and engender friction was inevitable, and envy and suspicion, ambition and treason, threatened more than once to destroy the life of the nascent nation. The experience of the Confederacy was a valuable training for the greater work to be done when the Constitution was to be framed, and it was the lesson taught by the Confederation that led to the perfection of the Constitution. If the nation was to live, power must be recognized as residing in the people, not the states. Hence the wording of the preamble, "We the People." An American writer on the Constitution explains the peculiar reverence in which it is held by saying: "All vigorous and harmonious national life demands some object of common reverence and devotion. In monarchical countries this object is the Crown, or the person on whose head it rests. In our republic, no living president, accepted or rejected as he is by a varying majority and at frequent intervals, can ever become the object of general and concentrated respect and affection. It is the great Charter bequeathed to us by our Fathers, and that alone, which can give to our whole country its central object of obedience and reverence, an object which shall rise above all the changing purposes and alliances of the passing hour. It stands supreme, above us all, ruling our rulers and receiving their oath-bound allegiance. . . . To this only Sovereign of our jurisdiction and Lord Protector of our rights and liberties, our allegiance and our devotion are worthily consecrated." In other words, the people reverence their own creation, and in doing it homage worship themselves, which is characteristic of a democracy, for in a democracy men rather than institutions are consecrated. While the framers of the Constitution recognized the people as the source of power, they were always fearful that the representatives of the people would prove false to their trust; hence the numerous precautions taken to curb delegated authority, which Lecky ascribes to the influence of Rousseau.2 To the writers of the time this fear was never absent. "It is a misfortune incident to republican government," Hamilton writes in The Federalist, "though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it, may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust. In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the Government." You may find in the pages of The Federalist a dozen similar expressions and a constant reliance on the "salutary check." In the constitutional convention that dread of the betrayal of a great trust was ever present; there was no security felt that the House would not yield to bribery, or 1 Kasson: The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States of America, p. 5. • Lecky: A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. vi, p. 267. • The Federalist, p. 469. the Senate to corruption, or the President to ambition; and the delegates did not disguise their solicitude, and did all that ingenuity could suggest to guard against treason to the people. Randolph, in support of his motion to reserve to the House the sole power to originate money bills, declared that "the Senate will be more likely to be corrupt than the House of Representatives, and should therefore have less to do with money matters."1 Madison, arguing in support of the resolution to give the Senate power to conclude a treaty of peace without the concurrence of the President, said the President "would necessarily derive so much power and importance from a state of war that he might be tempted to impede a treaty of peace.” Hamilton objected to the proposal to declare the President ineligible for reëlection, because "in this the President was a monster having great powers, in appointments to office, and continually tempted by this constitutional disqualification to abuse them in order to subvert the government. . . . If appointed by the legislature, he would be tempted to make use of corrupt influence to be continued in office." Gouverneur Morris, curiously enough, feared that the House of Representatives would subvert free government. It was the thing, not the name, to which he was opposed, and one of his prin 1 Documentary History of the Constitution, vol. 1, p. 521. 2 Op. cit., p. 700. 3 Op. cit., p. 688. cipal objections to the proposed Constitution, he told the convention, was that it threatened the country with an aristocracy. "The aristocracy will grow out of the House of Representatives," he warned. "Give the votes to people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich who will be able to buy them." Mason "ironically proposed to strike out the whole section [to make members of Congress ineligible to hold other offices], as a more effectual expedient for encouraging that exotic corruption which might not otherwise thrive so well in the American soil - for completing that aristocracy which was probably in the contemplation of some among us, and for inviting into the legislative service, those generous and benevolent characters who will do justice to each other's merit, by carving out offices and rewards for it. In the present state of American morals and manners, few friends will be lost to the plan, by the opportunity of giving premiums to a mercenary and depraved ambition." 2 That distrust was natural. It was an experiment they were about to make, and they could rely only on themselves for guidance. They had been taught to resist the corruption of a king and to maintain their own liberties against the encroachments of ministers and parliament; were they strong enough to withstand their own weakness now that each man owed no allegiance except to himself? As Washington said, when he took the 2 Op. cit., p. 524. 1 Op. cit., oath of office for the first time: "I walk on untrodden ground." It was an unknown country into which they committed themselves, and they might well tremble for the consequences. It has frequently been said that the men who made the Constitution were at heart aristocrats whose love for democracy was more academic than real. This is not true. There were, in fact, men in that convention with aristocratic leanings and who had no excessive love for the people; but the people were an unknown force, who had been given such a limited opportunity to exercise their power that it was uncertain whether they would use it with moderation or in their freedom from control rush to excess. The fear of an unrestrained democracy was a real fear, and with the experience of the Continental Congress, which had shown the danger of popular government without the curb of a central authority, it was not surprising that many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention should seriously question the wisdom of creating a political system that placed the government at the whim of the people, and that they voiced their apprehension. Thus Sherman, in the debate on the method of the election of members of the House of Representatives, 'opposed the election by the people, insisting that it ought to be by the state legislatures. The people, he said, should have as little to say as may be about the Government";1 Gerry declared that "the evils 66 1 Documentary History of the Constitution, vol. 111, p. 26. |