THREE OR FIVE CANDIDATES.

307

with Goddard, of Connecticut, that five would allow a larger choice than three, and thus favor the small States.

In defense of the report, Dawson explained, that the committee did not think three a discrimination because when both President and Vice-President were voted for without discrimination, the choice was made from five. Campbell, of Tennessee, had remarked that by limiting the number to three, the choice would nearer approach the will of the people. "What is this will,” inquired Goddard, "but the will of the large States, Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania ?" When it was known that the election might go to the House, the people would choose their Representatives accordingly. "The fewer the number of candidates," replied Alston, of North Carolina, "the less chance that the House would be called upon to make the choice." On the twenty-sixth, the committee reported a resolution which was agreed to by the House. The candidates should be designated; and in case no person was chosen President by the electors, the House should elect from the three highest on the list. If no Vice-President was chosen, the Senate should elect from those highest on the list and having an equal number of votes. But the friends of the number five made it the issue, on the following day, when, by a vote of fifty-nine to fortyseven, it was inserted; and the amendment, as now changed, was ordered engrossed and passed to a third reading.

On the twenty-eighth the debate of the measure began.1 This debate is no less interesting for its bearing upon the immediate question than for the interpretation it gives of the nature of the Constitution, and the light it throws on the scope and operation of that instrument, as understood in the opening years of the new century. In 1803, most

1 Id., 515.

308

THE STATUS OF THE CONSTITUTION.

of the framers of the Constitution were still living, and many of them were in public life. But the men who were proposing and discussing the twelfth amendment were of a later generation, to whom the Constitution came as the heritage of the country from Revolutionary times. To the surprise of many, the Constitution had proved itself well adapted to the needs of America. But no one should think that the Constitution seemed to Congressmen in 1803, as it seems to Congressmen in our day. It was not yet associated with the defeats and triumphs of administration extending over many years. Its makers were still living, and the passions of 1787 were not all allayed by its ratification. Jefferson had spoken of it as a clock that might run down, and many Federalists believed that some of its mechanism had stopped on the day when he was chosen President by the House of Representatives. To many Senators and Congressman of 1803, the Constitution was a law not differing, profoundly, from other laws. Public sentiment has long since come to venerate it as the supreme law of the land. Whatever the word Constitution may mean to the mass of Americans, at least, it stands for power and permanency, and supreme political wisdom, and a supreme law almost impossible to change. The twelfth amendment following its predecessors within five years, and, indeed, proposed before the eleventh had yet been proclaimed to be a part of the Constitution, suggested the thought to many that the nineteenth century might possibly revise the work of the Federal Convention, and that party demands might rewrite the Constitution.

On Friday, the twenty-eighth of October,1 Griswold, of New York, rising, after the manner of Congressmen, to give the reason for his opposition to the proposed amend1 1803; Annals, 515, 8th Cong. 1st Sess.

EQUALITY OF THE STATES.

309

ment, because it would "materially affect the smaller States in the choice of President," defined the Constitution as "a compact formed by the several States for the general good," a concept of the Constitution which was commonly held at the time, and, indeed, until the nineteenth century was in its last quarter. "In no other place than on this floor," said he, "are the smaller States on an equal footing with the larger in the choice of the President." It followed that the greater the chance of bringing the States to a vote in the House, the more advantageous it would be for the smaller States. For them an election by the House was an exercise of that sovereignty of which they were so jealous. The more the Constitution was examined, the greater the admiration of its principles. The mode originally provided for the election was the least liable to call forth art, intrigue and corruption, because the uncertainty of the result made all evil plans difficult of execution. Adopt the proposed amendment, and the door to corruption was opened. Moreover it was an unhappy time to alter the Constitution, when the public mind was agitated by party rage. By altering it for every trivial pretext, all sacred regard for it would be destroyed.

What is the Constitution, asked Huger, of South Carolina, other than a "compact, a bargain, a perfect compromise of interests, powers, influence and rights:-a federative government agreed upon between thirteen distinct and separate sovereignties, for their mutual defence and protection?" The inhabitants of the United States, in forming the Constitution, did not, he said, act in mass as one people.1 The men who framed it did not, even in the degree of members of the House, immediately represent the people. "They were not selected by the people

1 Annals, Id., 522.

310

CHECKS AND BALANCES.

at large, nor did they represent them in their individual capacities." "They were sent to represent the interests and views of thirteen distinct sovereignties; were appointed by the governments of the different States and held their authority from the States." When met therefore, in convention, "their object was not to form one general consolidated government for the inhabitants scattered over this vast territory, but to modify still further, and to draw still closer the bands of alliance by which the States were already connected." One of the chief objections to the Constitution was its violation of the federative principle, that it "approached too nearly to a consolidation of the different members of the Confederacy, and one general national government." Finally, when ratification was the issue, the point on which the fate of the Constitution rested was that point which balanced the great and the small States.

The difficulty, in detail, was to determine how much of State sovereignty was yielded to the Union. Representation was not fixed on mere numbers; that would have put an end to State sovereignty. As a partial check, the federative principle was preserved in the States; and in the House, to a certain extent, also. If the chief executive was to be chosen on the republican principle, instead of the federative, he would be the creature of the large States. The compromise finally agreed upon, provided for his election by States, not by the people at large. "I have ever understood, I have ever been taught to believe, by those few of the original framers of the Constitution with whom I have had the happiness to be acquainted, or to converse on the subject, that this very provision which obliges the electors in each State to vote indiscriminately for two persons to fill the offices of President and Vice-President, and which it is now pro

A STATE QUESTION.

311

posed to do away, was regarded as the best, the most effectual means, and that which did in fact tend most to soothe and quiet the fears of the smaller States, and was in this view, and for this very purpose, adopted as a part of the Constitution."

The proposition to change the manner of election was therefore "neither more nor less than a State question," one involving the vital principle upon which the Federal compact was formed; the compromise between the large and the small States. By the Constitution, the House, voting as equal States, could make its choice of five candidates; by the amendment, the choice, the electors in the larger States by agreeing on their candidates would always bring them in. By the Constitution, the smaller States always had a chance of securing the Vice-President. It should not be forgotten that the person elected President would usually be a man advanced in years; the Vice-President, the heir apparent, would succeed. Moreover it should be remembered that the Vice-President participated in the high functions of the Senate, the treaty power, the confirmation of executive appointments. The amendment would give a death-blow to the sovereignty reserved to the States and prove "a monstrous and more than a gigantic stride" towards their consolidation.

Huger remarked that he was not on popular ground; that the principles for which he contended no longer influenced the public as they did when the Federal Convention met. Nor were they regarded in the small States as formerly. The prosperity which the country had enjoyed under the General Government had done away, in a very considerable degree, with State jealousies. It was not true that the public demanded the amendment. It had been worked up by party zeal and its ultimate suc