agitation, but not of ruin.

Mode Of Election

Skill of the American legislators shown in the mode of election adopted
by them--Creation of a special electoral body--Separate votes of these
electors--Case in which the House of Representatives is called upon to
choose the President--Results of the twelve elections which have taken
place since the Constitution has been established.

Besides the dangers which are inherent in the system, many other
difficulties may arise from the mode of election, which may be obviated
by the precaution of the legislator. When a people met in arms on some
public spot to choose its head, it was exposed to all the chances of
civil war resulting from so martial a mode of proceeding, besides
the dangers of the elective system in itself. The Polish laws, which
subjected the election of the sovereign to the veto of a single
individual, suggested the murder of that individual or prepared the way
to anarchy.

In the examination of the institutions and the political as well as
social condition of the United States, we are struck by the admirable
harmony of the gifts of fortune and the efforts of man. The nation
possessed two of the main causes of internal peace; it was a new
country, but it was inhabited by a people grown old in the exercise of
freedom. America had no hostile neighbors to dread; and the American
legislators, profiting by these favorable circumstances, created a
weak and subordinate executive power which could without danger be made
elective.

It then only remained for them to choose the least dangerous of the
various modes of election; and the rules which they laid down upon this
point admirably correspond to the securities which the physical and
political constitution of the country already afforded. Their object was
to find the mode of election which would best express the choice of the
people with the least possible excitement and suspense. It was admitted
in the first place that the simple majority should be decisive; but
the difficulty was to obtain this majority without an interval of
delay which it was most important to avoid. It rarely happens that an
individual can at once collect the majority of the suffrages of a great
people; and this difficulty is enhanced in a republic of confederate
States, where local influences are apt to preponderate. The means by
which it was proposed to obviate this second obstacle was to delegate
the electoral powers of the nation to a bod