did,' admitted that the risks of foreign war, risks infinitely more serious in the infancy of the Republic than they have subsequently proved, required the concentration of executive powers into a single hand. And the fact that in every one of their commonwealths there existed an officer in whom the State constitution vested executive authority, balancing him against the State legislature, made the establishment of a Federal chief magistrate seem the obvious course.

Assuming that there was to be such a magistrate, the statesmen of the Convention, like the solid practical men they were, did not try to construct him out of their own brains, but looked to some existing models. They therefore made an enlarged copy of the State governor, or to put the same thing differently, a reduced and improved copy of the English king. He is George III. shorn of a part of his prerogative by the intervention of the Senate in treaties and appointments, of another part by the restriction of his action to Federal affairs, while his dignity as well as his influence are diminished by his holding office for four years instead of for life. His salary is too small to permit him either to maintain a Court or to corrupt the legislature; nor can he seduce the virtue of the citizens by the gift of titles of nobility, for such titles are altogether forbidden. Subject to these precautions, he was meant by the

1 "The disease we are suffering from is democracy," says Hamilton in one of his later letters.

2 When the Romans got rid of their king, they did not really extinguish the office, but set up in their consul a sort of annual king, limited not only by the short duration of his power, but also by the existence of another consul with equal powers. The Americans hoped to restrain their President not merely by the shortness of his term, but also by diminishing the power which they left to him; and this they did by setting up another authority to which they entrusted certain executive functions, making its consent necessary to the validity of certain classes of the President's executive acts. This is the Senate, whereof more anon.

VOL. I

E

constitution-framers to resemble the State governor and the British king, not only in being the head of the executive, but in standing apart from and above political parties. He was to represent the nation as a whole, as the governor represented the State commonwealth. The independence of his position, with nothing either to gain or to fear from Congress, would, it was hoped, leave him free to think only of the welfare of the people..

This idea appears in the method provided for the election of a President. To have left the choice of the chief magistrate to a direct popular vote over the whole country would have raised a dangerous excitement, and would have given too much encouragement to candidates of merely popular gifts. To have entrusted it to Congress would have not only subjected the executive to the legislature in violation of the principle which requires these departments to be kept distinct,' but have tended to make him the creature of one particular faction instead of the choice of the nation. Hence the device of a double election was adopted, perhaps with a faint reminiscence of the methods by which the Doge was then still chosen at Venice and the Emperor in Germany. The Constitution directs each State to choose a number of presidential electors equal to the number of its representatives in both Houses of Congress. Some weeks later, these electors meet in each State on a day fixed by law, and give their votes in writing for the President and Vice-President.2 The votes are transmitted, sealed up, to

1 See the remarks of Mr. Wilson in the Pennsylvania Convention. Elliot's Debates, vol. ii. p. 511.

2 Originally the person who received most votes was deemed to have been chosen President, and the person who stood second, Vice-President. This led to confusion, and was accordingly altered by the twelfth constitutional amendment, adopted in 1804, which provides that the President and Vice-President shall be voted for separately.

the capital and there opened by the president of the Senate in the presence of both Houses and counted. To preserve the electors from the influence of faction, it is provided that they shall not be members of Congress, nor holders of any Federal office. This plan was expected to secure the choice by the best citizens of each State, in a tranquil and deliberate way, of the man whom they in their unfettered discretion should deem fittest to be chief magistrate of the Union. Being themselves chosen electors on account of their personal merits, they would be better qualified than the masses to select an able and honourable man for President. Moreover, as the votes are counted promiscuously, and not by States, each elector's voice would have its weight. He might be in a minority in his own State, but his vote would nevertheless tell because it would be added to those given by electors in other States for the same candidate.

No part of their scheme seems to have been regarded by the constitution-makers of 1787 with more complacency than this,' although no part had caused them so much perplexity. No part has so utterly belied their expectations. The presidential electors have become a mere cog-wheel in the machine; a mere contrivance for giving effect to the decision of the people. Their personal qualifications are a matter of indifference. They have no discretion, but are chosen under a pledge-a pledge of honour merely, but a pledge which has never (since 1796) been violated-to vote for a particular candidate. In choosing them the people virtually choose

1 "The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system which has escaped without some censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents."—Federalist, No. lxvii., cf. No. 1. and the observations of Mr. Wilson in the Convention of Pennsylvania.

the President, and thus the very thing which the men of 1787 sought to prevent has happened, the President is chosen by a popular vote. Let us see how this happened.

In the first two presidential elections (in 1789 and 1792) the independence of the electors did not come into question, because everybody was for Washington, and parties had not yet been fully developed. Yet in the election of 1792 it was generally understood that electors of one way of thinking were to vote for Clinton as their second candidate (i.e. for Vice-President) and those of the other side for John Adams. In the third election (1796) no pledges were exacted from electors, but the election contest in which they were chosen was conducted on party lines, and although, when the voting by the electors arrived, some few votes were scattered among other persons, there were practically only two presidential candidates before the country, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, for the former of whom the electors of the Federalist party, for the latter those of the Republican (Democratic)1 party were expected to vote. The fourth election was a regular party struggle, carried on in obedience to party arrangements. Both Federalists and Republicans put the names of their candidates for President and Vice-President before the country, and round these names the battle raged. The notion of leaving any freedom or discretion to the electors had vanished, for it was felt that an issue so great must and could be decided by the nation alone. From that day till now there has never been any question of reviving the true and original intent of the plan of

1 The party then called Republican has for the last sixty years or so been called Democratic. The party now called Republican did not arise till 1854.

double election, and consequently nothing has ever turned on the personality of the electors. They are now so little significant that to enable the voter to know for which set of electors his party desires him to vote, it is found necessary to put the name of the presidential candidate whose interest they represent at the top of the voting ticket on which their own names are printed.

The completeness and permanence of this change has been assured by the method which now prevails of choosing the electors. The Constitution leaves the method to each State, and in the earlier days many States entrusted the choice to their legislatures. But as democratic principles became developed, the practice of choosing the electors by direct popular vote, originally adopted by Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, spread by degrees through the other States, till by 1832 South Carolina was the only State which retained the method of appointment by the legislature. She dropped it in 1868, and popular election now rules everywhere.2 In some States the electors were for a time chosen by districts, like members of the House of Representatives. But the plan of choice by a single popular vote over the whole of the State found increasing favour, seeing that it was in the interest of the party for the time being dominant in the State. In 1828 Maryland was the only State which clung

1 In 1876 the suggestion was thrown out that the disputed election of that year might be settled by the exercise of free choice on the part of the electors; but the idea found no favour with the politicians.

2 This, however, is merely matter of State law. Any State could go back to choice by the legislature. Colorado, not having time, after her admission to the Union in 1876, to provide by law for a popular choice of electors to vote in the election of a President in the November of that year, left the choice to the legislature, but now elects its presidential electors by popular vote like the other States.