earance
in the newspapers, where alone they would be generally read, and produce
general effect. The present vacancy too, of other matter, would give
them place in every paper, and bring the question home to every man's
conscience.

But inequality of representation in both Houses of our legislature, is
not the only republican heresy in this first essay of our revolutionary
patriots at forming a constitution. For let it be agreed that a
government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has
his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, (not indeed in person,
which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city, or small
township, but) by representatives chosen by himself, and responsible to
him at short periods, and let us bring to the test of this canon every
branch of our constitution.

In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than
half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose.
The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of
irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely independent
of the choice of the people, and of their control; his Council equally
so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the Judiciary, the
judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves.
In England, where judges were named and removable at the will of an
hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was feared, and has
flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for life, to make
them independent of that executive. But in a government founded on
the public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction,
and against that will. There, too, they were still removable on a
concurrence of the executive and legislative branches. But we have made
them independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by
their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own
body for the imbecilities of dotage. The justices of the inferior
courts are self-chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in
succession for ever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of
the bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county in
chains, for ever indissoluble. Yet these justices are the real executive
as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary concerns. They
tax us at will; fill the office of sheriff, the most important of all
the executive officers of the county