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Yet these justices are the real executive as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary concerns. The justices of the inferior courts are self-chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in succession forever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of the bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county in chains, forever indissoluble. They are irremovable, but by their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own body for the imbecilities of dotage. But we have made them independent of the nation itself. There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the executive and legislative branches.
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But in a government founded on the public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction, and against that will. 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. In the Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves. 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. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of irresponsibility. 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.
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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. The present vacancy too, of other matter, would give them place in every paper, and bring the question home to every man’s conscience.īut 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. On that point, then, I am entirely in sentiment with your letters and only lament that a copy- right of your pamphlet prevents their appearance in the newspapers, where alone they would be generally read, and produce general effect. But experience and reflection have but more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal representation then proposed. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that “governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.” Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in them. In truth, the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. The infancy of the subject at that moment, and our inexperience of self government, occasioned gross departures in that draught from genuine republican canons.
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At the birth of our republic, I committed that opinion to the world, in the draught of a constitution annexed to the “Notes on Virginia,” in which a provision was inserted for a representation permanently equal. Yet, if it be asked for your own satisfaction only, and not to be quoted before the public, I have no motive to withhold it, and the less from you, as it coincides with your own. The question you propose, on equal representation, has become a party one, in which I wish to take no public share. But I am now retired: I resign myself, as a passenger, with confidence to those at present at the helm, and ask but for rest, peace and good will. On the contrary, while in public service especially, I thought the public entitled to frankness, and intimately to know whom they employed. I have not been in the habit of mysterious reserve on any subject, nor of buttoning up my opinions within my own doublet. SIR, - I duly received your favor of June the 13th, with the copy of the letters on the calling a convention, on which you are pleased to ask my opinion. Thomas Jefferson to “Henry Tompkinson” (Samuel Kercheval), 12 July 1816,” Founders Online, National Archives. Source: “Proposals to Revise the Virginia Constitution: I.