been declared to be in accordance with her Constitution. It is also in accordance with the Constitution of the United States. Of all the steps leading to that appointment, the State, through her chosen organs, is the sole determining power. She has determined and declared that the persons named in Certificate No. 1 were duly and lawfully appointed her Electors of President and Vice-President. Those persons met at the time required by law; finding vacancies in their number, they filled such vacancies in the manner prescribed by the law of the State; and, in pursuance of the national Constitution, they cast their votes and certified the same to the President of the Senate. These certificates have been opened in the presence of the two houses of Congress; and there remains but one duty more, and that is, to obey the imperial command of the Constitution, which declares, "The votes shall then be counted."

Certificate No. 2 comes with no semblance of authority. It is signed by a man who for three years has not even pretended to be Governor. It is based upon no finding or declaration of any officer or pretended officer of the State. It has no validity whatever. It carries upon its face all the indications of worthlessness.

I shall vote against receiving the proffered evidence, and in favor of counting the votes reported in the first certificate.

A CENTURY OF CONGRESS.

PAPER CONTRIBUTED TO THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY,

JULY, 1877.

WE

E have seen the close of our centennial year, during which societies, the States, and the nation have been reviewing the completed century and forecasting the character of that which has just begun. Our people have been tracing the footprints of the fathers along the many paths which united to form the great highway whereon forty-four millions of Americans are now marching. If we would profit by the great lessons of this memorial year, we must study thoughtfully and reverently the elements and forces which have made the republic what it is, and which will in a great measure shape and direct its future. No study of these themes which does not include within its range a survey of the history and functions of the American Congress can lead to a just view of our institutions.

Indeed, the history of liberty and union in this country, as developed by the men of 1776 and maintained by their successors, is inseparably connected with the history of the national legislature. Nor can they be separated in the future. The Union and the Congress must share the same fate. They must rise or fall together.

The germ of our political institutions, the primary cell from which they were evolved, was the New England town; and the vital force, the informing soul, of the town was the town-meeting, which for all local concerns was king, lords, and commons in one. It was the training-school in which our fathers learned the science and the art of self-government, the school which has made us the most parliamentary people on the globe.

In what other quarter of the world could such a phenomenon have been witnessed as the creation of the State government of California, in 1849, when out of the most heterogeneous and discordant elements a constitution and body of laws were framed

and adopted, which challenge comparison with those of the oldest governments in the world? This achievement was due to the law-making habit of Americans. The spirit of the townmeeting guided the Colonies in their aspirations for independence, and finally created the Union. The Congress of the Union is the most general and comprehensive expression of this legislative habit of our people.

The materials for tracing the origin of Congress are scanty; but they are sufficient to show the spirit which gave it birth.

The idea of a congress on this continent sprang from the necessity of union among the Colonies for mutual protection; and the desire for union logically expressed itself in an intercolonial representative assembly. Every such assembly in America has been a more or less marked symbol of union.

The first decisive act of union among the Colonists was the convention of 1690, at New York. The revolution of 1688, in England, resulted in immediate and desperate war between that country and France, and soon involved the British and French Colonies of America. The French of Canada, aided by the Northern Indians, determined to carry the flag of Louis XIV. down the valley of the Hudson, and thus break in twain the British Colonies. To meet this danger and to retaliate upon France, the General Court of Massachusetts, ever watchful of the welfare of its people, addressed letters of invitation to the neighboring Colonies, asking them to appoint commissioners to meet and consult for the common defence. These commissioners met in convention at New York, on the 1st of May, 1690, and determined to raise an "army" of eight hundred and fifty-five men, from the five Colonies of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and Maryland, to repel the threatened invasion and to capture Canada in the name of William and Mary.1 Some of our historians have called this meeting of commissioners "the first American Congress." I find no evidence that the name "Congress" was then applied to that assembly; though it is doubtless true that its organization and mode of procedure contained the germ of the future Congress.

The New York convention called upon each of the five Colonies for its quota of troops for the little army, and intrusted the management of the campaign to a board or council of war,

1 Documentary History of New York, Vol. II. p. 239; and Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. III. p. 183.

consisting of one officer from each Colony. The several quotas were proportioned to the population of the several Colonies, while the great and small Colonies had an equal voice in directing the expedition. Here, in embryo, was the duplex system of popular and state representation.

Sixty-four years later, a convention of commissioners from seven of the Colonies met at Albany and called themselves a "Congress." So far as I have been able to discover, this was the first American assembly which called itself by that name. It was probably adopted because the convention bore some resemblance to that species of European international convention which in the language of diplomacy was called a Congress. In order to obtain a clearer view of this important Albany Congress of 1754, we must understand the events which immediately preceded it.

In 1748, in obedience to orders from England, the Governors of the Northern Colonies met at Albany to conclude a treaty of peace with the Six Nations. After this was accomplished, the Governors, sitting in secret council, united in a complaint that their salaries were not promptly and regularly paid, but that the Colonial legislatures insisted upon the right to determine, by annual appropriations, the amounts to be paid. This petition, forwarded to the dissolute Duke of Bedford, then at the head of the Colonial administration, was answered by a royal order directing the Governors to demand from the Colonial legislatures the payment of fixed salaries for a term of years, and threatening that, if this were not done, Parliament would impose upon the Colonies a direct tax for that purpose. Thus the first overt act which led to the Revolution was a demand for higher salaries; and, on the motion of the Colonial Governors at Albany, the British Board of Trade opened the debate in favor of Parliamentary supremacy. Six years later came the reply from seven Colonies through the Albany Congress of 1754.

War with France was again imminent. Her battalions had descended the Ohio, and were threatening the northern frontier. The Colonial Governors called upon the legislatures to send. commissioners to Albany to secure the alliance of the Six Nations against the French, and to adopt measures for the common defence. On the 19th of June, 1754, twenty-five commissioners met at the little village of Albany, and, following the example of the Governors who met there six years before, com

pleted their treaty with the Indians, and then opened the question of a Colonial union for common defence.

Foremost among the commissioners was Benjamin Franklin; and through his voice and pen the Congress and the Colonies replied to the demands of England by proposing a plan of union to be founded upon the rights of the Colonies as Englishmen. If his plan had been adopted, independence might have been delayed for half a century. Curiously enough, it was rejected by the Colonies as having "too much of the prerogative in it," and by England as having "too much of the democratic." But the talismanic words "Union" and "Congress" had been spoken, and from that hour were never forgotten. The argument for Colonial rights had also been stated in the perfect style of Franklin, and was never to be answered.

The second assembly which called itself a Congress met at New York, in 1765. The mercantile policy of England, embodied in the long series of Navigation Acts, had finally culminated in Lord Grenville's Stamp Act and the general assertion of the right of Parliament to tax the Colonies in all cases whatsoever. Again Massachusetts led the movement for union and resistance. On the 6th of June, 1765, her Legislature adopted a resolution, offered by James Otis, to call a congress of delegates of the thirteen Colonies, "to consult together" and "consider of a united representation to implore relief." This call was answered by every Colony; and on the 7th of October, 1765, twenty-seven delegates met at New York, and elected Timothy Ruggles, of Massachusetts, chairman.

There for the first time James Otis saw John Dickinson; there Gadsden and Rutledge sat beside Livingston and Dyer; there the brightest minds of America joined in the discussion of their common danger and common rights. The session lasted eighteen days. Its deliberations were most solemn and momentous. Loyalty to the Crown and a shrinking dread of opposing established authority were met by the fiery spirit which glowed in the breasts of the boldest thinkers. Amidst the doubt and hesitation of the hour, John Adams gave voice to the logic and spirit of the crisis when he said: "You have rights antecedent to all earthly government; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe." 1

1 Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. V. p. 345.