CREATING THE LEGISLATURE
(Excerpted from “Democracy Versus Freedom”)
The men who supported adopting the new Constitution believed a stronger national government was needed to preserve the union from both foreign aggressors as well as internal disputes between individual states.
The problem, of course, was in creating a government that would have sufficient power to achieve its purpose, while at the same time avoiding the natural inclination of governments to grow beyond their established boundaries.
Having a thorough education in ancient attempts at democracy, the Founders understood the inherent dangers in creating a powerful government which would, for the most part, operate completely out of the view and minds of a majority of the citizens it was created to serve.
During the original Constitutional debates, James Wilson, a rather unsung (to me) Founder from Pennsylvania, observed that “Despotism comes on mankind in different shapes, sometimes in an executive, sometimes in a military one. Is there no danger of a legislative despotism? Theory and practice both proclaim it. If the legislative authority be not restrained, there can be neither liberty nor stability; and it can only be restrained by dividing it within itself, into distinct and independent branches. In a single house there is no check, but the inadequate one, of the virtue and good sense of those who compose it.”
In Federalist 51, James Madison addressed the need for separate legislative bodies as follows, “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”
In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson complained about the arrangement of that state’s legislature, in part, as follows: “The senate is, by its constitution, too homogeneous with the house of delegates. Being chosen by the same electors, at the same time, and out of the same subjects, the choice falls of course on men of the same description. The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.”
So, you see, U.S. Senators were to be appointed by their state’s legislature in order to break up the legislative power and create competing interests.
Having decided that the legislature should be split into different houses, it remained to determine HOW or along what lines the legislature would be divided.
Gouverneur Morris, also at the Constitutional Convention, expressed the concern that the “rich” would seek to use the federal government for their own purposes: “The Rich will strive to establish their dominion & enslave the rest. They always did. They always will. The proper security against them is to form them into a separate interest.”
Other Founders feared giving too much power to the “common people,” for the same reasons.
Alexander Hamilton, in a speech before the Constitutional Convention, stated “In every community where industry is encouraged, there will be a division of it into the few and the many. Hence separate interests will arise. There will be debtors and creditors etc. Give all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Both therefore ought to have power, that each may defend itself against the other.”
The Founders, then, decided that our bicameral legislature would reflect democracy on one side, and “aristocracy” on the other.
Toward this end they designed the House of Representatives to be selected as each state deemed fitting. This ensured that the views and needs of the general public would be given full hearing in the legislature.
Fearing the “passions” of the masses, and recognizing that most average citizens weren’t able to spend time educating themselves in matters of government, the Founders limited the House’s power by limiting the terms of representatives to two years. The powers designated to the House were also less than those assigned to the Senate, but it is not necessary to list those here. These powers can be gleaned from the full text of the Constitution.
In order to create a legislative body that would represent the interests of the rich, in competition with those of the common, the Founders decided to have the members of the Senate selected by their respective states’ legislatures.
It was presumed that, since the members of each state government would mostly be men of property and education, these bodies would select people from their own level of society to represent them in the Senate.
Since it was presumed that men of means would tend to possess education and wisdom superior to that possessed by members of the “democratic” House, the terms of U.S. Senators were set at six years, and the powers assigned to that body were decidedly greater than those assigned to the House.
Creation of an “aristocratic” body such as the Senate was also intended to have another very important benefit to preserving stability.
Recall that earlier I pointed out the Founders’ concern with the passions of the masses, as well as our susceptibility to being misled by “designing men” and “pretended patriots.”
Since members of the Senate would be selected by their respective state legislatures, and would serve a relatively long term of six years, it was expected that these members would exercise a more sober, independent judgment than their counterparts in the House.
This “check” upon the “passions of the masses” was considered vital to the preservation of liberty for all citizens.
In Federalist # 63 James Madison addressed this concern at length, calling attention to how the use of a single house of legislation, as opposed to a bicameral legislature, was a major factor in the difficulties encountered in the democratic Athenian Republic; “…..so 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 some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth, can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped, if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens, the hemlock on one day, and statues on the next.”
Later in Federalist #63 Madison stated that “The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.”
From the above, the reader should see the importance of creating a legislature consisting of two houses, each representing interests almost totally opposed to the other.
Unfortunately, in 1913 the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified making selection of the members of the Senate a function of the popular vote in each state. This amendment virtually eliminated the class distinction between the two houses and destroyed the one legal method by which the wealthy could have their views represented in the federal government. It also made the legislature entirely beholden to popular will.
It is the elimination of this distinction, more than any other factor, which has lead to the corruption that exists in the federal government today, as well as our drift toward an overbearing, socialistic government.