inees was elected by a
majority of twenty over Madison; but in the case of the other that
majority was reduced more than half, and a change of five more votes
would have elected Madison.

He had, however, neither expected nor wished to be sent to the Senate,
while he did hope to be elected to the House of Representatives. The
Senate was intended to be the more dignified body, requiring in its
members a certain style of living for which wealth was indispensable.
Madison had not the means to give that kind of social support to
official position; but he could afford to belong to that body where a
member was not the less respectable because his whole domestic
establishment might be a bachelor's room in a boarding-house.

Virginia was, as he wrote to Washington, "the only instance among the
ratifying States in which the politics of the legislature are at
variance with the sense of the people, expressed by their
representatives in convention." This had enabled Henry and a majority
of his friends to elect senators who, representing "the politics of the
legislature," did not represent "the sense of the people" in regard to
the national Constitution. But in the election of members of the House
of Representatives, the sense of the people was to be again appealed to,
and a new way must be devised for asserting the supremacy of legislative
power. The cleverness of Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, many years
later, under similar circumstances, introduced a new word into the
language of the country, and, it was supposed at the time, a new device
in American politics. But what has since been known as "Gerrymandering"
was really the invention of Patrick Henry. This method of arranging
counties into congressional districts in accordance with their political
affinities, without regard to their geographical lines, Henry attempted
to do with Mr. Madison's own county. By joining it to distant counties
it was expected that an anti-Federal majority would be secured large
enough to insure his defeat. The attempt to elect him to the Senate was,
Madison wrote to Jefferson, "defeated by Mr. Henry, who is omnipotent in
the present legislature." He adds that Henry "has taken equal pains, in
forming the counties into districts for the election of representatives,
to associate with Orange such as are most devoted to his politics, and
most likely to be swayed by the prejudices excited against me." The
scheme, however, was unsuccessful, perhaps partly