[24] The septennial act was judged the only guard against a Popish reign, and therefore highly popular.

[25] Notes on Virginia, page 197. Lond. Edit. Query 13.

[26] Contracts, where a Legislature is a party, are excepted.

[27] Some jealous people ignorantly call the proposed Constitution of Federal Government, an aristocracy. If such men are honest, their honesty deserves pity: There is not a feature of true aristocracy in the Constitution; the whole frame of Government is a pure Representativ Republic.

[28] Calvini Lexicon Juridicum.

[29] See Laws of the Saxon Kings.

[30] Such is the article, which excludes the clergy from a right to hold civil offices. The people, might, with the same propriety, have declared, that no merchants nor lawyers should be eligible to civil offices. It is a common opinion that the business of the clergy is wholly spiritual. Never was a grosser error. A part of their business is to inform the minds of people on all subjects, and correct their morals; so that they have a direct influence on government. At any rate they are subjects of law, and ought as freemen to be eligible to a seat in the Legislature; provided the people incline to choose them.

[31] No. [II.] [IV.] [V.]

[32] It is a capital defect in some of the States, that the government is so organized as not to admit subordinate acts of legislation in small districts. In these States, every little collection of people in a village must petition the Legislature for liberty to lay out a highway or build a bridge; an affair in which the State at large has very little interest, and of the necessity and utility of which the Legislature are not suitable judges. This occasions much trouble for the State; it is a needless expense. A State should be divided into inferior corporations, veiled with powers competent to all acts of local police. What right have the inhabitants of Suffolk to interfere in the building of a bridge in Montgomery?[a] Who are the most competent judges of a local convenience; the whole State, or the inhabitants of the particular district?

[a] This was written in New York.