Слике страница
PDF
ePub

c. Its presiding officer.

d. Its management of executive matters.

e. The finance committee and its problems. f. The raising of money.

g. The compelling of obedience.

9. The Continental Congress not a sovereign body :—

a. The nature of real government.

b. Some functions of sovereignty exercised by the Congress.

c. The situation illogical.

10. Explain the "implied war powers" of the Congress.

II. When was the Congress at the height of its reputation, and

why?

12. Explain the decline in its reputation from 1778 to 1783. 13. The alarming weakness of the union after 1783 :

a. The effect of peace upon the union.

b. Local prejudices.

c. State antagonisms.

d. The gloomy outlook in 1786.

14. The Federal Convention in 1787 :

a. The reluctance to make the change that was felt to be needed.

b. Some facts about the Convention.

c. The character of its delegates.

d. The fundamental weakness of the Continental Congress. e. The fundamental power of a strong government.

f. The objection to granting the power of taxation to the Continental Congress.

g. The sort of assembly demanded for exercising the taxing

power.

h. The model on which the federal government was built.

§ 2. The Federal Congress.

The federal House of Representatives is descended, through the state houses of representatives, from the colonial assemblies. It is an assembly representing the whole population of the country as if it were all in one great state. It is composed of memof Represen- bers chosen every other year by the people tatives. of the states. Persons in any state who are qualified to vote for state representatives are qualified

The House

This arrange

to vote for federal representatives. ment left the power of regulating the suffrage in the hands of the several states, where it still remains, save for the restriction imposed in 1870 for the protection of the southern freedmen. A candidate for election to the House of Representatives must be twenty-five years old, must have been seven years a citizen of the United States, and must be an inhabitant of the state in which he is chosen.

As the Federal Congress is a taxing body, representatives and direct taxes are apportioned among the several states according to the same rule, that is, according to population. At this point a difficulty arose in the Convention as to whether slaves should be counted as population. If they were to be counted, the relative weight of the slave states in all matters of national legislation would be much increased. The northern states thought, with reason, that it would be unduly increased. The difficulty was ad- The three justed by a compromise according to which fifths comfive slaves were to be reckoned as three persons. Since the abolition of slavery this provision has become obsolete, but until 1860 it was a very important factor in American history.1

promise.

In the federal House of Representatives the great states of course have much more weight than the small states. In 1790 the four largest states had 32 representatives, while the other nine had only 33. The largest state, Virginia, had 10 representatives to 1 from Delaware. These disparities have increased. In 1880, out of thirty-eight states the nine largest had a majority of the house, and the largest state, New York, had 34 representatives to 1 from Delaware. This feature of the House of Representatives caused 1 See my Critical Period, pp. 257-262.

The Con

the smaller states in the Convention to oppose the whole scheme of constructing a new government. They were determined that great and small states should have equal weight in Congress. Their steadfast opposition threatened to ruin everything, when fortunately a method of compromise was discovered. It was intended that the national legislature, in imita tion of the state legislatures, should have an upper house or senate; and at first the advocates of a strong national government proposed that the senate necticut also should represent population, thus differ. compromise. ing from the lower house only in the way in which we have seen that it generally differed in the several states. But it happened that in the state of Connecticut the custom was peculiar. There it had always been the custom to elect the governor and upper house by a majority vote of the whole people, while for each township there was an equality of representation in the lower house. The Connecticut delegates in the Convention, therefore, being familiar with a legislature in which the two houses were composed on different principles, suggested a compromise. Let the House of Representatives, they said, represent the people, and let the Senate represent the states; let all the states, great and small, be represented equally in the federal Senate. Such was the famous "Connecticut Compromise." Without it the Convention would probably have broken up without accomplishing anything. When it was adopted, half the work of making the new government was done, for the small states, having had their fears thus allayed by the assurance that they were to be equally represented in the Senate, no longer opposed the work but coöperated in it most zealously.

Thus it came to pass that the upper house of our

national legislature is composed of two senators from each state. As they represent the state, they are chosen by its legislature and not by the people; but The Senate. when they have taken their seats in the Sen

ate they do not vote by states, like the delegates in the Continental Congress. On the contrary each senator has one vote, and the two senators from the same state may, and often do, vote on opposite sides.

In accordance with the notion that an upper house should be somewhat less democratic than a lower house, the term of office for senators was made longer than for representatives. The tendency is to make the Senate respond more slowly to changes in popular sentiment, and this is often an advantage. Popular opinion is often very wrong at particular moments, but with time it is apt to correct its mistakes. We are usually in more danger of suffering from hasty legislation than from tardy legislation. Senators are chosen for a term of six years, and one third of the number of terms expire every second year, so that, while the whole Senate may be renewed by the lapse of six years, there is never a new Senate." The Senate has thus a continuous existence and a permanent organization; whereas each House of Representatives expires at the end of its two years' term, and is succeeded by a "new House," which requires to be organized by electing its officers, etc., before proceeding to business. A candidate for the senatorship must have reached the age of thirty, must have been nine years a citizen of the United States, and must be an inhabitant of the state which he represents.

66

The constitution leaves the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives to be prescribed in each state by its own legislature; but it gives to Congress the power to alter such

regulations, except as to the place of choosing senators. Here we see a vestige of the original theory according to which the Senate was to be peculiarly the home of state rights.

Electoral

In the composition of the House of Representatives the state legislatures play a very important part. For the purposes of the election a state is divided into districts corresponding to the number of representatives the state is entitled to send to Congress. These electoral districts are marked out by the legislature, districts. and the division is apt to be made by the preponderating party with an unfairness that is at once shameful and ridiculous. The aim, of course, is so to lay out the districts "as to secure in the greatest possible number of them a majority for the party which conducts the operation. This is done sometimes by throwing the greatest possible number of hostile voters into a district which is anyhow certain to be hostile, sometimes by adding to a district where parties are equally divided some place in which the majority of friendly voters is sufficient to turn the scale. There is a district in Mississippi (the so-called Shoe String district) 250 miles long by 30 broad, and another in Pennsylvania resembling a dumb-bell. . . . In Missouri a district has been contrived longer, if measured along its windings, than the state itself, into which as large a number as possible of the negro voters have been thrown."1 This trick is called “gerGerryman- rymandering," from Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, who was vice president of the United States from 1813 to 1817. It seems to have been first devised in 1788 by the enemies of the Federal Constitution in Virginia, in order to prevent the election of James Madison to the first Congress, and

dering."

1 Bryce, American Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 121.

[ocr errors]
« ПретходнаНастави »