Imatges de pàgina
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duties; while the judicial department was deemed to be equally secure, from the nature of its constitutional powers, the permanency of its character, and the independent tenure by which its functionaries hold their offices. Thus the mutual participation, to a limited extent, of the several branches of the goverment in each other's power, was rendered subservient to their mutual independence, and the apparent violation of a fundamental principle of the Constitution converted into a security for its preservation.

I now proceed to examine and explain the organization of these separate departments of government, as established by the Federal Constitution, in their order, and commence with a review of the Legislative Power; under which title I shall consider,

First. The constituent parts of the Legislature, with the mode of their appointment.

Secondly. Their joint and several powers and privileges.

And, Thirdly. Their method of enacting laws, with the times and modes of assembling and adjourning.

I. All legislative powers granted by the Constitution are vested in a Congress of the United States, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. These terms, conferring the legislative authority, impart its limitation to the objects specified in the Constitution. And, besides the end already stated to have been proposed by the division of the Legislature into two separate and independent branches, another important object is accomplished by it, and that is, preventing the evil effects of excitement and precipitation, which had been found, by sad experi

ence, to exert a powerful and dangerous sway in single assemblies.

No portion of the political history of mankind, according to the elder President Adams,* is more full of instructive lessons on this subject, or contains more striking proofs of the factious instability and turbulent misery of states under the dominion of a single unchecked legislature, than the annals of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages. They arose in great numbers, and with dazzling but transient splendour, in the interval between the falls of the Western and Eastern Empires, and were all constituted with a single unbalanced legislative assembly. They were alike wretched in existence, and all ended in similar disgrace. At the commencement of the French Revolution, many of their speculative writers, pseudo-philosophers, and visionary pol iticians, seem to have been struck with the sim plicity of a legislature consisting of a single chamber, and concluded that more was useless and expensive. This led the veteran statesman te write and publish, during his residence in Eu rope, his great work, entitled, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States," in which he vindicates, with great learning and ability, the advantage and necessity of dividing the Legislature into two branches, and of distributing the powers of government among distinct departments. He reviewed the history and examined the constitutions of all the mixed and free governments which had existed from the earliest records of time, in order to deduce, with more certainty and force, his great practical truth, that single legislatures, without check or

* Defence of the American Constitutions.

balance, or a government with all authority collected in one centre or department, were violent, intriguing, corrupt, and tyrannical dominations of majorities over minorities, uniformly and rapidly terminating their career in profligate despotism.

This visionary notion of a single assembly was, nevertheless, imbodied in the constitution adopted by France in 1791; and the same false and vicious principle continued for some time to prevail with the sublimated theorists of that country. A single chamber was again established in the plan of government published by the Convention in 1793. Their own sufferings, however, at length taught the French people to listen to that oracle of wisdom, the experience of other nations and other ages, which, amid the tumult and violence of the passions which influenced them, they had utterly disregarded, and which, under any circumstances, their national vanity would otherwise have led them to despise. "No people," said Boissy d'Anglas, one of their greatest orators, no people can testify to the world, with more truth and sincerity than the French, the dangers inherent in a single legislative assembly, and the point to which faction may mislead an assembly without check or counterpoise." We accordingly find, that in the next of their ephemeral constitutions, which appeared in 1797, there was a division of the Legislature into twe co-ordinate branches; and the idea of two cham bers was never abandoned, either under the mil itary despotism of the empire, or in the charters. obtained upon the restoration of the monarchy, or upon the subsequent revolution and change of dynasty.

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Our country had, indeed, afforded more than one instance in point, in which, fortunately, however, the evil consequences were by no means so great as those experienced in France. The legislatures of Pennsylvania and Georgia consisted originally of a single house; but the instability and passion which marked their proceedings, far short as they were of the least of the atrocities of the French National Convention, were the subject of much public animadversion at the time; and in the subsequent reforms of their constitutions, the people of those states were so sensible of this defect, and of the evils they had suffered from it, that a Senate was introduced into both of their amended constitutions. There was a farther reason for the division of the legislative powers in the government of the United States, arising from its federative character, but which, from its peculiar importance, deserves a fuller explanation.

On those just principles of public polity on which our Constitution is founded, it is essential that in communities, thoroughly incorporated into one nation, the inhabitants of every geo graphical district or territorial subdivision should have their proportional share in the government; while among independent sovereign states, bound together by a simple league, the several parties, however unequal in respect to territory and population, should have an equal share in the public councils. It was therefore reasonable and proper, that in a republic partaking both of the national and federal characters, the government should be founded on both those principles of representation. Hence, in the constitution of the legislative powers, the House of Representatives

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was constructed on the principle of proportional, and the Senate on that of equal, representation; and although this equality in the latter was evidently the result of a compromise between the larger and smaller states, yet it afforded a convenient and effectual mode of applying the rule of combined representation to that co-ordinate branch, and necessarily induced a separation of the two bodies of which Congress is composed.

I. The House of Representatives was accordingly founded on the principles of proportional representation; yet not purely and abstractedly so, but with as much conformity to that principle as was practicable. It is composed of representatives of the people of the several states, not of the people of the United States at large; and in this respect it partakes of the federative quality. Neither are the qualifications of the electors uniform, as much variety of opinion and practice exists concerning them in the several states. The representatives in Congress are chosen every second year, by the people of the several states who are qualified to vote for the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. No person can be a representative until he has attained the age of twenty-five years, and has been seven years a citizen of the United States; nor unless he is an inhabitant of the state for which he is chosen. When vacancies happen, from death or resignation, in the representation of any state, its executive authority is directed to issue writs of election to fill them, either at a general or special election.

The general qualifications of electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures are, that they be past the age of twenty-one

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