONVENTION authorized to frame and submit to the people, amendments to the Constitution of Illinois, met at Springfield in December, 1869, and concluded the performance of its duties and adjourned finally on the 13th of May, 1870. The amended constitution for the State, as formed by the convention, was submitted to a popular vote for adoption or rejection on the first Saturday in July following, at which time also eight additional propositions of amendment were submitted severally to a like vote. An ingenious and convenient plan was provided by the Convention for taking the sense of the people upon all the questions submitted, by means of a single ticket. The tickets or ballots properly prepared were to be distributed by the Secretary of State through the County Clerks, and upon their face were to indicate clearly and separately an affirmative vote for each of the propositions to be passed upon-first, the new or amended Constitution, and next, in their order, the several separate amendments proposed. Whenever the voter should strike off or erase from his ballot either one of the propositions, his vote was to be counted as given against it, otherwise in its favor. Thus nine distinct questions were passed upon by the people, though pre