ARTICLE I

Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.5

5"The whole system of the National Government," said President Monroe, speaking of the powers given by the Constitution to Congress, "may be said to rest essentially on the powers granted to this branch. They mark the limit within which, with few exceptions, all the branches must move in the discharge of their respective functions."

In the Colonial Declaration of Rights of October 14, 1774, it was said to be indispensably necessary to good government that "the constituent branches of the legislature be independent of each other."

It was in the reign of Edward III (1341) that the Parliament of England divided into two Houses.

The Congress which had existed under the Articles of Confederation consisted of only one House, which was made up of "delegates appointed in such manner as the legislature of each State shall direct", who might be replaced by others at any time within the year for which they were chosen. A Congress consisting of two Houses makes the first fundamental difference between the new Constitution and the Articles of Confederation. In the Constitutional Convention the first resolution adopted declared for a Congress of two Houses.

Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year 6

6 As already noted, the Congressmen under the former government were chosen for one year and were changeable in the meantime at the pleasure of the State.

By an act of the English Parliament in 1694 the term of a member of the House of Commons was fixed at three years. In 1716 the Septennial Act was passed extending the term to seven years. Because it extended the term of the members who passed it instead of applying to future Parliaments, and because it was intended to keep a party longer in power than the time for which the members were elected by the people, some authorities considered it illegal. The Parliament Act of 1911 reduced the term from seven years to five.

Congress, unlike Parliament, is, by virtue of this clause, without power to fix its term.

In France the term of a member of the House of Deputies is four years. A member of the House of Commons in Canada sits for five years, and the term in the Australian House of Representatives is three years.

by the People 7 of the several States

7 Emphasis should be here laid upon the fact that ours is the only government in the world in which all the chief constitutional officers of the Executive and Legislative Departments are elected by the votes of the people. It stands unprecedented and unparalleled as a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Even in the countries which have closely patterned their governments on our Constitution, the election of officials is not so general. Thus in Canada, in Australia, and in South Africa the Governor General is appointed by the English sovereign. In the Republic of France the President is chosen by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies sitting together as the National Assembly. In Brazil the senators are chosen by the legislature (as ours once were) instead of being elected by the people.

and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.3

8 The property qualifications of the voters in the different States, as well as other requirements, were so various that it was concluded to let the practice in each State determine who should be qualified to vote for a candidate for a seat in the National House of Representatives. "To have reduced the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule," wrote Hamilton in the "Federalist”, “would probably have been as dissatisfactory to some of the States as it would have been difficult to the Convention."

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty-five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

9 A member of the English House of Commons need not be an inhabitant or even a resident of the district of his constituency.

This limitation had no reference to sex; and therefore it was permissible for a congressional district in a State to elect a woman to a seat in Congress. The first woman thus to be distinguished was Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who was elected to the National House of Representatives in 1916, four years before the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment (Note 187) gave suffrage to women under both State citizenship (where the State had not already granted it) and National citizenship.

Representatives and direct Taxes 10 shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers,

10 Confusion and contention springing from this language brought about the adoption in 1913 of the Sixteenth Amendment (Note 182), which gives Congress power "to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived,

without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

Although in the Constitutional Convention there was some question of the meaning of direct taxes, Congress early placed an interpretation upon the term by an act (July 14, 1798) "to lay and collect a direct tax within the United States."

This act had been preceded five days by an act "to provide for the valuation of Lands and Dwelling-houses, and the enumeration of slaves within the United States."

A tax of two mills was by the laws mentioned laid on buildings worth from one hundred dollars to five hundred dollars; and this was graduated up as high as ten mills on houses valued at thirty thousand dollars or more.

of fifty cents was laid on each slave.

In 1880, in upholding the Income Tax laws of 1864–1865, the Supreme Court pointed out that whenever the Government had imposed a direct tax it had never applied it except to real estate and slaves.

The Income Tax Law of 1894 imposed (with other taxes) a tax on the rent or income from land. But the tax on the income from land was not apportioned among or allotted to the States according to population, as other direct taxes always had been. In 1895, the question having been raised by numerous taxpayers, the Supreme Court held that the tax upon the income from land was in reality a tax on the land itself and therefore a direct tax which should have been apportioned in accordance with the command of the Constitution. It was held on rehearing that as in English history, and also in Canadian cases arising under a constitution with a provision like that in ours, an income tax had been treated as a direct tax, it was therefore necessary to apportion the income tax as to incomes from personal property as well as to incomes from land. Fourteen years thereafter the Sixteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress to permit the taxation of income from what

ever source derived without apportionment according to the population as ascertained by the census. The Amendment had been pending for over three and one half years when it received the ratification of the requisite number of States to make it a part of the Constitution.

which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

11 Referring to slaves. The word slave or slavery does not appear in our Constitution until we reach the Thirteenth Amendment, adopted (1865) after the Civil War. This is the first of the three "compromises of the Constitution" (Notes 61 and 121), which have been called the beginning of the Civil War that burst in fury three quarters of a century after. Although slaves were not citizens or voters, the number of them was considered in laying direct taxes and in ascertaining how many members a State should have in the House of Representatives. The fraction "three fifths" had been agreed upon in Congress three years before, when the question was whether, in the levy of direct taxes, slave-holding States would be undertaxed (as Northern men contended) by not counting the slaves as population or overtaxed (as the South claimed) by counting them. The compromise then made as to taxation was employed as to representation in the House. While these compromises were under discussion at Philadelphia the last Congress under the Articles of Confederation, sitting at New York, passed the ordinance creating the Northwest Territory (later Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) and forbidding that slavery ever exist within its limits. Fiske ("Critical Period in American History") says that in 1787 slavery was a cloud no larger than a man's hand. The institution had been