The Spirit of American Government / A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And / Relation To Democracy

by J. Allen Smith

The framers of our Constitution, as shown in previous chapters, took the English government for their model and sought to establish the supremacy of the well-to-do classes. Like the English conservatives of that time they deplored the existence of political parties and consequently made no provision for them in the system which they established. Indeed, their chief purpose was to prevent the very thing which the responsible political party aimed to establish, viz., majority rule.

"Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed union," wrote Madison in defense of the Constitution, "none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction....

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community....

" ... But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes actuated by different sentiments and views....

"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by a regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed."[156]

The very existence of political parties would endanger the system which they set up, since in their efforts to strengthen and perpetuate their rule they would inevitably advocate extensions of the suffrage, and thus in the end competition between parties for popular support would be destructive of all those property qualifications for voting and holding office which had up to that time excluded the propertyless classes from any participation in public affairs. Hence Washington though a staunch Federalist himself saw nothing inconsistent in trying to blend the extremes of political opinion by giving both Hamilton and Jefferson a place in his Cabinet.

In England the party by the Reform bill of 1832 accomplished its purpose, broke through the barriers erected against it, divested the Crown of all real authority, subordinated the House of Lords, and established the undisputed rule of the majority in the House of Commons. This accomplished, it was inevitable that the rivalry between political parties should result in extensions of the suffrage until the House should come to represent, as it does in practice to-day, the sentiment of the English people.

The framers of the American Constitution, however, succeeded in erecting barriers which democracy has found it more difficult to overcome. For more than a century the constitutional bulwarks which they raised against the rule of the numerical majority have obstructed and retarded the progress of the democratic movement. The force of public sentiment soon compelled, it is true, the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, which in effect recognized the existence of political parties and made provision for the party candidate for President and Vice-President. At most, however, it merely allowed the party to name the executive without giving it any effective control over him after he was elected, since in other respects the general plan of the Constitution remained unchanged.

The political party, it is true, has come to play an important role under our constitutional system; but its power and influence are of a negative rather than a positive character. It professes, of course, to stand for the principle of majority rule, but in practice it has become an additional and one of the most potent checks on the majority.

To understand the peculiar features of the American party system one must bear in mind the constitutional arrangements under which it has developed. The party is simply a voluntary political association through which the people seek to formulate the policy of the government, select the officials who are to carry it out in the actual administration of public affairs, and hold them to strict accountability for so doing. Under any government which makes full provision for the political party, as in the English system of to-day, the party has not only the power to elect but the power to remove those who are entrusted with the execution of its policies. Having this complete control of the government, it can not escape responsibility for failure to carry out the promises by which it secured a majority at the polls. This is the essential difference between the English system on the one hand and the party under the American constitutional system on the other. The one well knows that if it carries the election it will be expected to make its promises good. The other makes certain promises with the knowledge that after the election is over it will probably have no power to carry them out.