In Speaking Of The Senate, I Must Point Out A Matter To Which The
Constitution Does Not Allude, But Which Is Of The Gravest Moment In
The Political Fabric Of The Nation.
Each State sends two Senators
to Congress.
These two are sent altogether independently of the
population which they represent, or of the number of members which
the same State supplies to the Lower House. When the Constitution
was framed, Delaware was to send one member to the House of
Representatives, and Pennsylvania eight; nevertheless, each of these
States sent two Senators. It would seem strange that a young
people, commencing business as a nation on a basis intended to be
democratic, should consent to a system so directly at variance with
the theory of popular representation. It reminds one of the old
days when Yorkshire returned two members, and Rutlandshire two also.
And the discrepancy has greatly increased as young States have been
added to the Union, while the old States have increased in
population. New York, with a population of about 4,000,000, and
with thirty-three members in the House of Representatives, sends two
Senators to Congress. The new State of Oregon, with a population of
50,000 or 60,000, and with one member in the House of
Representatives, sends also two Senators to Congress. But though it
would seem that in such a distribution of legislative power the
young nation was determined to preserve some of the old fantastic
traditions of the mother country which it had just repudiated, the
fact, I believe, is that this system, apparently so opposed to all
democratic tendencies, was produced and specially insisted upon by
democracy itself. Where would be the State sovereignty and
individual existence of Rhode Island and Delaware, unless they could
maintain, in at least one House of Congress, their State equality
with that of all other States in the Union? In those early days,
when the Constitution was being framed, there was nothing to force
the small States into a union with those whose populations
preponderated. Each State was sovereign in its municipal system,
having preserved the boundaries of the old colony, together with the
liberties and laws given to it under its old colonial charter. A
union might be and no doubt was desirable; but it was to be a union
of sovereign States, each retaining equal privileges in that union,
and not a fusion of the different populations into one homogeneous
whole. No State was willing to abandon its own individuality, and
least of all were the small States willing to do so. It was,
therefore, ordained that the House of Representatives should
represent the people, and that the Senate should represent the
States.
From that day to the present time the arrangement of which I am
speaking has enabled the Democratic or Southern party to contend at
a great advantage with the Republicans of the North. When the
Constitution was founded, the seven Northern States - I call those
Northern which are now free-soil States, and those Southern in which
the institution of slavery now prevails - were held to be entitled by
their population to send thirty-five members to the House of
Representatives, and they sent fourteen members to the Senate.
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