another elsewhere. How far they could be successfully borrowed, transplanted, or engrafted upon any older system is a question too doubtful to be answered, unnecessary to consider, and which Americans are very far from proposing to discuss. THE CHOICE OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS WHETHER presidential electors for the congressional districts ought to be chosen by such districts or by State ticket, is a question that is more and more engaging public attention. Discussions of that sort are often premonitory of approaching changes in methods of government. Men of our race are principally guided in such subjects by the light of experience. They are not much concerned with theoretical speculations as to the future success of institutions, but rarely fail to profit by the lessons of the past. It is only when mischiefs have gradually made themselves apparent through a considerable period of time that the general intelligence begins to turn of its own accord towards a consideration of the remedy. The debate that ensues, and the comparison of views, not at first concurrent nor altogether mature, bring about at last such an agreement of the majority as produces a permanent, perhaps a constitutional change in the existing system. It is to be remarked in the first place that the method of choosing presidential electors which now prevails (except in Michigan where it has been recently abolished), while constitutional in the sense that the Con stitution does not prohibit it, is entirely at variance with the original design of that instrument. Its framers intended, and supposed they had provided, that the President should be selected as well as voted for by the electors. The function of the people was to elect the electors, not the President. The office of elector upon that theory was a very important one. Its members chose a President as the legislatures choose Senators, in the exercise of an independent judgment, limited only by the few conditions of eligibility imposed by the Constitution. It was not contemplated that the electors should be merely the registers to set down, and the mes engers to carry votes for a candidate to whom they were pledged beforehand, and from whom they were under no circumstances at liberty to withdraw. During the first three presidential elections, the constitutional method was pursued. But custom for a long period has deprived the electors of the power originally conferred upon them, and has ordained that they shall be only the instructed instruments of their party to record a vote in favor of the person nominated before the election, by a political convention. No elector would now venture to use, nor indeed, as a man of honor, would he be at liberty to use, any discretion in the matter. Indeed it may be questioned whether if the candidate so nominated should happen to die after the election and before the meeting of the electors, those bodies would feel themselves authorized to exercise their constitutional power of voting for another man, until a new convention of their party should have presented him as the candidate. The consequence is that the right of the American |