ntary interests are in
general procured and supported.

Theory, I know, would suppose, that every general election is to the
representative a day of judgment, in which he appears before his
constituents to account for the use of the talent with which they
entrusted him, and of the improvement he had made of it for the public
advantage. It would be so, if every corruptible representative were to
find an enlightened and incorruptible constituent. But the practice and
knowledge of the world will not suffer us to be ignorant, that the
Constitution on paper is one thing, and in fact and experience is
another. We must know that the candidate, instead of trusting at his
election to the testimony of his behaviour in parliament, must bring the
testimony of a large sum of money, the capacity of liberal expense in
entertainments, the power of serving and obliging the rulers of
corporations, of winning over the popular leaders of political clubs,
associations, and neighbourhoods. It is ten thousand times more
necessary to show himself a man of power, than a man of integrity, in
almost all the elections with which I have been acquainted. Elections,
therefore, become a matter of heavy expense; and if contests are
frequent, to many they will become a matter of an expense totally
ruinous, which no fortunes can bear; but least of all the landed
fortunes, encumbered as they often, indeed as they mostly are, with
debts, with portions, with jointures; and tied up in the hands of the
possessor by the limitations of settlement. It is a material, it is in
my opinion a lasting, consideration, in all the questions concerning
election. Let no one think the charges of election a trivial matter.

The charge, therefore, of elections ought never to be lost sight of, in a
question concerning their frequency, because the grand object you seek is
independence. Independence of mind will ever be more or less influenced
by independence of fortune; and if, every three years, the exhausting
sluices of entertainments, drinkings, open houses, to say nothing of
bribery, are to be periodically drawn up and renewed--if government
favours, for which now, in some shape or other, the whole race of men are
candidates, are to be called for upon every occasion, I see that private
fortunes will be washed away, and every, even to the least, trace of
independence, borne down by the torrent. I do not seriously think this
Constitution, even to the wrecks of it, c