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it must subject us to many embarrassments and collisions. difficult to impress upon a single body, which is numerous and changeable, a deep sense of the value of national character. A small portion of the praise or blame of any particular measure can fall to the lot of any particular person, and the period of office is so short that little responsibility is felt, and little pride is indulged, as to the course of the government.1

§ 567. Sixthly. It was urged that, paradoxical as it might seem, the want in some important cases of a due responsibility in the government arises from that very frequency of elections which in other cases produces such responsibility. In order to be reasonable, responsibility must be limited to objects within. the power of the responsible party; and in order to be effectual it must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents. Some measures have singly an immediate and sensible operation; others, again, depend on a succession of well-connected schemes, and have a gradual and perhaps unobserved operation. If, therefore, there be but one assembly, chosen for a short period, it will be difficult to keep up the train of proper measures, or to preserve the proper connection between the past and the future. And the more numerous the body, and the more changeable its component parts, the more difficult it will be to preserve the personal responsibility, as well as the uniform action, of the successive members to the great objects of the public welfare.

§ 568. Lastly. A senate duly constituted would not only operate as a salutary check upon the representatives, but occasionally upon the people themselves, against their own temporary delusions and errors. The cool, deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of their rulers. But there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments how salutary will be the interference of a body of respectable citizens, chosen without reference to the exciting cause, to check the misguided career of public opinion, and to

1 The Federalist, No. 63.

2 Id. No. 63.

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suspend the blow, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind.1 It was thought to add great weight to all these considerations that history has informed us of no long-lived republic which has not a senate. Sparta, Rome, Carthage, were, in fact, the only states to whom that character can be applied.2

§ 569. It will be observed that some parts of the foregoing reasoning apply to the fundamental importance of an actual division of the legislative power, and other parts to the true principles upon which that division should be subsequently organized, in order to give full effect to the constitutional check. Some parts go to show the value of a senate, and others what should be its structure in order to insure wisdom, experience, fidelity, and dignity in its members. All of it, however instructs us that in order to give it fair play and influence as a co-ordinate branch of government, it ought to be less numerous, more select, and more durable than the other branch, and be chosen in a manner which should combine and represent different interests with a varied force. How far these objects are attained by the Constitution will be better seen when the details belonging to each department are successively examined.

1 The Federalist, No. 63.

2 The Federalist, No. 63. There are some very striking remarks on this subject in the reasoning of the convention, in the county of Essex, called to consider the constitution proposed for Massachusetts, in 1778, and which was finally rejected. "The legislative power," said that body, "must not be trusted with one assembly. A single assembly is frequently influenced by the vices, follies, passions, and prejudices of an individual. It is liable to be avaricious, and to exempt itself from the burdens it lays on its constituents. It is subject to ambition; and after a series of years will be prompted to vote itself perpetual. The Long Parliament in England voted itself perpetual, and thereby for a time destroyed the political liberty of the subject. Holland was governed by one representative assembly, annually elected. They afterwards voted themselves from annual to septennial, then for life; and finally exerted the power of filling up all vacancies, without application to their constituents. The government of Holland is now a tyranny, though a republic. The result of a single assembly will be hasty and indigested, and their judgments frequently absurd and inconsistent. There must be a second body to revise with coolness and wisdom and to control with firmness, independent upon the first, either for their creation or existence. Yet the first must retain a right to a similar revision and control over the second." 8 The Federalist, Nos. 62, 63.

It is contained in a pamphlet entitled "The Essex Result," and was printed in 1778. I quote the passage from Mr. Savage's valuable Exposition of the Constitution of Massachusetts, printed in the New England Magazine for March, 1832, p. 9. See also, on this subject, Paley's Moral Philosophy, B. 6, ch. 7, p. 388; The Federalist, Nos. 62, 63.

§ 570. This discussion may be closed by the remark that in the Roman republic the legislative authority, in the last resort, resided for ages in two distinct political bodies, not as branches of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures, in each of which an opposite interest prevailed. In one the patrician, in the other the plebeian, predominated. And yet, during the co-existence of these two legislatures, the Roman republic attained to the supposed pinnacle of human greatness.1

1 The Federalist, No. 34.

V

CHAPTER IX.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

§ 571. THE second section of the first article contains the structure and organization of the House of Representatives. The first clause is as follows:

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"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature."(a)

§ 572. As soon as it was settled that the legislative power should be divided into two separate and distinct branches, a very important consideration arose in regard to the organization of those branches respectively. It is obvious that the organization of each is susceptible of very great diversities and modifications in respect to the principles of representation, the qualification of the electors and the elected, the term of service of the members, the ratio of representation, and the number of which the body should be composed.

§ 573. First, the principle of representation. The American. people had long been in the enjoyment of the privilege of electing at least one branch of the legislature, and in some of the colonies of electing all the branches composing the legislature. A house of representatives, under various denominations, such as a house of delegates, a house of commons, or simply a house of representatives, emanating directly from, and responsible to, the people, and possessing a distinct and independent legislative authority, was familiar to all the colonies, and was held by them in the highest reverence and respect. They justly thought, that as the government in general should always have a common interest with the people, and be administered for their good, so it was essential to their rights and liberties that the most numerous branch should have an immediate dependence upon, and

(a) As to the powers of Congress over federal elections, see Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371; Ex parte Clarke, ib. 399.

sympathy with, the people.1 There was no novelty in this view. It was not the mere result of a state of colonial dependence, in which their jealousy was awake to all the natural encroachments of power in a foreign realm. They had drawn their opinions and principles from the practice of the parént country. They knew the inestimable value of the House of Commons, as a component branch of the British Parliament; and they believed that it had at all times furnished the best security against the oppressions of the crown and the aristocracy. While the power of taxation, of revenue, and of supplies remained in the hands of a popular branch, it was difficult for usurpation to exist for any length of time without check; and prerogative must yield to that necessity which controlled at once the sword and the purse. No reasoning, therefore, was necessary to satisfy the American people of the advantages of a house of representatives, which should emanate directly from themselves; which should guard their interests, support their rights, express their opinions, make known their wants, redress their grievances, and introduce a pervading popular influence throughout all the operations of the government. Experience, as well as theory, had settled it in their minds, as a fundamental principle of a free government, and especially of a republican government, that no laws ought to be passed without the co-operation and consent of the representatives of the people; and that these representatives should be chosen by themselves, without the intervention of any other functionaries to intercept or vary their responsibility."

§ 574. The principle, however, had been hitherto applied to the political organization of the State legislatures only; and its application to that of the federal government was not without some diversity of opinion. This diversity had not its origin in any doubt of the correctness of the principle itself, when applied to simple republics; but the propriety of applying it to cases of confederated republics was affected by other independent considerations. Those who might wish to retain a very large portion of State sovereignty in its representative character in the councils of the Union, would naturally desire to have the House of Representatives elected by the State in its political character, as

1 The Federalist, No. 52; 1 Black. Comm. 158, 159; Paley's Moral Philosophy, B. 6, ch. 7; 1 Wilson's Law Lect. 429 to 433; 2 Wilson's Law Lect. 122 to 132. 21 Tucker's Black. Comm. App. 28.