The House of Representatives and How it is Constituted

Having pursued the more general inquiries of the last four papers, I now examine the several parts of the government in detail, beginning with the House of Representatives. The first thing to consider is the qualifications of the electors and the elected. For those who vote, the Constitution sets the same standard already used to choose the most numerous branch of each State legislature. The right of suffrage is rightly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government, so the convention was bound to define and establish it in the Constitution itself.

The convention had to put the standard somewhere, and each alternative was improper for a reason. To leave the suffrage open to occasional regulation by Congress would have been improper, for the reason just given; to hand it to the legislative discretion of the States would have been improper for the same reason, and for the added reason that it would make this branch of the federal government, which ought to depend on the people alone, too dependent on the State governments. To force the differing qualifications of the several States into one uniform rule would probably have dissatisfied some States as much as it would have troubled the convention. The chosen provision therefore appears the best within reach: it satisfies every State, because it conforms to the standard the State has set or may set for itself; and it is safe for the United States, because, being fixed by the State constitutions, it cannot be altered by the State governments, and we need not fear that the people of a State would amend their own constitution so as to abridge the rights the federal Constitution secures to them.

The qualifications of the elected, being less carefully defined by the State constitutions and more open to a uniform rule, the convention has properly regulated. A representative of the United States must be at least twenty-five years old; must have been a citizen for seven years; must, at the time of election, live in the State he is to represent; and, while serving, must hold no other office under the United States. Under these reasonable limits, this part of the federal government is open to merit of every kind, whether native-born or naturalized, young or old, rich or poor, and without regard to any particular religious faith.

The term for which representatives are elected falls under a second view of this branch. To decide whether two-year terms are proper, two questions must be answered: first, whether biennial elections will be safe; second, whether they are necessary or useful.

First, as to safety. Liberty requires that the government in general share a common interest with the people, and it is especially essential that this branch have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, them. Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy that can effectually secure that dependence and sympathy. But just how frequent they must be cannot be fixed by precise calculation; it depends on a variety of circumstances. Let us therefore consult experience, the guide that ought always to be followed wherever it can be found.

Representation as a substitute for an assembly of the citizens in person was barely known to ancient government, so only modern times offer instructive examples. To avoid a search too vague and diffuse, I confine myself to the few best-known cases that bear the closest analogy to ours. The first is the House of Commons in Great Britain. Its history before Magna Charta is too obscure to instruct us; political antiquaries have even questioned whether the body then existed. The earliest later records show that parliaments were to SIT every year, not that they were to be ELECTED every year, and even those annual sittings were left so much to the monarch’s discretion that royal ambition often contrived long and dangerous intermissions under various pretexts.

The remedy came by degrees. A statute under Charles II provided that the intermissions should not stretch beyond three years. When the revolution placed William III on the throne, the matter was taken up more seriously, and it was declared among the people’s fundamental rights that parliaments ought to be held FREQUENTLY. A later statute of the same reign gave that vague word a precise meaning, enacting that a new parliament be called within three years of the former one’s end. The last change, from three years to seven, was made early in the present century amid alarm over the Hanoverian succession. These facts show that the greatest frequency of elections ever deemed necessary in that kingdom to bind representatives to their constituents was a return every three years. And if liberty survived even under seven-year elections and all the other vicious features of the parliamentary constitution, then a reduction from seven years to three, with the other necessary reforms, would so extend the people’s influence over their representatives that we cannot doubt biennial elections, under the federal system, cannot possibly be dangerous to the dependence the House must have on its constituents.

Ireland points the same way. Until recently its elections were regulated entirely by the discretion of the crown and were rarely repeated, except on the accession of a new prince or some other chance event. The parliament that began with George II ran through his whole reign, about thirty-five years; the representatives’ only dependence on the people lay in the right to fill occasional vacancies and in the chance of some event that might force a general election. Worse, the Irish parliament’s ability to defend its constituents’ rights, so far as it was even disposed to, was severely shackled by the crown’s control over what it could deliberate. Lately, if I am not mistaken, these shackles have been broken and eight-year parliaments established. What this partial reform will produce must be left to further experience, so Ireland throws little light on the question. As far as any conclusion can be drawn, it is this: if the Irish kept any liberty at all under such disadvantages, biennial elections would secure to them every degree of liberty that depends on a due connection between representatives and people.

Let us bring the inquiry nearer home. The example of these States as British colonies deserves particular attention, though it is so well known that little need be said. In every one of them the principle of representation was established in at least one branch of the legislature, but the periods of election differed, varying from one to seven years. Is there any reason to infer, from the spirit and conduct of the people’s representatives before the Revolution, that biennial elections would have endangered the public liberties? The spirit that everywhere appeared at the outset of the struggle, and that overcame the obstacles to independence, is the best proof that enough liberty had been enjoyed everywhere to inspire both a sense of its worth and a zeal to enlarge it.

This holds true alike of the colonies whose elections were least frequent and of those whose elections were most frequent. Virginia stood first in resisting the parliamentary usurpations of Great Britain, and first also in adopting, by public act, the resolution of independence; yet in Virginia, if I am not misinformed, elections under the former government were septennial. I bring this example forward not as proof of any special merit, for the priority was probably accidental, and still less as proof of any advantage in seven-year elections, which are inadmissible when compared with greater frequency, but merely as a very substantial proof that the liberties of the people can be in no danger from biennial elections.

Three further circumstances strengthen the conclusion drawn from these examples. First, the federal legislature will hold only a part of the supreme legislative authority that resides wholly in the British Parliament and was exercised, with few exceptions, by the colonial assemblies and the Irish legislature. It is a well-founded maxim that, all else being equal, the greater the power, the shorter its duration ought to be; and conversely, the smaller the power, the more safely its duration may be extended.

Second, it has been shown elsewhere that the federal legislature will be restrained not only by its dependence on the people, as other legislative bodies are, but also by being watched and controlled by the several State legislatures, a check other legislative bodies lack. Third, there is no comparison between the means the more permanent branches of the federal government would have for seducing the House of Representatives from its duty, should they wish to, and the means of influence over the popular branch held by the other branches of government cited above. Having less power to abuse, the federal representatives can be less tempted on the one side, and will be doubly watched on the other.

Someone will remind me of the familiar saying that “where annual elections end, tyranny begins.” Proverbs that take hold usually rest on some reason, but once established they are often stretched to cases their reasoning does not cover; this is one of them. What is the reason behind this saying? No one will claim that nature ties the length of time a person can resist the temptations of power to the sun or the seasons. Liberty is not fixed to a single point on the calendar; it lies within a range wide enough to accommodate the differing situations of civil society. The election of officials could be daily, weekly, monthly, or annual, as has actually been tried in some places; and if circumstances justify departing from the rule on one side, they may justify it on the other as well.

Our own practice for electing the most numerous branches of the state legislatures shows no more agreement here than it does for other offices. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the term is half a year; in the other states, except South Carolina, it is one year; in South Carolina it is two years, the same term proposed for the federal government. That is a fourfold difference between the longest and the shortest term, yet it would be hard to show that Connecticut or Rhode Island is better governed, or freer, than South Carolina, or that any of these states stands apart from the others because of the length of its terms.

Searching for the ground of this doctrine, I can find only one, and it does not apply to us. America understands a distinction that other countries have barely grasped: the difference between a Constitution set by the people and beyond the government’s power to change, and a mere law set by the government and changeable by it. Elsewhere, wherever the supreme power to legislate has resided, the power to alter the form of the government has been assumed to reside there too. Even in Great Britain, where political and civil liberty have been most discussed, Parliament’s authority is held to be supreme and uncontrollable over the Constitution as much as over ordinary legislation.

Parliament has in fact used legislative acts to change some of the most basic features of the government. On several occasions it has altered the period of elections; on the last such occasion it replaced triennial elections with septennial ones, and by the same act extended its own members in their seats four years beyond the term for which the people had chosen them. Watching such dangerous practices has produced a very natural alarm among the friends of free government, who treat frequency of elections as its cornerstone, and has driven them to seek some safeguard for liberty against this danger.

Where no Constitution stands above the government, no constitutional safeguard like ours could be attempted; some other security had to be found. What better one did the situation allow than choosing some simple, familiar span of time as a standard for measuring the danger of changes, fixing the national sentiment, and uniting patriotic effort? The most simple and familiar span was a year. So a worthy zeal to build a barrier against the gradual changes wrought by an unlimited government taught the doctrine that the approach toward tyranny could be measured by the distance from the fixed point of annual elections.

But what necessity can there be of applying this expedient to a government limited, as the federal government will be, by the authority of a Constitution standing above it? Who will claim that the liberties of Americans will be less secure under biennial elections fixed unalterably by such a Constitution than the liberties of any other nation would be where elections are annual, or even more frequent, but always open to change by the government’s ordinary power?

The second question is whether biennial elections are necessary or useful. Several very obvious considerations will show that they are. No one can be a competent legislator without adding to honest intentions and sound judgment a certain knowledge of the subjects he must legislate on. Part of that knowledge can be gathered by anyone, in private or public life; another part can be gained thoroughly only through actual experience in the office that calls for it. The length of service should therefore bear some proportion to the amount of practical knowledge the work requires.

In most states the term for the more numerous branch is, as we have seen, one year. The question can then be put simply: does a two-year term bear no greater proportion to the knowledge needed for federal legislation than a one-year term bears to the knowledge needed for state legislation? Merely stating the question this way suggests the answer.

In a single state, the knowledge required concerns laws that are uniform throughout the state and familiar to all its citizens, and general affairs that are limited in range, not greatly varied, and the common subject of conversation among every class of people. The wide stage of the United States is a very different scene. The laws are far from uniform; they differ in every state. The public affairs of the Union are spread across a vast region and made highly varied by the local matters tied to them, and they can be learned correctly only in the central councils, where the representatives of every part of the empire bring knowledge of them.

Yet a member from each state ought to possess some knowledge of the affairs, and even the laws, of all the states. How can foreign trade be properly regulated by uniform laws without some acquaintance with the commerce, ports, customs, and regulations of the different states? How can trade among the states be regulated without knowing their relative situations? How can taxes be wisely imposed and effectively collected unless they are fitted to the differing laws and local circumstances of each state? How can uniform militia regulations be provided without knowing the many internal conditions that distinguish the states from one another? These are the chief objects of federal legislation, and they show forcefully how much information a representative must acquire; the remaining domestic matters will require a corresponding degree of knowledge.

It is true that these difficulties will diminish over time. The hardest task will be launching the government and forming the first body of federal law. Improvements on those first drafts will grow easier and fewer each year; the government’s past actions will become a ready and accurate source of information for new members; the affairs of the Union will increasingly become objects of curiosity and conversation among citizens at large; and greater dealings among people of different states will spread mutual knowledge of their affairs, which in turn will help bring their manners and laws into closer agreement. Even with all these reductions, federal legislation will remain so much more novel and difficult than the legislative business of a single state as to justify the longer term assigned to those who carry it out.

One branch of knowledge belonging to a federal representative has not yet been mentioned: foreign affairs. In regulating our own commerce, he ought to know not only the treaties between the United States and other nations but also the commercial policies and laws of those nations. He should not be wholly ignorant of the law of nations, which, so far as it is a proper object of domestic legislation, is committed to the federal government. And although the House of Representatives does not directly take part in foreign negotiations, the branches of public affairs are so connected that these matters will often deserve attention in the ordinary course of legislation and will sometimes require particular legislative sanction and cooperation. Some of this knowledge can be gained in a man’s study, but some can come only from public sources of information, and all of it is best acquired through practical attention during actual service in the legislature.

Other considerations, perhaps less important, still deserve notice. The distance many representatives must travel, and the arrangements that distance requires, might weigh much more heavily with suitable men if the service were limited to a single year than if extended to two. No argument against this can be drawn from the delegates to the present Congress; they are indeed elected annually, but the legislative assemblies treat their re-election almost as a matter of course, whereas election of representatives by the people would not follow the same pattern.

A few members, as happens in every such assembly, will have superior talents; through frequent re-election they will become members of long standing, thoroughly masters of public business, and perhaps not unwilling to use those advantages. The larger the proportion of new members, and the less informed the bulk of the members, the more readily they will fall into the snares laid for them. The same observation applies to the relation between the House of Representatives and the Senate.

There is also an inconvenience mixed with the advantages of frequent elections, even in single states that are large and hold only one legislative session a year: false elections cannot be investigated and overturned in time for the decision to take effect. If a return is obtained, no matter by what unlawful means, the irregular member takes his seat as a matter of course and is sure to hold it long enough to serve his purposes. This gives a very harmful encouragement to unlawful means of obtaining irregular returns. Were federal elections annual, the practice might become a serious abuse, especially in the more distant states.

Each house must necessarily judge the elections, qualifications, and returns of its own members. Whatever improvements experience may suggest for simplifying and speeding up disputed cases, so large a part of a year would still pass before an illegitimate member could be removed from his seat that the prospect of removal would do little to deter unfair and unlawful means of gaining one. Taken together, all these considerations justify affirming that biennial elections will be as useful to the public business as we have seen they will be safe for the liberty of the people.

My next subject regarding the House of Representatives is how its members are apportioned among the several States, which is to be fixed by the same rule that governs direct taxes. No one disputes that the number of people in each State should set the proportion of those who represent it. Using the same rule for taxes will probably be little contested either, though in that case the rule rests on a different principle. For representation, the rule refers to the personal rights of the people, with which it has a natural and universal connection. For taxation, it refers to the proportion of wealth, which numbers never measure precisely and ordinarily measure quite poorly. Yet despite this imperfection, the rule is the least objectionable of the workable ones, and it had so recently won America’s general approval that the convention readily preferred it.

All this may be granted, someone will say; but does accepting numbers as the measure of representation, or slaves combined with free citizens as a ratio of taxation, mean that slaves ought to be counted in the numerical rule of representation? Slaves are considered as property, not as persons. They should therefore be included in estimates of taxation, which are founded on property, and excluded from representation, which is regulated by a census of persons. That is the objection, stated at its full force. I will be just as candid in setting out the reasoning that may be offered on the other side.

“We accept the doctrine,” one of our Southern brethren might say, “that representation relates more directly to persons and taxation more directly to property, and we apply that distinction to our slaves. But we deny that slaves are regarded merely as property and in no respect as persons. The truth is that they share both qualities: our laws treat them in some respects as persons and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor for a master rather than himself; in being sold by one master to another; and in being liable at all times to have his liberty restrained and his body punished at another’s capricious will, the slave may seem degraded from human rank and grouped with the irrational animals that the law classes as property. Yet in being protected in his life and limbs against the violence of all others, even his own master, and in being himself punishable for violence against others, the slave is no less plainly regarded by the law as a member of society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not a mere article of property.

“The federal Constitution therefore decides rightly when it views our slaves in the mixed character of persons and of property, for that is in fact their true character, bestowed by the very laws under which they live. And these laws are the proper standard; for it is only on the pretext that the laws have transformed these persons into subjects of property that their place in the count of numbers is disputed. It is admitted that if the laws restored the rights taken from them, they could no longer be denied an equal share of representation with other inhabitants.

“Consider the question another way. All sides agree that numbers are the best scale of wealth and taxation, just as they are the only proper scale of representation. Would the convention have been impartial or consistent if it had dropped slaves from the list of inhabitants when shares of representation were calculated, yet entered them on the list when contributions were assessed? Could the Southern States be expected to join a system that counts their slaves in some degree as men when burdens are imposed, but refuses to count them the same way when advantages are conferred? One might even be surprised that those who reproach the Southern States with the barbarous policy of treating a part of their human brethren as property should themselves insist that the common government regard this unfortunate race more completely in the unnatural light of property than the very laws they complain of.

“It may be answered that slaves are not counted in the estimate of representatives in any State that holds them; they neither vote themselves nor add to their masters’ votes. On what principle, then, should they be taken into the federal estimate of representation? By rejecting them altogether, the Constitution would in this respect follow the very laws appealed to as the proper guide.

“A single observation answers this objection. It is a fundamental principle of the proposed Constitution that, while the total number of representatives assigned to each State is fixed by a federal rule based on the total number of inhabitants, the right of choosing that number within each State is exercised by whatever part of the inhabitants the State itself designates. The qualifications for the right of suffrage are perhaps not the same in any two States, and in some the difference is very material. In every State a certain portion of inhabitants are denied this right by the State’s own constitution, yet are still included in the census by which the federal Constitution apportions representatives.

“On this view the Southern States might turn the complaint around, insisting that the convention’s own principle required ignoring each State’s policy toward its own inhabitants, and that slaves, as inhabitants, should therefore have been counted at their full number, just like other inhabitants whom the policy of other States denies the full rights of citizens. But those who would gain by such a strict adherence waive it; all they ask is equal moderation on the other side. Let the case of the slaves be treated, as it truly is, a peculiar one. Let the Constitution’s compromise be mutually adopted, which regards them as inhabitants but, debased by servitude below the level of free inhabitants, regards the slave as divested of two fifths of the man.

“After all, may not still another ground make this article easier to defend? We have so far assumed that representation relates only to persons and not at all to property. But is that assumption just? Government is instituted no less to protect the property than the persons of individuals, so each may be considered as represented by those charged with governing. On this principle, in several States, and particularly in New York, one branch of government is meant especially to guard property and is elected by that part of society most interested in it. The federal Constitution does not follow that policy: the rights of property are placed in the same hands as personal rights. Some attention ought therefore to be paid to property in choosing those hands.

“For another reason, the votes allowed in the federal legislature to each State’s people ought to bear some proportion to the comparative wealth of the States. States do not, like individuals, exert influence over one another through superior fortune. When the law gives a wealthy citizen only a single vote, the respect his fortune commands often guides the votes of others toward his choices, and through that unseen channel the rights of property pass into the public representation. A State has no such influence over other States; it is unlikely that the richest State in the Confederacy will ever sway the choice of a single representative in another. Nor will the representatives of larger and richer States hold any advantage in the federal legislature beyond what their greater number gives. So far as their greater wealth and weight justly entitle them to any advantage, it ought to be secured by a larger share of representation.

“In this respect the new Constitution differs materially from the present Confederation, as well as from that of the United Netherlands and similar confederacies. In those, the force of federal resolutions depends on the later, voluntary resolutions of the member states; so the states, though holding equal votes in the public councils, have unequal influence corresponding to the unequal importance of those later resolutions. Under the proposed Constitution, federal acts take effect without the necessary intervention of the individual States. They depend only on a majority of votes in the federal legislature, so each vote, whether from a larger or smaller, richer or poorer State, carries equal weight and effect, just as the votes of representatives from unequal counties within a State legislature each count exactly the same; and if any difference appears, it comes from the personal character of the individual representative rather than from the size of his district.”

Such is the reasoning an advocate for the Southern interests might use on this subject; and although it seems a little strained in some points, on the whole I confess it fully reconciles me to the scale of representation the convention has established.

In one respect, using a common measure for both representation and taxation will have a very wholesome effect. Since the accuracy of the census the Congress obtains will depend in large part on the disposition, if not the cooperation, of the States, it matters greatly that the States feel as little bias as possible to swell or reduce their numbers. Were representation alone governed by this rule, they would have an interest in exaggerating their inhabitants; were taxation alone, the opposite temptation would prevail. By applying the rule to both, the States are given opposite interests that check and balance each other and produce the needed impartiality.

The size of the House of Representatives is another important angle from which to judge this branch of the federal legislature. Few articles in the whole Constitution have drawn more attention, because the people attacking this one bring both weight of reputation and apparent force of argument. The charges against it are four. First, that so small a number of representatives will be an unsafe guardian of the public interest. Second, that they cannot have proper knowledge of the local circumstances of their many constituents. Third, that they will be drawn from the class of citizens least in sympathy with the mass of the people, and most likely to seek a permanent rise of the few on the ruin of the many. Fourth, that small as the number is at the start, it will grow more and more out of proportion as the population increases while obstacles prevent a matching increase of representatives.

On this subject, no political problem yields less to a precise answer than the question of the most convenient size for a representative legislature; nor is there any point on which the several States differ more, whether we compare their assemblies directly or weigh each one against the number of its own constituents. Set aside the gap between the smallest and largest States, like Delaware, whose largest branch has twenty-one representatives, and Massachusetts, where it runs between three and four hundred. Even among States of nearly equal population the difference is large. Pennsylvania has no more than one fifth as many representatives as Massachusetts. New York, with a population to South Carolina’s as six to five, has little more than one third as many representatives. The same disparity holds between Georgia and Delaware or Rhode Island.

The proportions vary just as widely. In Pennsylvania the representatives stand at no more than one for every four or five thousand constituents. In Rhode Island they stand at one for every thousand at least. And under the constitution of Georgia the proportion may run to one for every ten electors, far exceeding the proportion in any other State.

A further point is that the ratio of representatives to people should not be the same where the people are very numerous as where they are very few. If Virginia’s representatives were set by Rhode Island’s standard, they would now number between four and five hundred, and within twenty or thirty years a thousand. On the other hand, Pennsylvania’s ratio applied to Delaware would shrink its assembly to seven or eight members. Nothing is more misleading than to build our political reasoning on arithmetic. Sixty or seventy men may be more properly trusted with a given amount of power than six or seven; but it does not follow that six or seven hundred would be a proportionally better guardian, and at six or seven thousand the whole reasoning would have to be reversed.

The truth is that in every case some minimum number is needed to secure the benefits of free debate and discussion, and to guard against too easy a combination for improper ends; and at the same time the number must be held within some upper limit, to avoid the confusion and excess of a multitude. In all very numerous assemblies, whatever their makeup, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

It is worth recalling here the points made about biennial elections. For the same reason that the limited powers of Congress and the check of the State legislatures justify less frequent elections than public safety might otherwise demand, the members of Congress need be fewer than if they held the whole power of legislation under no restraints beyond the ordinary ones on other legislative bodies.

With these general ideas in mind, weigh the objections raised against the proposed number of members. The first is that so small a number cannot safely be trusted with so much power.

At the start of the government this branch will consist of sixty-five members. Within three years a census is to be taken, after which the number may rise to one for every thirty thousand inhabitants; and every ten years the census is renewed, with further increases allowed under that same rule. It is no extravagant guess that the first census, at one for every thirty thousand, will raise the number of representatives to at least one hundred. Counting the negroes at three fifths, it can hardly be doubted that the population of the United States will by then, if it does not already, amount to three millions. At the end of twenty-five years, by the computed rate of increase, the number will reach two hundred, and at fifty years, four hundred. That number, I assume, will put an end to all fears arising from the smallness of the body. I take for granted here what I will show in answering the fourth objection: that the number of representatives will be increased from time to time as the Constitution provides. On the contrary assumption, I would admit that the objection has very great weight.

The real question, then, is whether the smallness of the number, as a temporary arrangement, is dangerous to public liberty. Whether sixty-five members for a few years, and a hundred or two hundred for a few more, are a safe guardian of a limited and well-guarded power to legislate for the United States. I could not answer no to this without first erasing every impression I have formed about the present character of the American people, the spirit that moves the State legislatures, and the principles woven into the political character of every class of citizens. I cannot conceive that the people of America, in their present temper or under any circumstances likely to arise soon, will choose, and every second year choose again, sixty-five or a hundred men inclined to form and pursue a scheme of tyranny or treachery. I cannot conceive that the State legislatures, which feel so many motives to watch the federal legislature and possess so many means of counteracting it, would fail to detect or defeat a conspiracy against the liberties of their shared constituents. And I cannot conceive that there are now, or soon can be, in the United States any sixty-five or a hundred men able to win the choice of the people at large who would desire or dare, within the short span of two years, to betray the solemn trust placed in them. What changed circumstances, time, and a fuller population may bring would take a prophet to declare, which is no part of my claims. But judging from the circumstances before us, and their probable state within a moderate period, I must declare that the liberties of America cannot be unsafe in the number of hands the federal Constitution proposes.

From what quarter could the danger come? Are we afraid of foreign gold? If foreign gold could so easily corrupt our federal rulers and let them ensnare and betray their constituents, how is it that we are at this moment a free and independent nation? The Congress that carried us through the Revolution was a smaller body than its successors will be. Its members were not chosen by, nor answerable to, their fellow citizens at large; though appointed yearly and recallable at will, they were generally kept on for three years, and before the Articles were ratified, for longer still. They always met in secret; they alone managed our dealings with foreign nations; through the whole war they held the fate of their country more in their hands than we may ever hope our future representatives will. Given the size of the prize and the eagerness of the party that lost it, we may well suppose that means other than force would not have been scrupled. Yet we know by happy experience that the public trust was not betrayed, nor has the purity of our public councils in this matter ever suffered, even from the whispers of slander.

Is the danger feared from the other branches of the federal government? But where would the President, or the Senate, or both, find the means? Their official salaries, we may presume, will not, and without first corrupting the House of Representatives cannot, amount to more than enough for very different purposes; and their private fortunes, since they must all be American citizens, cannot possibly be sources of danger. The only means they can have, then, lies in handing out appointments. Is this where suspicion lodges its charge? Sometimes we are told that this fund of corruption is to be spent by the President in breaking down the virtue of the Senate. Now it is the loyalty of the other House that is to be the victim. The sheer improbability of such a mercenary and treacherous combination among members of the government, who rest on foundations as different as republican principles will allow, and who are at the same time accountable to the society over which they are placed, ought by itself to quiet this fear.

But fortunately the Constitution provides a further safeguard. The members of Congress are made ineligible for any civil office created, or whose salary is increased, during their term. No offices, then, can be dealt out to sitting members except those that fall vacant by ordinary chance; and to suppose these would suffice to buy the guardians of the people, chosen by the people themselves, is to abandon every rule by which events ought to be reckoned, and to put in its place a sweeping and boundless suspicion against which all reasoning is useless. The sincere friends of liberty who give themselves up to the excesses of this passion do not see the harm they do their own cause. Just as there is a degree of depravity in mankind that calls for a certain caution and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature that justify a certain measure of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. If the portraits drawn by the political suspicion of some among us were true likenesses of human character, the conclusion would be that there is not virtue enough among men for self-government, and that nothing short of the chains of despotism can keep them from destroying and devouring one another.

The second charge against the House of Representatives is that it will be too small to know its constituents’ interests well enough. This objection compares the proposed number of representatives with the vast extent of the United States, the size of its population, and the diversity of its interests; but it ignores the circumstances that set Congress apart from other legislatures. The best answer is a brief explanation of those distinguishing features.

It is a sound and important principle that a representative ought to know the interests and circumstances of his constituents. But the principle reaches only as far as the circumstances and interests that the representative’s authority and care actually touch. Being ignorant of countless small, particular matters that fall outside the scope of legislation is consistent with every quality a legislator needs. To judge how much knowledge a given authority requires, we must look at the objects that fall within that authority.

What are the objects of federal legislation? The ones that matter most, and that seem to call most for local knowledge, are commerce, taxation, and the militia. A proper regulation of commerce does require much information; but so far as that information concerns the laws and local situation of each individual State, a very few representatives would be sufficient to carry it to the federal councils.

Taxation will consist largely of duties bound up with the regulation of commerce, so the same remark applies to it. As far as taxation involves internal collections, a broader knowledge of the State’s circumstances may be needed. But will not even this be held in sufficient degree by a few intelligent men, elected from across the State? Divide the largest State into ten or twelve districts, and no peculiar local interest will exist in any of them that the district’s representative does not know. Beyond this, the State’s own laws, framed by representatives from every part of it, will themselves be an almost sufficient guide. Every State already makes, and must continue to make, regulations on this subject, so that the federal legislature will often need only to review the various State laws and combine them into one general act. A skilled individual, alone in his study with all the local codes before him, could compile a tax law on some subjects for the whole union without any oral information; and when internal taxes are necessary, especially where uniformity across the States is wanted, the simpler objects will be preferred.

To see how much the State codes will ease this branch of federal legislation, suppose for a moment that this or any other State were split into several parts, each exercising its own power of local legislation. Plainly, the local information and preparatory work recorded in their volumes of proceedings would greatly shorten the general legislature’s labors and make a much smaller number of members sufficient. The federal councils gain a further advantage: the representatives of each State will bring not only a considerable knowledge of its laws and a local knowledge of their districts, but will probably have served, and may even still be serving, in the State legislature, where all the local information and interests of the State are gathered and from which a very few hands can easily convey them into the legislature of the United States.

What was said about taxation applies with even greater force to the militia. However the rules of discipline may differ between States, they are the same throughout each particular State and rest on circumstances that can vary only slightly within it. Indeed, on the regulation of the militia there is scarcely any matter for which local knowledge can be called necessary. Whether the country is mountainous or level, and so better suited to infantry or cavalry, is almost the only such consideration; the art of war teaches general principles of organization, movement, and discipline that apply everywhere.

The careful reader will see that this reasoning, used here to prove that a moderate number of representatives is enough, does not contradict what was argued elsewhere about the broad information representatives ought to have and the time needed to acquire it. That difficulty arises not from differences of law and circumstance within a single State, but from differences among the several States. Taken by itself, a State’s laws are uniform and its interests little varied, so a few men can hold all the knowledge needed to represent it well. Were each State perfectly simple and uniform, knowing one part would mean knowing every part, and a single member from anywhere in it could represent the whole.

Comparing the States together, though, we find great dissimilarity in their laws and in many other matters tied to the objects of federal legislation, and the federal representatives ought to have some acquaintance with all of it. So while a few representatives from each State may bring a sufficient knowledge of their own State, every representative will still have much to learn about all the others. The passage of time, as noted before, will tend to make the comparative situation of the different States more alike. Its effect on the internal affairs of each State, taken singly, will be the opposite. Some States are now little more than communities of farmers, having made little progress in the branches of industry that give a nation’s affairs variety and complexity; but as their populations advance, such complexity will grow, and each State will require a fuller representation. The convention has accordingly provided that the growth of population may be matched by a proper increase in the representative branch.

The experience of Great Britain, which offers so many political lessons both cautionary and exemplary and has often been consulted in these papers, supports the conclusions just reached. The combined population of England and Scotland cannot be put at less than eight million, and these eight million are represented in the House of Commons by five hundred fifty-eight members. Of that number, one ninth are elected by three hundred sixty-four persons, and one half by five thousand seven hundred twenty-three persons. The half thus chosen, who do not even live among the people at large, can add nothing either to the people’s security against the government or to the knowledge of their circumstances in the legislature; on the contrary, it is notorious that they serve more often as agents of the executive magistrate than as guardians of popular rights.

Those members might fairly be treated as worse than a mere subtraction from the nation’s real representatives, but we will count them only as a subtraction, and will not extend it to many others who likewise do not live among their constituents, are barely connected with them, and know little of their affairs. Even with these concessions, only two hundred seventy-nine persons remain as the depository of the safety, interest, and happiness of eight million; that is, one representative to defend the rights and explain the situation of twenty-eight thousand six hundred seventy constituents, in an assembly exposed to the full force of executive influence and reaching every object of legislation within a nation whose affairs are highly diversified and complicated.

Yet it is quite certain not only that a valuable measure of freedom has survived under all these conditions, but that the defects in the British code can be blamed only in very small part on the legislature’s ignorance of the people’s circumstances. Giving this case its due weight and comparing it with the House of Representatives as explained above, it gives the fullest assurance that one representative for every thirty thousand inhabitants will make our House both a safe and a competent guardian of the interests entrusted to it.

The third charge against the House of Representatives is that its members will be drawn from a class of citizens with the least sympathy for ordinary people, and the most likely to sacrifice the many to enrich the few. Of all the objections raised against the Constitution, this is perhaps the strangest. On its face it attacks a supposed oligarchy; but the principle behind it strikes at the very root of republican government itself.

The aim of every constitution is, or ought to be, twofold: first, to secure rulers who have the wisdom to discern the common good and the virtue to pursue it; and second, to take the most effective precautions for keeping them virtuous while they hold the public trust. Election is the defining method of republican government for choosing rulers. This form of government relies on many and varied means to prevent them from degenerating, and the most effective is a limited term of office that maintains a proper responsibility to the people.

So I ask: what feature of the House of Representatives violates republican principles, or favors raising the few on the ruins of the many? On the contrary, every feature is strictly faithful to those principles and scrupulously impartial toward the rights and claims of every class of citizen.

Who will choose the federal representatives? Not the rich any more than the poor; not the learned any more than the ignorant; not the proud heirs of famous names any more than the humble children of obscurity and hard fortune. The electors will be the great body of the people of the United States, the very same people who in each State elect the corresponding branch of their own legislature.

And who may be chosen? Every citizen whose merit recommends him to the esteem and confidence of his country. No requirement of wealth, of birth, of religious faith, or of profession is allowed to restrict the people’s judgment or thwart their preference.

Consider the situation of the men on whom voters confer this trust, and you find every security that can be devised for their faithfulness to their constituents. First, since they will have been singled out by the preference of their fellow citizens, we may presume they will generally be marked also, to some degree, by the qualities that earned that preference, qualities that promise a sincere and careful regard for the obligations they take on.

Second, they enter public service under circumstances that cannot fail to produce at least a temporary attachment to their constituents. Every person feels some sensitivity to marks of honor, favor, esteem, and confidence, and that feeling, apart from any self-interest, is some pledge of grateful and generous conduct in return. Ingratitude is a common complaint against human nature, and instances of it are indeed too frequent and flagrant in both public and private life; but the universal and intense indignation it provokes is itself proof of how strong the opposite sentiment is.

Third, the ties binding a representative to his constituents are reinforced by more selfish motives. His pride and vanity attach him to a form of government that favors his standing and gives him a share in its honors and distinctions. Whatever schemes a few ambitious characters might harbor, most men who owe their advancement to influence with the people will have more to gain from keeping that favor than from overturning the government and the people’s authority along with it.

All these securities, however, would prove insufficient without the restraint of frequent elections. So, fourth, the House is built to keep its members in a habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Before the lessons of how they rose to power can be erased by the exercise of that power, they must look ahead to the moment when it ends, when their conduct will be reviewed, and when they will sink back to the level from which they were raised, to remain there forever unless faithful service has earned them a renewal of the trust.

I add a fifth restraint against oppressive measures: representatives can pass no law that does not fall fully on themselves and their friends as well as on the great mass of society. This has long been counted one of the strongest bonds human policy can create between rulers and ruled. It builds between them a shared interest and sympathy of feeling that few governments have shown, but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked what restrains the House from making laws that favor themselves and a particular class, I answer: the character of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit of the American people, a spirit that nourishes freedom and is in turn nourished by it. Should that spirit ever sink so low as to tolerate a law that binds the people but not the legislature, the people will be ready to tolerate anything except liberty.

Such will be the relation between the House and its constituents. Duty, gratitude, interest, and ambition itself are the cords binding them to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people. These may possibly all fail to control the caprice and wickedness of man; but are they not all that any government can admit and all that human prudence can devise? Are they not the genuine means by which republican government secures the people’s liberty and happiness, the very same means every State government in the Union relies on for those ends? What, then, are we to make of this objection, and of men who profess the most flaming zeal for republican government yet attack its fundamental principle, who claim to champion the people’s right and capacity to choose their own rulers yet insist the people will choose only those who will immediately and unfailingly betray the trust placed in them?

If someone read this objection without knowing how the Constitution actually provides for choosing representatives, he would assume nothing less than that some unreasonable property test was attached to the right to vote, or that eligibility was confined to particular families or fortunes, or at least that the method used in the State constitutions had been grossly departed from. We have already seen how mistaken such a supposition would be on the first two points, and it would be no less mistaken on the last. The only real difference is that each federal representative will be elected by five or six thousand citizens, while in the individual States a representative is chosen by about as many hundreds. Is that difference enough to justify attachment to the State governments and dread of the federal one? If the objection rests on this point, it deserves examination.

Is it supported by reason? Not unless one maintains that five or six thousand citizens are less capable of choosing a fit representative, or more easily corrupted by an unfit one, than five or six hundred. Reason tells us the opposite: in so large a number a fit candidate is more likely to be found, and the choice is less likely to be diverted from him by the schemes of the ambitious or the bribes of the rich.

Is the consequence that follows from this doctrine acceptable? If we hold that five or six hundred citizens are the most that can jointly exercise the vote, must we not deny the people the direct choice of their public servants in every case where governing does not require one representative for every such number of citizens?

Is the doctrine warranted by facts? The last paper showed that real representation in the British House of Commons barely exceeds one member for every thirty thousand inhabitants. On top of many powerful causes that do not exist here and that favor rank and wealth in Britain, no one may serve as a county representative without real estate worth a clear six hundred pounds sterling a year, nor as a representative of a city or borough without an estate worth half that. To this is added a further restriction on the county electors, who must hold a freehold worth more than twenty pounds sterling a year to vote at all. Yet despite these unfavorable conditions, and despite some very unequal laws in the British code, it cannot be said that the nation’s representatives have raised the few on the ruins of the many.

We need not rely on foreign experience, though; our own is explicit and decisive. In New Hampshire the districts that elect senators directly are nearly as large as those that will be needed for her members of Congress. Those in Massachusetts are larger than will be needed, and those in New York larger still. In New York the assembly members for the cities and counties of New York and Albany are chosen by very nearly as many voters as will be entitled to a federal representative, counting on a House of only sixty-five members. It makes no difference that in these districts each voter chooses several representatives at once: if the same electors can choose four or five at the same time, they cannot be incapable of choosing one. Pennsylvania offers another example. Some of her counties that elect State representatives are almost as large as the districts that will elect her federal representatives. Philadelphia, thought to hold between fifty and sixty thousand people, will form nearly two federal districts, yet it is a single county in which every voter votes for each of its State representatives. More directly to the point, the whole city elects a single member to the executive council, as does every other county in the State.

Are not these facts the clearest proof of how false this objection is? Has experience shown that the senators of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, or the executive council of Pennsylvania, or the assemblymen of the last two States, have betrayed any special tendency to sacrifice the many to the few, or are in any way less worthy of their offices than the representatives and magistrates chosen elsewhere by much smaller bodies of voters?

There are even stronger cases than these. One branch of Connecticut’s legislature is so arranged that each member is elected by the whole State. So is the governor of Connecticut, of Massachusetts, and of New York, and the president of New Hampshire. I leave every man to judge whether the outcome of any one of these experiments can support the suspicion that choosing representatives across a wide population tends to raise traitors and undermine public liberty.

The last charge against the House of Representatives that I have to examine rests on a supposition: that the number of members will not be increased from time to time as population grows. It has been admitted that this objection, if well supported, would carry great weight. The following observations will show that, like most objections against the Constitution, it can only proceed from a partial view of the subject, or from a jealousy that discolors and disfigures every object it beholds.

First, those who press this objection forget that the federal Constitution loses nothing by comparison with the State constitutions in the security it provides for a gradual increase in representatives. The number set for the first instance is expressly declared temporary; it lasts only three years. Within every successive ten-year term a census of inhabitants is to be repeated. These regulations have two clear objects: first, to readjust the apportionment of representatives to the number of inhabitants, with the single exception that each State shall have at least one; second, to increase the number of representatives at the same periods, limited only by the rule that the whole number shall never exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants. Review the State constitutions and you find that some contain no definite rules on this subject, others correspond fairly closely to the federal plan, and the most effective security any of them offers amounts to a mere directory provision.

Second, as far as experience has gone, the gradual increase of representatives under the State constitutions has at least kept pace with the growth of their constituents; the legislatures have proved as ready to agree to such measures as the people have been to demand them.

Third, there is a feature peculiar to the federal Constitution that guarantees watchful attention, in a majority both of the people and of their representatives, to a constitutional increase of that body. The feature is this: one branch of the legislature represents citizens, the other represents the States; so in the House the larger States carry the most weight, while in the Senate the advantage belongs to the smaller States. From this it follows with certainty that the larger States will be strenuous advocates for increasing the number and weight of the branch in which their influence predominates. And it happens that only four of the largest States will hold a majority of the whole votes in the House. So if the smaller States, or their people, ever oppose a reasonable addition of members, a coalition of a very few States will be enough to overrule them; a coalition that, despite the rivalries and local prejudices that might block it on ordinary occasions, would not fail to form when it is not only prompted by common interest but justified by equity and the principles of the Constitution.

It may be objected that the Senate would be driven by the opposite motive to form an adverse coalition, and since its concurrence is indispensable, the just and constitutional aims of the House could be defeated. This is the difficulty that has probably caused the most serious alarm among the jealous friends of a numerous representation. Fortunately, it is one of the difficulties that exist only in appearance and vanish on close inspection. The following reflections should settle the point.

Though the two houses share equal authority on all legislative subjects except originating money bills, the House cannot be doubted to hold no small advantage in any contest that depends on the comparative firmness of the two bodies. It is composed of the greater number of members, it is supported by the more powerful States, and it speaks the known and determined sense of a majority of the people. That advantage is heightened by one side feeling itself backed by right, by reason, and by the Constitution, while the other side knows it is contending against the force of all these solemn considerations.

Consider further that among the gradation of States between smallest and largest, several, though generally likely to range themselves with the smaller ones, are too close in size and population to the larger to support an opposition to their just claims. So it is by no means certain that a majority of votes, even in the Senate, would be hostile to proper increases in the number of representatives. Nor is it too far to add that the senators from all the new States may be won over to the just views of the House by an obvious expedient. Since these States will for a long time grow in population with unusual rapidity, they will want frequent reapportionments of representatives to the number of inhabitants. The large States, who prevail in the House, need only make reapportionments and increases conditions of each other; then the senators from all the fastest-growing States, bound by their interest in the first, will be obliged to contend for the second.

These considerations seem to offer ample security and ought by themselves to satisfy every doubt that has been raised. But suppose they should all fail to overcome the unjust policy of the smaller States, or their predominant influence in the Senate; a constitutional and infallible resource still remains with the larger States, by which they can always accomplish their just purposes. The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but alone can propose, the supplies necessary to support the government. In a word, they hold the purse. By that powerful instrument, the history of the British Constitution shows an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging its sphere of activity and importance, and finally cutting down, as far as it wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches. This power over the purse may be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon any constitution can place in the hands of the immediate representatives of the people, for redressing every grievance and carrying into effect every just and beneficial measure.

But will the House not be as interested as the Senate in keeping the government in its proper functions, and therefore unwilling to stake its existence or reputation on the Senate yielding? And if such a trial of firmness were risked, would not one branch be as likely to give way first as the other? These questions cause no difficulty for anyone who reflects that, in all cases, the smaller the number and the more permanent and conspicuous the station of men in power, the stronger is the personal interest each feels in whatever concerns the government. Those who represent the dignity of their country before other nations will be especially alert to every prospect of public danger or dishonorable stagnation in public affairs. To such causes we owe the continual triumph of the British House of Commons over the other branches whenever the engine of a money bill has been employed. An absolute inflexibility on the part of the other branches, which could not have failed to throw every department into general confusion, has been neither feared nor experienced. The utmost firmness the federal Senate or President could display will be no more than equal to a resistance supported by constitutional and patriotic principles.

In this review of the House of Representatives I have passed over considerations of economy, which in the present state of affairs might have justified lessening the temporary number of representatives, and a disregard of which would probably have furnished as rich a theme for attack as the smallness of the number now does. I also omit any remarks on the difficulty there might be, under present circumstances, in engaging in federal service a large number of the kind of men the people will likely elect. One observation, however, I must add, as deserving very serious attention: in all legislative assemblies, the greater the number composing them, the fewer will be the men who actually direct their proceedings. First, the more numerous an assembly, whatever its members, the greater is the known ascendancy of passion over reason. Next, the larger the number, the greater the proportion of members of limited information and weak capacities; and it is precisely on such men that the eloquence and address of the few act with all their force. In the ancient republics, where the whole body of the people assembled in person, a single orator or an artful statesman was generally seen to rule as completely as if a scepter had been placed in his hand. On the same principle, the more crowded a representative assembly becomes, the more it will share the infirmities of collective meetings of the people: ignorance will be the dupe of cunning, and passion the slave of sophistry and declamation.

The people can never err more than in supposing that by multiplying their representatives beyond a certain limit they strengthen the barrier against the government of a few. Experience will forever warn them that, on the contrary, once they have secured a sufficient number for the purposes of safety, of local information, and of broad sympathy with the whole society, every further addition works against their own aims. The face of the government may become more democratic, but the soul that animates it will grow more oligarchic. The machine will be enlarged, but the springs that drive it will be fewer, and often more hidden.

Connected with the objection about the number of representatives is another, raised against the number made sufficient for legislative business. It has been said that more than a majority should have been required for a quorum, and in some cases, if not all, more than a majority of a quorum for a decision. That some advantages might have followed from such a precaution cannot be denied: it might have been an additional shield to some particular interests, and a general obstacle to hasty and partial measures. But these are outweighed by the disadvantages on the other side. In every case where justice or the general good required new laws or active measures, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed: the majority would no longer rule, and power would pass to the minority. Were this defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might use it to escape fair sacrifices to the general good, or in emergencies to extort unreasonable concessions. Lastly, it would foster the baneful practice of secessions: a practice that has appeared even in States requiring only a majority, subversive of all order and regular government, and leading more directly to public convulsions and the ruin of popular governments than any other yet seen among us.