The Political Contest Of Parties Which Is Being Waged Now, And Which
Has Been Waged Throughout The History Of The
United States, has been
pursued on one side in support of that idea of an undivided
nationality of which I
Have spoken - of a nationality in which the
interests of a part should be esteemed as the interests of the
whole; and on the other side it has been pursued in opposition to
that idea. I will not here go into the interminable question of
slavery - though it is on that question that the Southern or
democratic States have most loudly declared their own sovereign
rights and their aversion to national interference. Were I to do so
I should fail in my present object of explaining the nature of the
Constitution of the United States. But I protest against any
argument which shall be used to show that the Constitution has
failed because it has allowed slavery to produce the present
division among the States. I myself think that the Southern or Gulf
States will go. I will not pretend to draw the exact line or to say
how many of them are doomed; but I believe that South Carolina, with
Georgia and perhaps five or six others, will be extruded from the
Union. But their very extrusion will be a political success, and
will in fact amount to a virtual acknowledgment in the body of the
Union of the truth of that system for which the conservative
Republican party has contended. If the North obtain the power of
settling that question of boundary, the abandonment of those
Southern States will be a success, even though the privilege of
retaining them be the very point for which the North is now in arms.
The first clause of the Constitution declares that all the
legislative powers granted by the Constitution shall be vested in a
Congress, which shall consist of a Senate and of a House of
Representatives. The House of Representatives is to be rechosen
every two years, and shall be elected by the people, such persons in
each State having votes for the national Congress as have votes for
the legislature of their own States. If, therefore, South Carolina
should choose - as she has chosen - to declare that the electors of
her own legislature shall possess a property qualification, the
electors of members of Congress from South Carolina must also have
that qualification. In Massachusetts universal suffrage now
prevails, although it is not long since a low property qualification
prevailed even in Massachusetts. It therefore follows that members
of the House of Representatives in Congress need by no means be all
chosen on the same principle. As a fact, universal suffrage* and
vote by ballot, that is by open voting papers, prevail in the
States, but they do not so prevail by virtue of any enactment of the
Constitution. The laws of the States, however, require that the
voter shall have been a resident in the State for some period, and
generally either deny the right of voting to negroes, or so hamper
that privilege that practically it amounts to the same thing.
* Perhaps the better word would have been manhood suffrage; and even
that word should be taken with certain restrictions. Aliens,
minors, convicts, and men who pay no taxes cannot vote. In some
States none can vote unless they can read and write. In some there
is a property qualification. In all there are special restrictions
against negroes. There is in none an absolutely universal suffrage.
But I keep the name as it best expresses to us in England the system
of franchise which has practically come to prevail in the United
States.
The Senate of the United States is composed of two Senators from
each State. These Senators are chosen for six years, and are
elected in a manner which shows the conservative tendency of the
Constitution with more signification than perhaps any other rule
which it contains. This branch of Congress, which, as I shall
presently endeavor to show, is by far the more influential of the
two, is not in any way elected by the people. "The Senate of the
United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State,
CHOSEN BY THE LEGISLATURE THEREOF, for six years, and each senator
shall have one voice." The Senate sent to Congress is therefore
elected by the State legislatures. Each State legislature has two
Houses and the Senators sent from that State to Congress are either
chosen by vote of the two Houses voting together - which is, I
believe, the mode adopted in most States, or are voted for in the
two Houses separately - in which cases, when different candidates
have been nominated, the two Houses confer by committees and settle
the matter between them. The conservative purpose of the
Constitution is here sufficiently evident. The intention has been
to take the election of the Senators away from the people, and to
confide it to that body in each State which may be regarded as
containing its best trusted citizens. It removes the Senators far
away from the democratic element, and renders them liable to the
necessity of no popular canvass. Nor am I aware that the
Constitution has failed in keeping the ground which it intended to
hold in this matter. On some points its selected rocks and chosen
standing ground have slipped from beneath its feet, owing to the
weakness of words in defining and making solid the intended
prohibitions against democracy. The wording of the Constitution has
been regarded by the people as sacred; but the people has considered
itself justified in opposing the spirit as long as it revered the
letter of the Constitution. And this was natural. For the letter
of the Constitution can be read by all men; but its spirit can be
understood comparatively but by few. As regards the election of the
Senators, I believe that it has been fairly made by the legislatures
of the different States.
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