bviate the difficulty, Ellsworth and King suggested the
device of an electoral college, in which the electors should be chosen
by the state legislatures, and should hold a meeting at the federal city
for the sole purpose of deciding upon a chief magistrate. It was then
objected that it would be difficult to find competent men who would be
willing to undertake a long journey simply for such a purpose. The
objection was felt to be a very grave one, and so the convention
returned to the plan of an election by Congress, and again confronted
the difficulty of the chief magistrate's intriguing to secure his
reelection. Wilson thought to do away with this difficulty by
introducing the element of blind chance, as in some of the states of
ancient Greece, and choosing the executive by a board of electors taken
from Congress by lot; but the suggestion found little support. Dickinson
thought it would be well if the people of each state were to choose its
best citizen,--in modern parlance, its "favourite son;" then out of
these thirteen names a chief magistrate might be chosen, either by
Congress or by a special board of electors. At length, on the 26th of
July, at the motion of Mason, the convention resolved that there should
be a national executive, to consist of a single person, to be chosen by
the national legislature for the term of seven years, and to be
ineligible for a second term. He was to be styled President of the
United States of America.

This decision remained until the very end of August, when the whole
question was reopened by a motion of Rutledge that the two houses of
Congress, in electing the president, should proceed by "joint ballot."
The object of this motion was to prevent either house from exerting a
negative on the choice of the other. It was carried in spite of the
opposition of some of the smaller states, which might hope to exercise a
greater relative influence upon the choice of presidents, if the Senate
were to vote separately. At this point the fears of Gouverneur Morris,
that an election by Congress would result in boundless intrigue, were
revived; and in a powerful speech he persuaded the convention to return
to the device of the electoral college, which might be made equal in
number and similar in composition to the two houses of Congress sitting
together. It need not be required of the electors, after all, that they
should make a long journey to the seat of the federal government. They
might meet