The President pro tempore. The Joint Resolution will be read at length.
The Chief Clerk read as follows:—
Joint Resolution proposing an Amendment of the Constitution, confining the President to One Term.
Whereas for many years there has been an increasing conviction among the people, without distinction of party, that one wielding the vast patronage of the President should not be a candidate for reëlection, and this conviction has found expression in the solemn warnings of illustrious citizens, and in repeated propositions for an Amendment of the Constitution confining the President to one term:
Whereas Andrew Jackson was so fully impressed by the peril to Republican Institutions from the temptations acting on a President, who, wielding the vast patronage of his office, is a candidate for reëlection, that, in his first Annual Message, he called attention to it;[131] that, in his second Annual Message, after setting forth the design of the Constitution “to secure the independence of each department of the Government, and promote the healthful and equitable administration of all the trusts which it has created,” he did not hesitate to say, “The agent most likely to contravene this design of the Constitution is the Chief Magistrate,” and then proceeded to declare, “In order particularly that his appointment may as far as possible be placed beyond the reach of any improper influences; in order that he may approach the solemn responsibilities of the highest office in the gift of a free people uncommitted to any other course than the strict line of constitutional duty; and that the securities for this independence may be rendered as strong as the nature of power and the weakness of its possessor will admit, I cannot too earnestly invite your attention to the propriety of promoting such an Amendment of the Constitution as will render him ineligible after one term of service”;[132] and then, again, in his third Annual Message, the same President renewed this patriotic appeal:[133]
Whereas William Henry Harrison, following in the footsteps of Andrew Jackson, felt it a primary duty, in accepting his nomination as President, to assert the One-Term principle in these explicit words: “Among the principles proper to be adopted by any Executive sincerely desirous to restore the Administration to its original simplicity and purity, I deem the following to be of prominent importance: first, to confine his service to a single term”;[134] and then, in public speech during the canvass which ended in his election, declared, “If the privilege of being President of the United States had been limited to one term, the incumbent would devote all his time to the public interest, and there would be no cause to misrule the country”; and he concluded by pledging himself “before Heaven and Earth, if elected President of these United States, to lay down, at the end of the term, faithfully, that high trust at the feet of the people”:[135]
Whereas Henry Clay, though differing much from Andrew Jackson, united with him on the One-Term principle, and publicly enforced it in a speech, June 27, 1840, where, after asking for “a provision to render a person ineligible to the office of President of the United States after a service of one term,” he explained the necessity of the Amendment by saying, “Much observation and deliberate reflection have satisfied me that too much of the time, the thoughts, and the exertions of the incumbent are occupied during his first term in securing his reëlection: the public business consequently suffers”;[136] and then, again, in a letter dated September 13, 1842, while setting forth what he calls “principal objects engaging the common desire and the common exertion of the Whig party,” the same statesman specifies “an Amendment of the Constitution, limiting the incumbent of the Presidential office to a single term”:[137]
Whereas the Whig party, in its National Convention at Baltimore, May 1, 1844, nominated Henry Clay as President and Theodore Frelinghuysen as Vice-President, with a platform where “a single term for the Presidency” is declared to be among “the great principles of the Whig party, principles inseparable from the public honor and prosperity, to be maintained and advanced by the election of these candidates”;[138] which declaration was echoed at the great National Ratification Convention the next day, addressed by Daniel Webster, where it was resolved that “the limitation of a President to a single term” was among the objects “for which the Whig party will unceasingly strive until their efforts are crowned with a signal and triumphant success”:[139]
Whereas, in the same spirit and in harmony with these authorities, another statesman, Benjamin F. Wade, at the close of his long service in the Senate, most earnestly urged an Amendment of the Constitution confining the President to one term, and in his speech on that occasion, February 20, 1866, said, “The offering of this resolution is no new impulse of mine, for I have been an advocate of the principle contained in it for many years, and I have derived the strong impressions which I entertain on the subject from a very careful observation of the workings of our Government during the period that I have been an observer of them; I believe it has been very rare that we have been able to elect a President of the United States who has not been tempted to use the vast powers intrusted to him according to his own opinions to advance his reëlection”; and then, after exposing at length the necessity of this Amendment, the veteran Senator further declared, “There are defects in the Constitution, and this is among the most glaring; all men have seen it; and now let us have the nerve, let us have the resolution to come up and apply the remedy”:[140]
Whereas these testimonies, revealing intense and wide-spread convictions of the American people, are reinforced by the friendly observations of De Tocqueville, the remarkable Frenchman to whom our country is under such great and lasting obligations, in his famous work on “Democracy in America,” where he says, in words of singular clearness and force, “Intrigue and corruption are vices natural to elective Governments; but when the chief of the State can be reëlected, these vices extend themselves indefinitely, and compromise the very existence of the country: when a simple candidate seeks success by intrigue, his manœuvres can operate only over a circumscribed space; when, on the contrary, the chief of the State himself enters the lists, he borrows for his own use the force of the Government: in the first case, it is a man, with his feeble means; in the second, it is the State itself, with its immense resources, that intrigues and corrupts”:[141] and then, again, the same great writer, who had studied our country so closely, testifies: “It is impossible to consider the ordinary course of affairs in the United States without perceiving that the desire to be reëlected dominates the thoughts of the President; that the whole policy of his Administration tends toward this point; that his least movements are made subservient to this object; that, especially as the moment of crisis approaches, individual interest substitutes itself in his mind for the general interest”:[142]