In accordance with the previous decisions of the Convention, the committee of detail had provided that the legislative power of the United States should be vested in a Congress, to consist of two branches, a House of Representatives and a Senate, each of which should have a negative on the other. But as to the persons by whom the members of the national legislature were to be appointed, no decision had been made in the Convention, excepting that the members of the House were to be chosen by the people of the States, and the members of the Senate by their legislatures. Nothing had been settled respecting the qualifications of the electors of representatives; nor had the qualifications of the members of either branch been determined.[131] Two great questions, therefore, remained open; first, with what class of persons was the election of members of the popular branch of the legislature to be lodged; secondly, what persons were to be eligible to that and to the other branch. In substance, these questions resolved themselves into the inquiry, in whom was the power of governing America to be vested; for it is to be remembered that, according to a decision of the Convention not yet reversed, the national executive was to be chosen by the national legislature.

So far as the people of the United States had evinced any distinct purpose, at the time when this Convention was assembled, it appeared to be well settled that the new system of government, whatever else it might be, should be republican in its form and spirit. When the States had assembled in Convention, it became the result of a necessary compromise between them, that the appointment of one branch of the legislature should be vested in the people of the several States. But who were to be regarded as the people of a State, for this purpose, was a question of great magnitude, now to be considered.

The situation of the country, in reference to this as well as to many other important questions, was peculiar. The streams of emigration, which began to flow into it from Europe at the first settlement of the different Colonies, had been interrupted only by the war of the Revolution. On the return of peace, the tide of emigration again began to set towards the new States, which had risen into independent existence on the western shores of the Atlantic by a struggle for freedom that had attracted the attention of the whole civilized world; and when the Constitution of the United States was about to be framed, large and various classes of individuals in the different countries of Europe were eagerly watching the result of the experiment. It appeared quite certain that great accessions of population would follow the establishment of free institutions in America, if they should be framed in a liberal and comprehensive spirit. It became necessary, therefore, to meet and provide for the presence in the country of great masses of persons not born upon the soil, who had not participated in the efforts by which its freedom had been acquired, and who would bring with them widely differing degrees of intelligence and of fitness to take part in the administration of a free government. The place that was to be assigned to these persons in the political system of the country was a subject of much solicitude to its best and most thoughtful statesmen.

On the one hand, all were aware that there existed among the native populations of the States a very strong American feeling, engendered by the war, and by the circumstances attending its commencement, its progress, and its results. It was a war begun and prosecuted for the express purpose of obtaining and securing, for the people who undertook it, the right of self-government. It necessarily created a great jealousy of foreign influence, whether exerted by governments or individuals, and a strong fear that individuals would be made the agents of governments in the exercise of such influence. The political situation of the country under the Confederation had increased rather than diminished these apprehensions. The relations of the States with each other and with foreign nations, under a system which admitted of no efficient national legislation binding upon all alike, afforded, or were believed to afford, means by which the policy of other countries could operate on our interests with irresistible force.

There was, therefore, among the people of the United States, and among their statesmen who were intrusted with the formation of the Constitution, a firmly settled determination, that the institutions and legislation of the country should be effectually guarded against foreign control or interference.

On the other hand, it was extremely important that nothing should be done to prevent the immigration from Europe of any classes of men who were likely to become useful citizens. The States which had most encouraged such immigration had advanced most rapidly in population, in agriculture, and the arts. There were, too, already in the country many persons of foreign birth, who had thoroughly identified themselves with its interests and its fate, who had fought in its battles, or contributed of their means to the cause of its freedom; and some of these men were at this very period high in the councils of the nation, and even occupied places of great importance in the Convention itself.[132] They had been made citizens of the States in which they resided, by the State power of naturalization; and they were in every important sense Americans. It was impossible, therefore, to adopt a rule that would confine the elective franchise, or the right to be elected to office, to the native citizens of the States. The States themselves had not done this; and the institutions of the United States could not rest on a narrower basis than the institutions of the States.

Another difficulty which attended the adjustment of the right of suffrage grew out of the widely differing qualifications annexed to that right under the State constitutions, and the consequent dissatisfaction that must follow any effort to establish distinct or special qualifications under the national Constitution. In some of the States, the right of voting was confined to "freeholders"; in others,—and by far the greater number,—it was extended beyond the holders of landed property, and included many other classes of the adult male population; while in a few, it embraced every male citizen of full age who was raised at all above the level of the pauper by the smallest evidence of contribution to the public burdens. The consequence, therefore, of adopting any separate system of qualifications for the right of voting under the Constitution of the United States would have been, that, in some of the States, there would be persons capable of voting for the highest State officers, and yet not permitted to vote for any officer of the United States; and that in the other States persons not admitted to the exercise of the right under the State constitution might have enjoyed it in national elections.

This embarrassment, however, did not extend to the qualifications which it might be thought necessary to establish for the right of being elected to office under the general government. As the State and the national governments were to be distinct systems, and the officers of each were to exercise very different functions, it was both practicable and expedient for the Constitution of the United States to define the persons who should be eligible to the offices which it created.

At the same time, in relation to both of these rights—that of electing and that of being elected to national offices—it was highly necessary that the national authority, either by direct provision of the Constitution, or by a legislative power to be exercised under it, should determine the period when the rights of citizenship could be acquired by persons of foreign birth. From the first establishment of the State governments down to the present period, those governments had possessed the power of naturalization. Their rules for the admission of foreigners to the privileges of citizenship were extremely unlike; and if the power of prescribing the rule were to be left to them, and the Constitution of the United States were to adopt the qualifications of voters fixed by the laws of the States, or were to be silent with respect to the qualifications of its own officers, the rights both of electing and of being elected to national office would, in respect to citizenship, be regulated by no uniform principle. If, therefore, the right of voting for any class of federal officers were to be in each State the same as that given by the State laws for the election of any class of State officers, it was quite essential that the States should surrender to the general government the power to determine, as to persons of foreign birth, what period of residence in the country should be required for the rights of citizenship. It was equally necessary that the national government should possess this power, if it was intended that citizenship should be regarded at all in the selection of those who were to fill the national offices.

The committee of detail, after a review of all these considerations, presented a scheme that was well adapted to meet the difficulties of the case. They proposed that the same persons who, by the laws of the several States, were admitted to vote for members of the most numerous branch of their own legislatures, should have the right to vote for the representatives in Congress. The adoption of this principle avoided the necessity of disfranchising any portion of the people of a State by a system of qualifications unknown to their laws. As the States were the best judges of the circumstances and temper of their own people, it was certainly best to conciliate them to the support of the new Constitution by this concession. It was possible, indeed, but not very probable, that they might admit foreigners to the right of voting without the previous qualification of citizenship. It was possible, too, that they might establish universal suffrage in its most unrestricted sense. But against all these evils there existed one great security; namely, that the mischiefs of an absolutely free suffrage would be felt most severely by themselves in their domestic concerns; and against the special danger to be apprehended from the indiscriminate admission of foreigners to the right of voting, another feature of the proposed plan gave the national legislature power to withhold from persons of foreign birth the privileges of general citizenship, although a State might confer upon them the power of voting without previous naturalization.