The two messengers first mentioned correspond with the two Senators, and therefore represent the state in its Federal capacity. The other messengers correspond with the Representatives of the state in the Lower House, and as the Lower House is national, so those messengers are national.
If the people fail to elect a President, and the election is thrown into the House of Representatives, this House, which in its organization as a legislative body is national, at once becomes Federal, because each state has one vote, and the voice of Ohio or Pennsylvania is not more potent than that of Rhode Island or Delaware.
It is only when our Government comes to put its laws into operation that it is purely national.
It is not strictly correct, politically or legally, to say that the United States is a nation, for a nation does not properly exist when the Government is one of limited power. That our Government is one of limited power, absolute only within the sphere of action granted to it by the states, cannot be denied. While secession has been forever decided as not being among the reserved rights of the states, there are very many other reserved rights which still belong to the states, and which always should be retained.
As the Washington Post remarked some time since: “The United States has not a single voter, and does not hold elections for any office. All elections are state elections.”
Already there has been too much concentration of power in the central Government. To take away from the states their power of selecting Senators would be nothing short of revolution, and would lead to such a consolidation of power as would entirely change the form and spirit of our Government.
If the principles of Populism grow strong enough to carry the large states they will probably be found strong enough to carry the small states. If they be found strong enough to control the state elections, they will control national offices, because, as the Washington Post very aptly points out, the Federal Government holds no elections and has no voters: it is the state that holds the election and furnishes the voters; it is the state that prescribes the limits of the franchise, and says how, when, where and by whom these elections shall be held; and even the Federal Judiciary has not yet ventured to infringe in the slightest degree upon that reserved right of the separate states.
Speaking of the equal representation of the states in the Senate, Mr. Adams says, “This vicious compromise was made in the Constitutional Convention as the price for the perpetuation of slavery.”
This compromise he characterizes further as “cowardly and unfair.” And he adds: “Now that the logic of events has made this a nation, despite the restrictive clauses of the Constitution, the dual participation of the unrepresentative Senate is so grotesque that its continuance is fraught with a danger which at any time is likely to precipitate civil war.”