Considerations on the Choice of Public Rulers: On the Extent of Their Powers; and on the Best Means of Securing the Advantages, and Reforming the Abuses, of Popular Elections

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Hopkins & Seymour, 1805 - Elections - 156 pages

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Page 57 - ... such persons with the magistracy, or even with the right of voting. " Would it not be prudent, and give greater steadiness and respectability to national deliberations, if none were allowed to hold any magistracy, or to vote for any public officer, until they were forty years of age ? Such a regulation would very much lessen the number of voters without injuring the...
Page 58 - Would it not be prudent, and give greater steadiness and respectability to national deliberations, if none were allowed to hold any magistracy, or to vote for any public officer, until they were forty years of age ? Such a regulation would very much lessen the number of voters, without injuring the rights of any class, and would put the magistracy, the election and control of public agents, and the judging and voting on laws, into the hands of men, who from having cooler pa*w>n(, and more experience,...
Page 57 - As there are so many instances of young persons, who, in a few years after their majority, spend their fortunes and ruin their health, from the want of experience, and from the violence of their passions, their own interest being an insufficient check to prevent them, nothing can appear more imprudent than to entrust such persons with the magistracy, or even with the right of voting.
Page 59 - Every three hundred of these, living most contiguous, to form a w«rd, and to meet in a church, or some other convenient place, on a certain day annually, to elect two provincial senators, and one ware'en or judge for the ward.
Page 50 - But by the constitution which was formed for the bank, the directors are not only elected annually, but they are liable to be superseded at any time by their constituents, and each director is liable individually, for every act which he has not protested against which the members of congress are not.
Page 51 - ... congress with power over the property of the nation; yet the American legislators did not think it prudent to allow the directors of the bank any absolute power whatever.

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