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even at the election of the first Presidents after Washington, that the electors were pledged in some informal way as to the candidate for whom they should vote; but the very idea of an election by electors has been abandoned since the Presidency of General Jackson. According to the theory of the Constitution, the privilege and the duty of selecting a best man as President was to be delegated to certain best men chosen for that purpose. This was the intention of those who framed the Constitution. It may, as I have said, be doubted whether this theory has ever availed for action; but since the days of Jackson it has been absolutely abandoned. The intention was sufficiently conservative. The electors to whom was to be confided this great trust, were to be chosen in their own States as each State might think fit. The use of universal suffrage for this purpose was neither enjoined nor forbidden in the separate States-- was neither treated as desirable or undesirable by the Constitution. Each State was left to judge how it would elect its own electors. But the President himself was to be chosen by those electors and not by the people at large. The intention is sufficiently conservative, but the intention is not carried out. The electors are still chosen by the different States in conformity with the bidding of the Constitution. The Constitution is exactly followed in all its biddings, as far as the wording of it is concerned; but the whole spirit of the document has been evaded in the favor of democracy, and universal suffrage in the presidential elections has been adopted. The electors are still chosen, it is true; but they are only chosen as the mouth-piece of the people's choice, and not as the mind by which that choice shall be made. We have all heard of Americans voting for a ticket--for the Democratic ticket, or the Republican ticket. All political voting in the States is now managed by tickets. As regards these presidential elections, each party decides on a candidate. Even this primary decision is a matter of voting among the party itself. When Mr. Lincoln was nominated as its candidate by the republican party, the names of no less than thirteen candidates were submitted to the delegates who were sent to a convention at Chicago, assembled for the purpose of fixing upon a candidate. At that convention Mr. Lincoln was chosen as the Republican candidate and in that convention was in fact fought the battle which was won in Mr. Lincoln's favor, although that convention was what we may call a private arrangement, wholly irrespective of any constitutional enactment. Mr. Lincoln was then proclaimed as the Republican candidate, and all Republicans were held as bound to support him. When the time came for the constitutional election of the electors, certain names were got together in each State as representing the Republican interest. These names formed the Republican ticket, and any man voting for them voted in fact for Lincoln. There were three other parties, each represented by a candidate, and each had its own ticket in the different States. It is not to be supposed that the supporters of Mr. Lincoln were very anxious about their ticket in Alabama, or those of Mr. Breckinridge as to theirs in Massachusetts. In Alabama, a Democratic slave ticket would, of course, prevail. In Massachusetts, a Republican free-soil ticket would do so. But it may, I think, be seen that in this way the electors have in reality ceased to have any weight in the elections--have in very truth ceased to have the exercise of any will whatever. They are mere names, and no more. Stat nominis umbra. The election of the President is made by universal suffrage, and not by a college of electors. The words as they are written are still obeyed; but the Constitution in fact has been violated, for the spirit of it has been changed in its very essence. The President must have been born a citizen of the United States. This is not necessary for the holder of any other office or for a Senator or Representative; he must be thirty-four years old