Respectfully your friends and obedient servants,
(Signed by) Jacob Kern,
and Seventy other Members.
The following communication, in reply, was laid before the members, at a meeting held in the Capitol on the 7th instant, by Col. Jacob Kern, Speaker of the Senate:
[TO JACOB KERN, ESQ., AND OTHERS, MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA.]
Washington, Dec. 22, 1834.
Gentlemen:—
I want language to express my feelings on the perusal of your kind letter, which was delivered to me at the moment I was about to leave Harrisburg. Elevated by your free and unsolicited suffrages to the only public station I desire to occupy, it shall be my constant endeavor to justify, by my conduct, the generous confidence which you have thus reposed. The interest and the honor of Pennsylvania, so far as you have committed them to my hands, shall never be wilfully abandoned or betrayed.
Although you have not asked me for any pledge or promise relating to my course in the Senate, yet I am sensible that many of you desire I should express my opinion publicly in regard to the right of legislative instruction. I shall do so with the utmost frankness. On this question I have not, and never have had, any serious difficulties. The right results from the very nature of our institutions. The will of the people, when fully and fairly expressed, ought to be obeyed by all their political agents. This is the very nature and essence of a representative democracy.
Without entering into an argument upon the general question, which would be altogether misplaced upon the present occasion, it may not be improper to observe that the principle applies with redoubled force to Senators in Congress. They represent the sovereign States, who are the parties to that constitutional compact which called the federal union into existence. In the Senate, these States are represented as distinct communities, each entitled to the same number of votes, without regard to their population. In that body they are all equal, as they were before the adoption of the federal constitution. Here, emphatically, if any where, the voice of the States ought to be heard, and ought to be obeyed. Shall it then be said that a Senator possesses the constitutional right to violate the express instructions of the sovereign State which he represents, and wield the power and the vote which have been conferred upon him for the benefit of his constituents in a manner which they have solemnly declared to be ruinous to their dearest interests, or dangerous to their liberties! The bare statement of the proposition carries conviction to my mind. All, or nearly all the State Legislatures, have long been in the practice of instructing their Senators, and this affords the strongest evidence of the principle upon which the custom is founded.