The whole tenor of these paragraphs is to disparage the democracy—to disparage democratic government—to attack fundamentally the principle of popular election itself. They disqualify the people for self-government, hold them to be incapable of exercising the elective franchise, and predict the downfall of our republican system, if that franchise is not still further restricted, and the popular vote—the vote of the people—reduced to the subaltern choice of persons to vote for them. These are profound errors on the part of Mons. de Tocqueville, which require to be exposed and corrected; and the correction of which comes within the scope of this work, intended to show the capacity of the people for self-government, and the advantage of extending—instead of restricting—the privilege of the direct vote. He seems to look upon the members of the two Houses as different orders of beings—different classes—a higher and a lower class; the former placed in the Senate by the wisdom of State legislatures, the latter in the House of Representatives by the folly of the people—when the fact is, that they are not only of the same order and class, but mainly the same individuals. The Senate is almost entirely made up out of the House! and it is quite certain that every senator whom Mons. de Tocqueville had in his eye when he bestowed such encomium on that body had come from the House of Representatives! placed there by the popular vote, and afterwards transferred to the Senate by the legislature; not as new men just discovered by the superior sagacity of that body, but as public men with national reputations, already illustrated by the operation of popular elections. And if Mons. de Tocqueville had chanced to make his visit some years sooner, he would have seen almost every one of these senators, to whom his exclusive praise is directed, actually sitting in the other House.
Away, then, with his fact! and with it, away with all his fanciful theory of wise elections by small electoral colleges, and silly ones by the people! and away with all his logical deductions, from premises which have no existence, and which would have us still further to "refine popular discretion," by increasing and extending the number of electoral colleges through which it is to be filtrated. Not only all vanishes, but his praise goes to the other side, and redounds to the credit of popular elections; for almost every distinguished man in the Senate or in any other department of the government, now or heretofore—from the Congress of Independence down to the present day—has owed his first elevation and distinction, to popular elections—to the direct vote of the people, given, without the intervention of any intermediate body, to the visible object of their choice; and it is the same in other countries, now and always. The English, the Scotch and the Irish have no electoral colleges; they vote direct, and are never without their ablest men in the House of Commons. The Romans voted direct; and for five hundred years—until fair elections were destroyed by force and fraud—never failed to elect consuls and prætors, who carried the glory of their country beyond the point at which they had found it.
The American people know this—know that popular election has given them every eminent public man that they have ever had—that it is the safest and wisest mode of political election—most free from intrigue and corruption; and instead of further restricting that mode, and reducing the masses to mere electors of electors, they are, in fact, extending it, and altering constitutions to carry elections to the people, which were formerly given to the general assemblies. Many States furnish examples of this. Even the constitution of the United States has been overruled by universal public sentiment in the greatest of its elections—that of President and Vice-President. The electoral college by that instrument, both its words and intent, was to have been an independent body, exercising its own discretion in the choice of these high officers. On the contrary, it has been reduced to a mere formality for the registration of the votes which the people prepare and exact. The speculations of Monsieur de Tocqueville are, therefore, groundless; and must be hurtful to representative government in Europe, where the facts are unknown; and may be injurious among ourselves, where his book is translated into English, with a preface and notes to recommend it.
Admitting that there might be a difference between the appearance of the two Houses, and between their talent, at the time that Mons. de Tocqueville looked in upon them, yet that difference, so far as it might then have existed, was accidental and temporary, and has already vanished. And so far as it may have appeared, or may appear in other times, the difference in favor of the Senate may be found in causes very different from those of more or less judgment and virtue in the constituencies which elect the two Houses. The Senate is a smaller body, and therefore may be more decorous; it is composed of older men, and therefore should be graver, its members have usually served in the highest branches of the State governments, and in the House of Representatives, and therefore should be more experienced; its terms of service are longer, and therefore give more time for talent to mature, and for the measures to be carried which confer fame. Finally, the Senate is in great part composed of the pick of the House, and therefore gains double—by brilliant accession to itself and abstraction from the other. These are causes enough to account for any occasional, or general difference which may show itself in the decorum or ability of the two Houses. But there is another cause, which is found in the practice of some of the States—the caucus system and rotation in office—which brings in men unknown to the people, and turns them out as they begin to be useful; to be succeeded by other new beginners, who are in turn turned out to make room for more new ones; all by virtue of arrangements which look to individual interests, and not to the public good.
The injury of these changes to the business qualities of the House and the interests of the State, is readily conceivable, and very visible in the delegations of States where they do, or do not prevail—in some Southern and some Northern States, for example. To name them might seem invidious, and is not necessary, the statement of the general fact being sufficient to indicate an evil which requires correction. Short terms of service are good on account of their responsibility, and two years is a good legal term; but every contrivance is vicious, and also inconsistent with the re-eligibility permitted by the constitution, which prevents the people from continuing a member as long as they deem him useful to them. Statesmen are not improvised in any country; and in our own, as well as in Great Britain, great political reputations have only been acquired after long service—20, 30, 40, and even 50 years; and great measures have only been carried by an equal number of years of persevering exertion by the same man who commenced them. Earl Grey and Major Cartwright—I take the aristocratic and the democratic leaders of the movement—only carried British parliamentry reform after forty years of annual consecutive exertion. They organized the Society for Parliamentry Reform in 1792, and carried the reform in 1832—disfranchising 56 burgs, half disfranchising 31 others, enfranchising 41 new towns; and doubling the number of voters by extending the privilege to £10 householders—extorting, perhaps, the greatest concession from power and corruption to popular right that was ever obtained by civil and legal means. Yet this was only done upon forty years' continued annual exertions. Two men did it, but it took them forty years.
The same may be said of other great British measures—Catholic emancipation, corn law repeal, abolition of the slave trade, and many others; each requiring a lifetime of continued exertion from devoted men. Short service, and not popular election, is the evil of the House of Representatives; and this becomes more apparent by contrast—contrast between the North and the South—the caucus, or rotary system, not prevailing in the South, and useful members being usually continued from that quarter as long as useful; and thus with fewer members, usually showing a greater number of men who have attained a distinction. Monsieur de Tocqueville is profoundly wrong, and does great injury to democratic government, as his theory countenances the monarchial idea of the incapacity of the people for self-government. They are with us the best and safest depositories of the political elective power. They have not only furnished to the Senate its ablest members through the House of Representatives, but have sometimes repaired the injustice of State legislatures, which repulsed or discarded some eminent men. The late Mr. John Quincy Adams, after forty years of illustrious service—after having been minister to half the great courts of Europe, a senator in Congress, Secretary of State, and President of the United States—in the full possession of all his great faculties, was refused an election by the Massachusetts legislature to the United States Senate, where he had served thirty years before. Refused by the legislature, he was taken up by the people, sent to the House of Representatives, and served there to octogenarian age—attentive, vigilant and capable—an example to all, and a match for half the House to the last. The brilliant, incorruptible, sagacious Randolph—friend of the people, of the constitution, of economy and hard money—scourge and foe to all corruption, plunder and jobbing—had nearly the same fate; dropped from the Senate by the Virginia general assembly, restored to the House of Representatives by the people of his district, to remain there till, following the example of his friend, the wise Macon, he voluntarily withdrew. I name no more, confining myself to instances of the illustrious dead.
I have been the more particular to correct this error of De Tocqueville, because, while disparaging democratic government generally, it especially disparages that branch of our government which was intended to be the controlling part. Two clauses of the constitution—one vesting the House of Representatives with the sole power of originating revenue bills, the other with the sole power of impeachment—sufficiently attest the high function to which that House was appointed. They are both borrowed from the British constitution, where their effect has been seen in controlling the course of the whole government, and bringing great criminals to the bar. No sovereign, no ministry holds out an hour against the decision of the House of Commons. Though an imperfect representation of the people, even with the great ameliorations of the reform act of 1832, it is at once the democratic branch, and the master-branch of the British government. Wellington administrations have to retire before it. Bengal Governors-General have to appear as criminals at its bar. It is the theatre which attracts the talent, the patriotism, the high spirit, and the lofty ambition of the British empire; and the people look to it as the master-power in the working of the government, and the one in which their will has weight. No rising man, with ability to acquire a national reputation, will quit it for a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. Our House of Representatives, with its two commanding prerogatives and a perfect representation, should not fall below the British House of Commons in the fulfilment of its mission. It should not become second to the Senate, and in the beginning it did not. For the first thirty years it was the controlling branch of the government, and the one on whose action the public eye was fixed. Since then the Senate has been taking the first place, and people have looked less to the House. This is an injury above what concerns the House itself. It is an injury to our institutions, and to the people. The high functions of the House were given to it for wise purposes—for paramount national objects. It is the immediate representation of the people, and should command their confidence and their hopes. As the sole originator of tax bills, it is the sole dispenser of burthens on the people, and of supplies to the government. As sole authors of impeachment, it is the grand inquest of the nation, and has supervision over all official delinquencies. Duty to itself, to its high functions, to the people, to the constitution, and to the character of democratic government, require it to resume and maintain its controlling place in the machinery and working of our federal government: and that is what it has commenced doing in the last two or three sessions—and with happy results to the economy of the public service—and in preventing an increase of the evils of our diplomatic representation abroad.