The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 10, September, 1836Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 10, September, 1836
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
that he moves in? Firmness in an agent who has no will of his own, no
right to act but on the dictation of another, would not only be
superfluous, but a positive evil and disqualification. It would
produce struggles and perhaps refusal, where his duty was to submit.
The more pliable the instrument in such a case, the belter would it
answer the purposes it was designed for. To be firm, says Mr. Madison,
the Senator must hold his authority by a tenure of considerable
duration. But how can this be, if he is to hold it from year to year
as the Legislature of his State may change its opinion on the same
subject, and require him to follow these changes or to resign his
place? The tenure of the Constitution, as Mr. Madison understood it,
is essentially changed by this doctrine. These changes of opinions and
measures are, in the opinion of Mr. Madison, a great and dangerous
evil in any government, and show ‘the necessity of some stable
institution’ such as our Senate was intended to be—but such as it
cannot be on this doctrine of instructions.”
I must admit my inability to perceive the propriety of the Judge's
conclusions from Mr. Madison's premises. He is afraid of instructions,
because _single_ and numerous bodies are apt to yield to passion and
faction, and he hence thinks it absurd to place the Senate as a check
upon the House of Representatives, if the State Legislatures are to
remain as a check upon the Senate. There seems to be a double fallacy
in this. Does the Senate possess an exclusive patent of exemption from
faction and passion, and the other frailties of human nature, to which
the House of Representatives and _both_ branches of the State
Legislature, are to be held peculiarly liable? The Senate, as a body,
would not be _checked_ by the State Legislatures, unless a _majority_
was instructed; and if this was the case, we must suppose instructions
sanctioned by so many bodies to be the dictates of true wisdom, and
not the offspring of faction and passion. If only a few Senators are
instructed, we must suppose the object to be deemed important by the
instructing States; and so far from the likelihood of sudden or
violent passion, or the seductions of factious leaders thus affecting
Legislation, we find the securities proposed by Mr. Madison quadrupled
in numbers, increased by the distance of the bodies, and doubled by
the difference in their constitution. If two federal legislative
bodies are likely to ensure the defeat of faction and passion, when
both belong to the same government—the members of both are members of
the same political parties, and both meet at the same place, how much
less likely is passion or faction to succeed _by means of
instructions_, when it has first to encounter the federal House of
Representatives, and then in succession a State House of Delegates,
and a State Senate, and lastly the chance of an uninstructed, or
differently instructed majority in the federal Senate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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