The House of Representatives and How it is Constituted

I begin with the House of Representatives, and with who may vote and who may serve. Voters must meet the standard their State sets for its most numerous legislative branch. Suffrage is a fundamental article of republican government, so the convention had to fix it in the Constitution. Congress could not be left to settle it. Nor could the State legislatures, for this branch must depend on the people alone. One rule for every State would probably have displeased some. The rule chosen suits every State, since it follows the State’s own standard. It is safe too, since State governments cannot alter what their constitutions fix.

The State constitutions define the qualifications of the elected less carefully, and one rule fits them more easily. So the convention has settled them. A representative must be twenty-five and a citizen of seven years. He must live in the State he represents when elected, and hold no other office under the United States while serving. Within these limits the office is open to merit of every kind: native or naturalized, young or old, poor or rich, of any religious faith. Now the term of election. Two questions decide it: are elections every two years safe, and are they needed or useful?

First, safety. Liberty requires that government share the people’s interest, and this branch above all must depend on the people and feel with them. Frequent elections alone secure that, and no exact rule can fix how frequent. Let us consult experience, the guide we should follow wherever it can be found. Representation was barely known to the ancients, so I take the modern cases nearest our own. Take first the House of Commons in Great Britain. Its earliest records show that parliaments were to sit each year, not be elected each year. Even those sittings lay at the monarch’s will, and royal ambition often contrived long, dangerous breaks.

The remedy came by degrees. A statute under Charles II barred these breaks beyond three years. Under William III it was declared a fundamental right that parliaments be held frequently, and a later statute fixed three years. Early in this century the term rose to seven. So three years was the most frequent election that kingdom ever thought necessary. Much liberty survived even under seven-year elections, with that constitution’s other vices. If we may argue from that, cutting seven to three, with the other needed reforms, would greatly extend the people’s hold. Elections every two years, then, cannot possibly endanger the House’s dependence on its constituents.

In Ireland, elections long lay at the crown’s will. The parliament begun under George II ran his whole reign, some thirty-five years. If the Irish kept any liberty under such burdens, elections every two years would secure every liberty that rests on a due tie between representatives and people. Nearer home, each colony had representation in at least one branch, with terms of one to seven years. The spirit that overcame every obstacle to independence proves liberty enough was enjoyed everywhere. Virginia stood first in resisting Britain’s usurpations, yet its elections ran every seven years. I offer that as proof, and I think substantial proof, that elections every two years leave liberty in no danger.

Three things strengthen this. First, the federal legislature will hold only part of the supreme lawmaking power. The British Parliament held it whole, and the colonial and Irish legislatures nearly so. By a sound maxim, all else equal, the greater the power the shorter its term, and the smaller the longer. Second, it is restrained by dependence on the people, as others are, and watched besides by the State legislatures, a check others lack. Third, the lasting branches of this government have far less means of seducing the House than those governments had over their popular branch. With less power to abuse, the federal representatives are less tempted on one side and doubly watched on the other.

I shall be reminded of the saying that “where annual elections end, tyranny begins.” Proverbs generally rest on reason, yet they are often stretched to cases the reason does not cover. Nothing in nature ties the sun or the seasons to the span in which virtue can bear the temptations of power. Liberty is not fixed to any single point on the calendar. If circumstances justify departing from the rule one way, why not the other? Our own terms agree no better. Connecticut and Rhode Island elect their most numerous branch every half year, most states yearly, and South Carolina every two years, as proposed here. Across that fourfold spread, no one could easily show that Connecticut or Rhode Island is better governed, or freer, than South Carolina.

I find one ground for this doctrine, and it does not fit our case. America understands a distinction barely grasped elsewhere: the people set a Constitution the government cannot alter; the government sets laws it may alter. Wherever the supreme power to legislate has resided, the power to change the government’s form has been assumed to reside there too. In Great Britain, Parliament has used it to lengthen the period between elections. Such practices alarmed the friends of free government, whose cornerstone is frequent elections. Having no Constitution above their government, they sought another safeguard: a familiar span of time to measure the danger of change. A year was the simplest; hence the doctrine that the advance toward tyranny is measured by distance from annual elections. Why apply that expedient where a Constitution already limits the government? Who will claim Americans less secure under two-year terms fixed beyond change than a nation whose more frequent elections its government may alter?

The second question: are two-year terms needed or useful? No man makes laws well without honest aims, sound judgment, and knowledge of his subjects. Part of that knowledge anyone may gather; part comes only from experience in office. Length of service should therefore bear some proportion to the practical knowledge the work requires. Most states give their popular branch one year. Does two years bear no greater proportion to federal knowledge than one year to state knowledge? The question answers itself.

In a single state the laws are uniform and the affairs narrow. The Union is a different scene. Its laws vary in every state, and its affairs, spread over a vast region and varied by local matters, can be learned only in the central councils. Yet each member ought to know something of every state’s laws. How regulate foreign trade without knowing each state’s commerce and ports? Trade between states, without their relative situations? Taxes, without their differing laws? The militia, without their local differences? These chief objects show how much a representative must learn.

These difficulties will lessen. The hardest task is launching the government and forming the first body of federal law; later improvements grow easier and fewer. Past acts will inform new members, and wider dealings among the states will spread mutual knowledge. Even so, federal lawmaking stays so much more novel and difficult than a single state’s as to justify the longer term. One branch remains: foreign affairs. To regulate our own commerce, a representative should know our treaties and other nations’ commercial laws. He should not be ignorant of the law of nations, which is committed to the federal government. The House takes no direct part in foreign negotiations, yet these matters often touch ordinary lawmaking and sometimes need its sanction. Such knowledge is best acquired by practical service.

Many representatives must travel far, and the arrangements that forces might tell far more with fit men under one year than under two. A few members will have superior talents. By frequent re-election they become masters of public business, perhaps not unwilling to use those advantages. The more new members, and the less informed the rest, the readier they fall into the snares laid for them. The same holds between the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Frequent elections carry a drawback even in large states that meet once a year: a false election cannot be overturned in time to matter. Whoever obtains a seat by unlawful means holds it long enough for his purpose, which encourages the practice. Were federal elections annual, this might become a serious abuse. Each house judges the elections, qualifications, and returns of its own members. Yet so much of a year would pass before a false member could be removed that the prospect little deters him. All this warrants us in affirming that two-year terms are as useful to the public business as we have seen them safe for the people’s liberty.

My next subject is how each State’s representatives are apportioned: by the same rule that fixes direct taxes. No one disputes that population should set each State’s representation. The two rules rest on different principles, though: representation marks the people’s personal rights; taxation their share of wealth, which numbers measure poorly. Yet no workable rule is less objectionable, and America’s recent approval won the convention’s preference. All this is admitted, an objector says. But must slaves enter the numerical rule of representation? They are property, not persons: fit for a tax founded on property, not for a count of persons. I state the other side as candidly.

“We grant,” a Southern brother might say, “that representation relates more to persons, taxation more to property. But our slaves are not property only; our laws make them both. They are made to labor for a master, sold from master to master, held in body and liberty at another’s will. So they seem degraded to the irrational animals the law calls property. Yet the law protects their life and limb against all, even the master, and punishes them for violence. There it makes them moral persons, not mere articles of property.

“The Constitution therefore rightly views our slaves as persons and property both. That is their true character under the laws they live by, and no one denies those laws are the standard. Their place in the count is disputed only on the pretext that law has made them property. And it is admitted: restore their rights, and equal representation could not be refused. Put the question another way. Would it be fair to count slaves when burdens are laid, yet drop them when advantages are conferred? Our critics reproach us for holding human brethren as property, yet would have government do so more wholly than our own laws.

“It may be answered that no State counts slaves in its own representation; they neither vote nor swell their masters’ votes. Why include them in the federal count? But a federal rule fixes each State’s representatives by its whole population. The State itself then says which of its people may choose them. In every State some inhabitants are denied the vote by their own constitution, yet counted in the census.

“The Southern States might retort. The convention’s principle ignores each State’s policy toward its own people, and would count slaves in full. But those who would gain waive that rule, asking only equal moderation. Let the peculiar case stand, and the compromise be adopted. It counts the slave an inhabitant, yet, debased by servitude below the free, divested of two fifths of the man.

“Firmer ground may be taken. We have assumed representation relates to persons only, not property. Is that just? Government guards property no less than persons, so both are represented by those who govern. Several States, New York especially, give property its own guardian branch. The federal Constitution does not: it puts property’s rights in the same hands as personal rights, so property deserves regard in choosing those hands.

“Each State’s votes ought also to bear some proportion to its comparative wealth. A rich citizen has one vote, yet his fortune guides other votes, and by that unseen channel property enters the representation. No State holds such sway over another. So far as greater wealth justly entitles a State to advantage, a larger share of representation should secure it.

“Here the Constitution differs from the present Confederation, the United Netherlands, and like confederacies. There a federal vote takes effect only if the members later agree, so equal votes carry unequal weight. Federal acts will take effect without any act of the States, needing only a majority in the federal legislature. Each vote counts the same, from a larger State or smaller, richer or poorer.”

Such is a Southern advocate’s reasoning. It may seem a little strained in places, yet on the whole it reconciles me fully to the convention’s scale of representation. In one respect the common measure works well. The census will depend largely on the States’ disposition, so they should feel little bias to swell or shrink their numbers. Representation alone would tempt them to exaggerate; taxation alone, to understate. Applied to both, the opposite interests check each other and yield impartiality.

The House’s size is another test. Critics make four charges. (1) So small a number cannot safely guard the public interest. (2) It cannot know the local circumstances of so many constituents. (3) Its members will come from the class that feels least for the mass, and will raise the few on the ruin of the many. (4) It falls further out of proportion as the people grow, while obstacles bar any increase.

No political question has a less precise answer than the right size for a legislature. Nothing misleads more than political arithmetic. Sixty or seventy men may hold a power more safely than six or seven. Six or seven hundred need not be better still; at six or seven thousand the reasoning reverses. Every case needs a minimum, to secure free debate and guard against easy combination for improper ends. It needs a maximum too, to avoid the confusion of a crowd. In every large assembly, passion wrests the scepter from reason.

Recall the argument for elections every two years. Congress holds limited powers and faces the check of the State legislatures. Its members may therefore be fewer than if it held the whole power of legislation. Weigh, then, the first objection: so small a number cannot safely be trusted with so much power.

The House begins with sixty-five members. A census within three years, renewed every ten, allows one representative per thirty thousand. Counting the negroes at three fifths, the people should reach three millions, raising the House to at least a hundred. At the same rate, twenty-five years brings two hundred, fifty years four hundred. That, I presume, ends all fear of a body too small. I assume here, as the fourth objection will show, that the number will rise as the Constitution provides. Otherwise the objection would carry very great weight.

The true question is whether so small a number, while temporary, endangers public liberty. I cannot believe the people would choose, and every second year choose again, sixty-five men bent on tyranny. I cannot believe the State legislatures, with every motive to watch and every means to check, would fail to detect or defeat the plot. Nor can I believe men who could win the people’s choice would dare betray that trust within two years. Judging by what is before us, America’s liberties are safe in the number of hands the Constitution proposes.

If foreign gold could so easily corrupt our rulers, how are we a free nation today? The Congress that carried us through the Revolution was smaller and less answerable, yet held the country’s fate more firmly than our representatives ever will. The prize was great, so we may suppose bribery was tried; yet the public trust held. Nor could the President or Senate find the means. Their salaries barely suffice for other purposes, and their private fortunes, as American citizens, are no danger. Only appointments remain. Such a combination between branches so differently founded, each accountable to society, is improbable.

The Constitution adds one more safeguard. No member may hold a civil office created, or its salary raised, during his term. To suppose that chance vacancies could buy the guardians the people chose is to trade judgment for boundless suspicion. Mankind holds depravity enough to require some distrust, and other qualities that justify some confidence. Republican government assumes those qualities more than any other form. Were the portraits drawn by that suspicion true, men would lack the virtue to govern themselves. Only the chains of despotism could keep them from devouring one another.

The second charge is that the House will be too small to know its constituents’ interests. It weighs our numbers against the size, people, and varied interests of the United States, ignoring what sets Congress apart. A representative ought to know those interests, but only so far as his authority reaches. Ignorance of matters outside lawmaking costs him nothing.

What are the objects of federal lawmaking? Three matter most, and seem most to need local knowledge: commerce, taxation, and the militia. Commerce demands much knowledge, but a very few representatives can carry each State’s laws and situation to the federal councils. Taxation is largely duties tied to commerce, so the same holds. Internal collections may ask broader knowledge of a State. But divide the largest State into ten or twelve districts, and no local interest in any of them escapes its representative. The State’s own laws, framed by members from every part, are almost guide enough; often the federal legislature need only review and combine them. Each State’s representatives bring knowledge of those laws and of their own districts. They will probably have served in the State legislature, and may be serving still. From there a very few hands can carry the State’s local knowledge to Congress.

This holds with greater force for the militia. Rules of discipline may differ between States, but within each State they are the same, and rest on conditions that vary little inside it. Scarcely anything in militia rules needs local knowledge; terrain is almost the only such point. The art of war teaches principles that apply everywhere. None of this contradicts the broad knowledge I elsewhere required of representatives. That trouble comes from differences among the States, not within one. Taken singly, a State’s laws are uniform and its interests little varied, so a few men can hold all the knowledge it needs.

Across the States, laws and conditions tied to federal objects differ greatly, and representatives ought to know something of all of them. A few from each State bring knowledge of their own; each must learn much about the rest. Time will make the States more alike, and each more complex within. As their people advance, the States will gain the industry that varies a nation’s affairs, and will need fuller representation. So the convention provided that the House grow as the people grow.

Britain’s experience confirms this. England and Scotland hold at least eight million people, and five hundred fifty-eight members of the Commons represent them. Half of those members are chosen by five thousand seven hundred twenty-three persons. That half do not even live among the people. They add nothing to the people’s security against the government, or to what the legislature knows of them. Notoriously, they serve the executive magistrate more often than popular rights. We will count them only as a subtraction, and pass over the many others barely connected with their constituents. Even so, two hundred seventy-nine persons hold the safety, interest, and happiness of eight million. That is one representative for twenty-eight thousand six hundred and seventy constituents, in an assembly exposed to the whole force of executive influence. Yet a valuable share of freedom has survived there. The defects in the British code owe very little to the legislature’s ignorance of the people. Weighed against our House, this seems to give the fullest assurance. One representative for every thirty thousand inhabitants will be a safe and competent guardian of the interests trusted to him.

The third charge is that House members will come from the class least sympathetic to ordinary people, readiest to sacrifice the many to enrich the few. This objection is the strangest of all: aimed at a supposed oligarchy, its principle strikes at the root of republican government. Every constitution should obtain rulers with the wisdom to see the common good and the virtue to pursue it. The next is to keep them virtuous while they hold the public trust. Republics choose by election, and rely above all on short terms that keep rulers answerable to the people.

Let me ask what in the House violates republican principles, or raises the few on the ruins of the many. Every feature is instead faithful to them, and impartial to every class of citizen. Who elects the federal representatives? Not the rich more than the poor, not the heirs of famous names more than the children of obscurity. The electors are the great body of the people, the same who elect the matching branch in every State legislature. And who may be chosen? Any citizen whose merit earns his country’s trust, with no test of wealth, birth, faith, or profession to fetter the people’s choice.

Consider the men on whom voters confer this trust: their situation carries every security for faithfulness. First, their fellow citizens singled them out. We may presume they generally have some measure of the qualities that earned it, which promise a careful regard for their obligations. Second, they take office under marks of honor and confidence that breed at least a temporary attachment to their constituents. Third, more selfish motives strengthen the tie. Pride and vanity attach a member to a government that favors his standing and gives him its honors. A few may scheme otherwise, but generally those who rise by the people’s favor gain more from keeping it than from overturning the people’s authority.

Fourth, and above all, these securities would fail without frequent elections, which keep members mindful of their dependence on the people. Before power can erase how they rose, they must face the moment it ends, when their conduct is reviewed. There they sink to the level they came from, unless faithful service renews the trust. Fifth, they can pass no law that does not fall on themselves and their friends as fully as on everyone else. Without that shared interest between rulers and people, every government degenerates into tyranny. What else restrains laws that favor themselves and one class? The character of the whole system, the nature of just laws, and above all the vigilant spirit of the American people.

Duty, gratitude, interest, and ambition itself are the cords binding members to the great mass of the people. These may all fail against the caprice and wickedness of man. But are they not all that government admits and prudence can devise, and the means every State government relies on? What, then, of men who profess flaming zeal for republican government yet attack its fundamental principle? They champion the people’s right to choose their rulers, yet insist the people will choose only those who betray the trust at once.

Suppose the objection means federal elections depart from the States’ method. The one difference: a federal representative will be chosen by five or six thousand citizens, a State representative by about as many hundreds. Is it supported by reason? Only if thousands choose a fit man worse than hundreds, or fall more easily to an unfit one. The opposite holds: among so many, a fit man is likelier to be found, and the choice harder to divert by intrigue or bribery. And the consequence? If six hundred are all who can vote together, the people lose the direct choice of their servants wherever fewer are needed.

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 people. There, property tests limit who may stand and who may vote. Yet even so, British members have not raised the few on the ruins of the many. Our own experience is plainer. New Hampshire chooses senators in districts nearly as large as her federal districts will be, and those of Massachusetts and New York are larger still. Electors who can choose four or five representatives at once are not incapable of choosing one.

Have the senators of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, or Pennsylvania’s executive council, leaned to sacrifice the many to the few? Stronger cases exist. Connecticut elects one branch of its legislature, and its governor, by the whole State. I leave every man to judge whether any of these experiments supports a suspicion that wide election raises traitors and undermines public liberty.

The last charge supposes the House will never grow as the people do. I have admitted that, if well founded, it would weigh heavily. It springs only from a partial view, or from jealousy. First, no State constitution does better here. The first number is temporary, fixed for three years, and a census follows every ten. Each census resets each State’s share by its numbers, none falling below one member, and adds members, capped at one for every thirty thousand people. The best any State offers is a mere directory rule.

Second, so far as experience goes, State representation has at least kept pace with the people. It appears that legislatures have been as ready to add members as the people to ask. Third, the Constitution itself keeps most of the people and their representatives watchful for this increase. The House stands for citizens, the Senate for States: the larger weigh most in one, the smaller in the other. The larger States will press to enlarge the branch they rule; four of them alone hold a House majority. Should the smaller States resist a fair increase, a few States can overrule them. Rivalries might block that coalition elsewhere, but not one that interest, equity, and the Constitution prompt.

Might the Senate, whose consent is needed, form the opposite coalition and defeat the House? That fear does not survive a close look. The two houses have equal power over laws, but money bills begin in the House. In a test of firmness the House holds no small advantage: more members, stronger States, and the known will of most people. It knows right, reason, and the Constitution back it; the other side knows it fights all three.

Some States lean toward the smaller ones, yet stand too near the larger in size and numbers to back an opposition to their just claims. So even a Senate majority may not oppose a fair increase. The new States’ senators can be won too. Those States will long grow fast, so they want their share reset often. The large States rule the House, and need only tie each reset to added members; those senators must fight for both.

Suppose all this fails against the smaller States and their weight in the Senate. One resource still remains to the larger States, given by the Constitution and certain to work. The House alone can propose the supplies that keep the government running, and can refuse them. It holds the purse. No constitution can arm the people’s own representatives with a better weapon for redressing every grievance and carrying every just measure.

But is the House not as concerned for the government, and unwilling to stake its existence on the Senate yielding? In such a trial of firmness, might it not give way first? These questions trouble no one who reflects that the fewer the men in power, and the more lasting and public their place, the more each cares about the government. Those who carry their country’s dignity abroad dread public danger and shameful standstill most. Hence the British House of Commons has always won when it employed a money bill. The utmost firmness of Senate or President can only match a resistance backed by constitutional and patriotic principle.

I pass over economy, and the trouble of finding so many fit men for federal service. One point deserves attention: in every legislative assembly, the more members, the fewer who direct it. The more numerous a body, the more passion sways reason. The larger it grows, the greater the share of members of little knowledge and weak ability. It is on just such members that the eloquence of a few works fully. So a more crowded assembly takes on a crowd’s faults: ignorance the dupe of cunning, passion the slave of sophistry.

The people can never err more than in thinking that more representatives, past a point, strengthen the barrier against the rule of a few. Once the number is enough for safety, local knowledge, and broad sympathy with the whole society, every addition defeats their aim. The government’s face grows more democratic, its soul more oligarchic. The machine is larger, but the springs that drive it are fewer, and often more hidden.

A related objection: a quorum, and sometimes a decision, should need more than a majority. That might shield some interests and check hasty measures; the harms outweigh it. Wherever justice or the public good needed action, free government’s first rule would be reversed. The majority would no longer rule; power would pass to the minority. Limited to some cases, it would let a selfish minority dodge fair sacrifices, or extort favors in a crisis. Last, it would foster secessions. They subvert all order, and lead to public convulsions and the ruin of popular government faster than anything else among us.