--The cause of this trouble is a change in the political substance and the political habits of the country, of which the average citizen seems to have little knowledge and of which he takes less thought. We do not refer to the change of the functions of the Electoral College from those of a real electing body to those of a mere recorder of the votes of the people of the several States, which has been much remarked upon of late years. That change took place very early; and thus far it has been productive of no trouble or even of inconvenience. If that were all, there would be little need of any modification of our system of electing the President. But there has been of later years--say within the last half century--a change from the political condition of the country to which the Electoral College was adapted. We are in the habit, in patriotic moments, of lauding the wisdom and the foresight of the fathers of the republic. And they were wise, and good, and patriotic men; but as to their foresight, it would seem that we are to-day a living witness that they were quite incapable of seeing into the political future. We are now demanding that the Electoral College shall be abolished, and the President be elected by a direct popular vote; and yet nothing is surer than that the distinct purpose of the founders of our Federal Union was to prevent such an election. Their design was to establish, not a democratic government, working more or less by mass-meeting--a direct vote of the mass of the citizens--but a representative republican government, in which the people should commit their affairs to their representatives, who should have full power to manage them according to their discretion, entirely irrespective of the dictation of their constituents, although not without respect for their opinions and wishes. The doctrine of instruction, by which the representative is turned into a mere delegate--a sort of political attorney--is new and is entirely at variance with the design of the founders of the republic, to which, of course, the Constitution was adapted. It was supposed, assumed as a matter of course, by them that there would always be a body of men of high character and intelligence, who would have sufficient leisure to perform the functions of legislators, governors, and other officers, for a small compensation, and that the people at large would freely commit their affairs to these gentlemen, choosing, of course, those whose general political views were most in accordance with their own. So it was at the time of the war of Independence, and at that of the formation of the Constitution. Of such a political conception the Electoral College was a legitimate product. The "Fathers" didn't _mean_ that the people should decide between the merits of the candidates for the Presidency. They thought--and shall we therefore decry their wisdom?--that a small body of intelligent and well educated men, men of character and social position, accustomed to the study of public affairs, was better fitted to choose such an officer as the President of the United States than the whole mass of the people. Moreover, the people themselves have changed, and have become in substance and in condition something that the "Fathers" did not dream of. States in which the vote of the mass of the citizens should be in the hands of negroes or of emigrants from the peasant class of Europe were not among the political conditions for which their foresight provided.