Pennsylvania was not more important than the vote of a district of Rhode Island or New Jersey; and a majority, however large, in any section of a great State was of no more consequence than a like majority in a section of a small State. The vote of a citizen of a large State had no greater direct influence on the result than that of a citizen of a State of average or inferior political numbers. The minority, too, in each State had a chance of representation in the electoral college, the probabilities being that if they were considerable in numbers they would lead in some of the districts. Thus the electoral vote was fairly and equally dispersed over the whole country, and approximated closely to the popular vote in its results.

Great evils and dangers from the general-ticket system began to develop themselves, and have continued to do so, to the present time, with increasing force and malignity. Under the temptation` of the great importance of carrying the Presidential election, increased to its utmost by the spoils system, frauds of the most extraordinary character, most complex and most various in their operations, have come into use. Manifold voting by ballot, personation of voters dead or removed, colonization, unlawful naturalizations, the stuffing of ballot-boxes, and, last and simplest of all, false returns by returning officers, have multiplied upon us in such manner as to excite almost as much of ridicule and amusement as of apprehension and disgust. Frauds in voting will be found wherever voters are human beings, but the extent of the frauds will depend upon the temptations offered. If the area of the operation of a great fraud is only a single electoral district, and it can determine only one electoral vote out of some four hundred, there will not be a temptation to invest in it much capital, labor, or risk. But if the area of its operation is an entire State, and it may determine the choice, not of one elector, but of thirty or forty, -one tenth of the entire vote of the Union, the temptation is increased indefinitely. In our great cities, numbering their millions or half-millions of inhabitants, with universal suffrage and a large, ignorant, transient population, "alike unknowing and unknown," such frauds on a large scale are not difficult. And they have been practised, as every honest citizen must admit. If in a Presidential election great States, like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, are supposed to run very close, perhaps the majority

to be but a few thousands or even hundreds, the temptation to create the necessary thousands in the worst districts of their great cities, like New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, has been found too strong for such virtue as abides with electioneering managers.

The difference between the results of voting by single districts and by general ticket may be brought home to the apprehensions of all by an illustration. Suppose all the people of the United States voted directly for President; suppose the law to require that the entire vote of each State should be cast by the majority of that State; suppose a large State to cast 505,000 for one candidate, and 495,000 for the other; the candidate having a majority would be credited with the whole 1,000,000 votes in summing up the aggregate vote of the Union. This is practically the result of this method now. Ever so small a majority throws the entire electoral vote of a State.

The unfairness of the present system, the great temptation it offers for frauds, and the great scope it gives to the operation of local frauds or even mistakes, ought to be sufficient to condemn it. But this statement does not exhaust, it does little more than begin to enumerate, the objections.

The present system of swinging the vast vote of a great State with such prodigious power as a unit in the election gives to a great State an undue preponderance over smaller States, such preponderance as almost to crush them. No matter how large may be the majority in a State of the middle rank, though it be almost a unanimity, it can carry but its 8, 10, or 12 votes, while the barest plurality in a great State swings the force of 20, 30, or 40 electoral votes. It was for this reason that we were constantly told that the late Presidential election was to be fought in a circle whose radius was ten miles from the City Hall in New York. This was substantially true. If the majority, however small, obtained for one candidate in that circle was larger than the majority given by the rest of the State of New York for another candidate, it would carry all the thirty-five electoral votes of New York, and so outweigh the largest possible majorities in States whose populations entitle them to a tenth or a twelfth part of the political power of the Union. The effect is also demoralizing upon the smaller States. It is of little import how great may be their majorities, or how

deep their feeling and interest. There is little left to them but to await in suspense the drawing of the lottery in the great State which is to control the result, however small its majority and however large an element in its composition may be fraud or mistake. It is still more demoralizing upon the great States. The knowledge that they wield this vast vote, which may be cast by ever so small a majority, offers the temptation to fraud of which we have spoken; necessarily brings to the front and gives great power and importance to the most dangerous and unscrupulous class of electioneering managers, and tends greatly to put in their power those who should be the best public men of the State. It adds greatly to the power of the spoils system. So great is the pressure for carrying majorities in the great capitals of great States that the party in power in the nation, State, or city is tempted to increase its force of servants and officers, to strain the party rein upon them to the utmost, and in fact to employ them during the whole period of the contest, in electioneering services, which they must render at the peril of losing their places. The substitution of single district voting, diminishing so much the importance of local majorities, will do something toward lessening the hold of the spoils system upon the public, as the abolition of the spoils system would restrain, quiet, and purify the contest itself.

That this statement respecting the operation of the general-ticket system is not overdrawn will appear by a recurrence to a few wellknown events. The election for State officers, which Pennsylvania formerly held a few weeks before the Presidential election, was regarded as almost decisive upon the vote of the whole Union. There is very little doubt that the small majority which that State gave in her October election of 1856 for the Democratic candidates practically settled the Presidential election in the following November. The certainty almost established thereby that her twenty-eight electoral votes would be given to Mr. Buchanan had such an effect upon a highly excited and impressible community, upon the fears of one side and the hopes of the other, as well as upon the timid and self-seeking everywhere, that the national election was substantially given up in the other thirty States. In the late Presidential contest, does any one doubt that if the State elections in Ohio and Indiana had gone for one and the same party, whichever it was, the certainty how their thirty-seven electoral votes

would go would have settled the question for the whole nation? The general government cannot prevent States holding their State elections at such times as make them tentative and significant of the Presidential election; and although the two elections, with their expense of money, time, and excitement, are injurious to the citizens of the States, and many States have abandoned them, still other States have held to them against the interest of their citizens, for the sake of the political power which is thus given to their public men and to the managers of their political machinery. Everything must be done for Maine, Indiana, and Ohio, nothing must be refused them, because they vote by general ticket in November, and their September and October elections will settle and proclaim their Presidential vote.

The effect of the general-ticket system is seen in the bearing of the public men, and, still worse, of the electioneering managers from a few great States, in Congress, and especially at about the time of the Presidential nominating conventions. It is due to the public men of great States that they should receive high consideration and wield a large influence, because of the magnitude of the interests and the number of citizens they especially represent. These they will have, whatever may be the form of voting for President. But under the present system they have an undue influence from artificial causes. The Republican or Democratic Senator from a mammoth State walks about with the possible thirty or forty Presidential votes of his State in his pocket, and "Doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus.'

Nor he alone, but every electioneering manager from a great State, whose function and capacity are solely that of marshaling or creating the hundreds or thousands of votes in his great city or district, which may be decisive of the entire national election, may, without one qualification of a statesman, have a personal prestige, and a power over all questions of policy and patronage, which it is a shame to contemplate and a peril to permit. Nay, further, every inhabitant of a great State who has any local influence, just or unjust, honest or dishonest, which may be thought to affect even a few hundred voters in his immediate locality, becomes by this unjust contrivance a possible arbiter of the fate of the nation.

Few seem to have thought much of the effect of this system on

the public policy of the country. If Congress has before it some question of public policy affecting branches of industry, which ought to be settled upon general principles, the public argument made before the committee of the House will probably be upon principle, but what is the private argument of the interested parties who buttonhole the committee-men and members of the House ? "Recollect my State votes by general ticket, and throws a tenth or a fifteenth part of the vote of the country, and does it by very small majorities. Last year my district furnished a bigger majority for our side than we got in the whole State. Now, if you don't care for that majority in the coming Presidential election, very well; but if you do, you had better not touch the thirteenth article of the tariff bill." Now, if that State voted by districts, this man's majority would settle but one electoral vote, and perhaps affect the two electoral votes at large; and his argument would be weighed accordingly. It is the general-ticket system alone which gives this small, worthless personage such disproportionate power, whether over Congress in matters of legislation, or over the President and the executive departments in questions of patronage.

These disproportionate powers and influences, so wielded, are also felt in the national conventions for nominations of Presidents, and in all the contests within the party which precede and follow these conventions, and in all the dealings with patronage and appointments, high or low, prospective or in hand.

Thus it has come to pass that the selection of candidates and election of President, instead of being a power and function spread as equally as possible over the whole country, is reduced to a few great centres, where the political machinery of the few great States is in play. It has been converted from a corporation of generally diffused and pretty equally divided stock, on which each shareholder has a vote, into a lottery where a few great prizes control and absorb the entire scheme.

It is true that the States can return to the system of voting by single districts without the necessity of an amendment to the Constitution, the manner of appointing electors being at their control. But there is no probability that they will do so. The great States are not likely to lead off in it, and the smaller States will hold on to the little power they have, as their protection. No