Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander

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      But this is not the only view in which the delay in convening the Legislature is to be considered as reprehensible. It had the effect of depriving the Legislature itself of the exercise of a right vested in them by the national Constitution, and hazarded an undue postponement of our representation in Congress, which has actually happened. As to the first, the Constitution of the United States leaves the mode of appointing electors to the discretion of State Legislatures. They may, therefore, refer them to the choice of the people, if they think proper. This has been done in several of the States, and is, in my opinion, a privilege which it is of great importance should be in the hands of the people. Making the usual allowances for want of punctuality in meeting, disagreement in opinion, difficulties in framing new and untried regulations, it may be safely pronounced that the Legislature was assembled too late to refer the choice of electors to the people; whereby they were deprived of an opportunity of exercising a constitutional discretion, and the people of a chance of exercising a privilege of very considerable moment to their interests. May it not be justly said, in this instance, that the Governor undertook to think for the Legislature? But this is not all. The state of the parties in the Legislature was understood long before they met, and it was to have been foreseen that there would have been a diversity of views in regard to the mode of appointing our national representatives, and consequently delays in agreeing upon any. By not calling the Legislature early enough to allow time for overcoming these impediments, it happens, that in a matter in which the two Houses did finally agree, to wit, the manner of choosing members of the national House of Representatives, the execution has been so greatly procrastinated, that it must be more than a month from the time appointed for the meeting of the body before it can be even ascertained who our representatives are.

      There is a further circumstance in which the Governor's conduct subjects him to the suspicion of an intention to embarrass the measures relating to the Constitution.

      The Senate having, in very gentle terms, intimated a wish that the Legislature had been more early convened, the Governor, in a very petulant and indecent reply, considering that it was the Executive speaking to a branch of the Legislature, made himself a party on the side of the Assembly in the controversy between the two Houses, and thereby furnished a motive of obstinacy to the one and of irritation to the other. It is well known that, in that controversy, one of the reasons on which the Assembly had chiefly relied in insisting upon the joint ballot was, that it approached more nearly to an election by the people; while the Senate held that they were entitled to an equal voice, and that, as being the peculiar representative, by our Constitution, of the great body of the freeholders, they were bound, by a regard to the interests of that class, as well as to their own rights as a branch of the Legislature, to insist upon the equality they claimed.

      The Senate in their speech had observed that, if there had been time, they would have been for referring the choice of electors to the people. The Governor answers, that it was impracticable to convene the Legislature in time for that object, and intimates a persuasion that the Senate will see the propriety of pursuing their principle, as far as circumstances would permit, by adopting such mode of appointment as should appear most nearly to approach an election by the people, adverting to the ground which had been taken by the majority in the Assembly. This intimation of the Governor could not be understood in any other light than as advocating their principle, and could not have failed to have had the effect of confirming them in it, and alienating the Senate, who were indelicately treated, still more from it. There are circumstances which render a hint as intelligible as the most precise and positive expressions.

      This species of interference in a question between the two branches of the Legislature was very unbecoming in the Chief Magistrate, and bespoke much more the intemperate partisan than the temperate arbiter of differences prejudicial to the State.

      And the inference from the whole of what I have stated is, that the Governor, since the adoption of the Constitution in this State, has manifested the reverse of a disposition to afford it a cordial support.

      I remain, with great regard,

      Yours, etc.,

      H.G.

      To____, Esq., Suffolk County.