CHAPTER XXIV TENDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE, AND SUGGESTIONS UR Federal bicameral system was not instituted OUR avowedly on Adams's principles. Indeed, Adams did not at first care to have two chambers in the Federal government. It was adopted ostensibly as a means of effecting a compromise between the confederative and the national systems, between the interests of the small and of the large States. Our "double organization,” says President Wilson, "represents no principle, but only an effort at prudence." And there is a curious commentary upon its success in this respect in the remark of an English historian, that in a unitary state like England or France "the question between one or two Chambers in the Legislature is simply a question in which of the two ways the Legislature is likely to do its work best," but "in a federal constitution, like that of Switzerland or the United States, the two Chambers are absolutely necessary." "2 Yet, although bicameralism served this purpose of reconciling the smaller States to the loss of their equality in one chamber by instituting another in which their equality was preserved, bicameralism had already been decided upon for other reasons, which appear to resemble those of Adams. In fact, there was an indirect attempt to attain the same end. Four other differences were established between the two chambers: the Senate was made a small body, with long terms, renewable in rota 1 The State, § 929. Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, p. 199; similarly Marriott, Second Chambers, p. 241. tion, elected by the State legislatures, while the House was made a numerous body, with short terms, renewable together, elected by the people. These differences, it was hoped, would be sufficient, while leaving the latter a popular or democratic body, to make the former a select and aristocratic body, removed from the fickleness of the popular will, and attractive to men of wealth and position.' The attempt is now succeeding, though in the absence of any true aristocracy in our country the idea 'The views of Hamilton, Morris, Madison, and others have already been given, in Ch. XXI. Randolph desired a small Senate, to act as check upon "the turbulence and follies of democracy," Elliot's Debates, v., 138. Dickinson, in proposing the motion for making the Senators elective by the State legislatures, had two reasons, one of which was, "because he wished the Senate to consist of the most distinguished characters, distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property, and bearing as strong a likeness to the British House of Lords as possible; and he thought such characters more likely to be selected by the State legislatures than in any other mode," ib., 166, cf. 163. Butler considered the second branch "as the aristocratic part of our government,” ib., i., 452, and Gerry referred to the senates in some of the States as "somewhat aristocratic," v., 169. In the ratifying conventions the friends of the Constitution, while repudiating any trace of aristocracy in the Senate or elsewhere, ib., iv., 67 (Davie), 132, 134 (Iredell), 207 (Spaight), 259, 329 (C. Pinckney), frequently spoke of the other chamber as the "democratical branch," ib., ii., 26 (Cabot), 75 (Jones), 251 (Hamilton), iii., 185 (H. Lee), 600 (Randolph), iv., 67 (Davie), 69 (Maclaine): 207 (Spaight); cf. also Mason and Randolph, ib., v., 136 and 186 (and i., 393). That the two chambers were intended to represent different interests, we have seen avowed by C. Pinckney, above, p. 312–13 n. In public, this was reduced to saying they should have a different composition, by Madison in The Federalist, Nos. 62 and 63 (cf. his Writings, iii., 42). Since then also Webster hung between these two doctrines, Works, iii., 12-13, 17; and the latter has been preached by Story, Commentaries, ii., 179-80, Lieber, On Civil Liberty, 198-9, Woolsey, Political Science, ii., 312.-The desire of the constitution-drafters to subject democracy to the curb of aristocracy, and the amount of their success, has recently been thoroughly investigated by J. A. Smith in his The Spirit of American Government. "plutocracy" ought to be substituted. The process has been a slow one, and still is incomplete, becoming more manifest, however, as its condition, the differentiation of the rich as a class from the rest of the community, is becoming more pronounced. Already our Federal Senators are mostly rich men; and though they are not elected by rich men solely, yet their affiliations are chiefly with the rich, and they are becoming more and more distinctively the representatives of the rich and the guardians of vested interests and of vested abuses, the conservatives, the blockers of progress. A bicameral system would seem inevitably to lead to this result, as otherwise there appears no sufficient reason for the two chambers-for "the repetition"; and where each has an absolute negative, enabling it to prevent new and to retain old laws, economy of effort enjoins the capture of only one of the chambers, and that the smaller1 and longer-lasting. The fiction can no longer be kept up of the Senators representing the States that send them. They do not, and never did from the beginning, truly represent the States, any more than the so-called Representatives truly represent their particular districts. Senators would represent the States only if, as in the Confederation, they were delegates or deputies, subject to instructions and liable to recall; which they expressly are not. Much rather do Senators and Representatives alike represent interests, wherever located. Cf. Wilson: "It is a lesson we ought not to disregard, that the smallest bodies in Great Britain are notoriously the most corrupt. . . . When Lord Chesterfield had told us that one of the Dutch provinces had been seduced into the views of France, he need not have added that it was not Holland, but one of the smallest of them," Elliot's Debates, v., 196 (cf. i., 415). But the lesson was disregarded, and accordingly the seat of corruption throughout our country is in the senates. And as they form two bodies set in opposition to each other, they are likely to represent opposing interests, which will be the great ones of wealth and poverty, anticipated by Adams and Hamilton, as they grow up in advancing civilization into more prominent antagonism. The prospect, therefore, is, that the end, though deferred, will be just as bad as though Adams's scheme were embodied in the Constitution itself. In the individual States these evils have not developed yet to quite so appreciable an extent, owing to the lesser importance of these territorially small and subordinate bodies; also because the terms of the Senators are shorter (mostly for four years, rotating by halves), and their districts are not so unequal, with the result that the people can more quickly bring them into agreement with the lower house. But other inherent evils have come to the surface. Bicameralism divides responsibility. Popular measures have been defeated by politicians in the two houses agreeing to differ on details, while all pretended to uphold the principle. Against which no appreciable benefit, not otherwise obtainable, can be discerned. It is not likely that this system shall last permanently. If deadlocks have not caused much harm in the past, they may in the future, as the homogeneity of the people continues to diminish. If there be a revulsion of sentiment and another wave toward democracy sets in, the possession of the United States Senate by the rich, bought up especially in the small States, may block its advance. We may then come to a pass similar to that in which the English recently found themselves, through the revival there of the unrevoked powers of the House of Lords. Two equal powers in a government are an absurdity,' even on Adams's principles. If we do not wish the House of Representatives to kneel before the Senate, we must make the Senate bow to the House of Representatives. Merely making its members elective by the people, advantageous though it will be, will not be enough. The Senate ought to be shorn of some of its functions. To do this, involves reconstructing it. From a branch of the legislature, it should be converted into a distinct member of the body politic-a council. 2 The idea of the council seems to be passing out of the ken of modern political scientists. It was already obsolescent in Adams's day. It is sometimes lost in that of the cabinet, more often in that of the upper chamber of the legislature. The fact is overlooked that in England, beside the legislative Houses, and beside the Ministry, exists a Privy Council. In truth, a council is one of the earliest of institutions. Primitive states seem to fall naturally into a constitution in the form of a chieftain, a council, and an assembly. The council is a small and continually officiating body, which is effaced upon the occasional, generally annual, meeting of the assembly, or sinks into that large body. In Rome, after the expulsion of the Kings, the council, named the "Senate," while the executive chiefs were called "Consuls" (consulters as well as advisers), inherited the Kings' usurpation of the initiative in legislation, till the people got it back by the institution of the Tribunes and the Comitia Tributa. The English "My soul aches To know, when two authorities are up, May enter 'twixt the gap.' Coriolanus, III., i., 108-11. As for instance was done in the Philadelphia Convention by Morris and others, Elliot's Debates, v., 442, 446, 462. |