Tom Watson's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 3, May 1905

by Various

The truth is that the people of the United States are unfamiliar not only with the history of the formation of the Constitution, but the vast majority of them do not know what it contains. Many of them confound the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution. What is the “Open Door” in the Constitution to which Washington repeatedly refers?

Before considering that, let us list a few of the abuses which the more thoughtful admit exist under our Constitution. Ignoring all of lesser importance I will name four, any one of which constitutes a menace to the perpetuation of free government. These are as follows:

First, the election of a President and Vice-President under the absurd and antiquated method provided by the Constitution, in which citizens vote for electors, and the decision is made by the unit vote of states, irrespective of the majorities cast. Under this grotesque system it has repeatedly happened that candidates obtaining an actual majority of the votes cast have been defeated by the minority. There is not one valid argument in favor of the continuance of this unrepublican and undemocratic elective monstrosity.

Second, the election of senators by the state legislatures, a system which is the fountain-head of the corruption of American politics, and which has given us a Senate, a large percentage of whose members owe their selection to selfish private interests. The error of this system has been so conclusively shown that there is no honest defense for it. The founders of the Constitution designed it for the purpose of making the Senate the citadel of patriotic wealth; it has degenerated into a chamber in which the admitted representatives of vested interests defend their masters against fair legislative enactments, and force unfair compromises on the popular branch which constitutes the House of Representatives.

Third, the equal representation of unequal states in the Senate. This vicious compromise was made in the constitutional convention as the price of the perpetuation of slavery. There was no justification for it even at a time when this nation was no more than a federation of states. Washington, Madison, Randolph, Morris, Franklin and every broad-minded man in that convention protested against it, and their fame is tarnished because they finally submitted to so cowardly and unfair a compromise. Now that the logic of events has made this a nation, despite the restrictive clauses of the Constitution, the dual participation of an unrepresentative Senate is so grotesque that its continuance is fraught with a danger which at any time is likely to precipitate civil war, in the event that at some crucial moment this body shall exercise its constitutional powers combined with those it has arrogated.

Unless the Constitution be entirely repealed, there is no way by amendment to deprive any state of its equal representation in the Senate. It is too much to expect that all of the corrupt boroughs which now hold the undeserved dignity of statehood will relinquish the selfish advantage bequeathed them by the unwisdom of the forefathers, but it is possible to make amendments to the Constitution which will reduce the Senate of the United States to a state of harmless inefficiency. It is possible to preserve its form and extract its substance, and the people should set about the task with no qualms of conscience. Great Britain showed the way when she boldly reduced her House of Lords to a condition of docile vassalage to the popular branch of her Parliament, and she was aroused to this righteous act of retaliation by abuses which were of small consequence compared to those from which we have tamely suffered. It is possible, under the Constitution, to strip the Senate of its legislative power, permitting it to retain its feature of unequal representation, and reserving for it a chamber in which those who wish for the honor can keep up the pretense of governmental power and prestige.

Fourth, the specific enumeration and limitation of the powers and functions of the Federal Judiciary, including the Supreme Court of the United States and all other courts authorized by Congress. This is the paramount subject for constitutional amendment or revision. The founders of our Government did not contemplate any such grant of power as now is wielded by the courts. There is nothing in the document itself which warrants the prerogatives which have been assumed by the courts, and the records of the speeches and the proceedings in the constitutional convention when the judiciary was under consideration contain no hint that they were to be granted the power to annul a law passed by Congress and signed by the President of the United States. Years passed before the Supreme Court dared attempt such a step, and when it did Jefferson scornfully ignored its mandate. Presidents as late as Lincoln have declined to acquiesce in the interference of the Federal Courts, but slowly and insidiously this branch of the Government has reached out and grasped power, until today it is supreme in fact as well as in name.

The Supreme Court is the creature of the Presidents and is subject to the direction of Congress, yet it has arrogated to itself the power of overriding the will of the entire people as recorded by its Congress and affirmed by its chief executive. If they are doing this without warrant of the Constitution, the day will come when, in the inevitable conflict between the court and the Congress or the President, or both combined, there will be precipitated a question which will rend the country with civil war. If they do this under the implied authority of the Constitution, that document should be amended so as to preclude their future interference with laws passed by Congress and signed by the President.

As we exist today we are not a republic or a democracy, neither have we a representative form of government. We are a “judiciary”—if one may coin such a word. Ours is the only country on earth where an elective or appointed judge presumes to wield the most autocratic power of the absolute monarch, viz., the veto of a law passed and demanded by the people. We have become so accustomed to this that we do not properly realize what it means. We teach ourselves to acknowledge the “sacredness of the judiciary” and to bow in humble contrition to any mandate thundered from the Bench. We assent to the insane doctrine that there is not enough of wisdom in a House of Representatives elected by 17,000,000 voters, combined with the check of an ultra-conservative Senate chosen by forty-five state legislatures, and indorsed by the judgment and responsibility of a President, to incorporate for our government a law until such law has been affirmed by the majority of a Supreme Court.