most important of all the executive officers of the county; name nearly all our military leaders, which leaders, once named, are removable but by themselves.  The juries, our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it, are not selected by the people, nor amenable to them.  They are chosen by an officer named by the court and executive.  Chosen, did I say?  Picked up by the sheriff from the loungings of the court-yard, after every thing respectable has retired from it.  Where then is our republicanism to be found?  Not in our constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people.  That would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly.  Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution, all things have gone well.  But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but has prevailed in spite of it.  Our functionaries have done well, because generally honest men.  If any were not so, they feared to show it.

But it will be said, it is easier to find faults than to amend them.  I do not think their amendment so difficult as is pretended.  Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly.  Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendancy of the people.  If experience be called for, appeal to that of our fifteen or twenty governments for forty years, and show me where the people have done half the mischief in these forty years, that a single despot would have done in a single year; or show half the riots and rebellions, the crimes and the punishments, which have taken place in any single nation, under Kingly government, during the same period.  The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.  Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people.  Reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion.  Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.  Submit them to approbation or rejection at short intervals.  Let the executive be chosen in the same way, and for the same term, by those whose agent he is to be; and leave no screen of a council behind which to skulk from responsibility.  It has been thought that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law.  But I do not know that this is true, and if doubtful, we should follow principle.  In this, as in many other elections, they would be guided by reputation, which would not err oftener, perhaps, than the present mode of appointment.  In one State of the Union, at least, it has been long tried, and with the most satisfactory success.  The judges of Connecticut have been chosen by the people every six months, for nearly two centuries, and I believe there has hardly ever been an instance of change; so powerful is the