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OUR
EX-PRESIDENTS
WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR THEM?
WHAT SHALL THEY DO FOR US?
BY
JOHN BIGELOW, LL.D.
Sanabilibus ægrotanus malis---SENECA
We are sick with ills which are curable
Th
606
B5
OUR
EX-PRESIDENTS
WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR THEM ?
WHAT SHALL THEY DO FOR US ?
BY
JOHN BIGELOW, LL.D.
Sanabilibus ægrotamus malis-SENECA
We are sick with ills which are curable
PRIVATELY PRINTED
No. 21 GRAMERCY PARK
NEW YORK
1906
OUR EX-PRESIDENTS
-
WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR THEM ?
WHAT SHALL THEY DO FOR US ?
I
O
4 é
NE of the first bills, if not the first, introduced
at the session of the 58th Federal Congress
in 1905, was designed to provide for the increase
of the President's annual salary from $50,000 to
$100,000. The motive and only excuse assigned
for this increase was, not to provide for our Presi-
dent's present needs—his salary provides amply for
them--but that he should not be required to toil for
his livelihood on his retirement.
Such a proposition was sure to receive, as it did,
but scant hospitality from our people, whatever
might be the verdict of Congress. That body wisely
adjourned without acting upon it. As the prop-
osition has reappeared at the present session, it is
none too soon for the organs of public opinion to be
0
[3]
heard from in regard to a policy so little in harmony
with the spirit of our institutions.
Mr. Cleveland, the only ex-President at present,
was only fifty-five years of age when he became
such, and Mr. Roosevelt, the only other ex-Presi-
dent in sight, at the expiration of the term on which
he has just entered, will be only fifty-one. Who will
pretend that either of these gentlemen was more
competent to take care of himself before his election
to the Chief Magistracy than he is to-day? Men as
often gain in wisdom as they deteriorate in strength,
through age. Old people are apt to know as many
things that youngsters do not know and even could
not understand, as younger men are capable of doing
things which old people cannot or no longer wish
to do. The scheme of putting our ex-Presidents
away like pieces of royal Sèvres, too precious to use
and only interesting as curiosities, is one which
neither the countrymen of Franklin nor their rep-
resentatives in Congress have thus far shown them-
selves willing seriously to entertain. The fact, how-
ever, that such a scheme has been seriously urged
by a member of the Administration party on the
crest of a wave of almost unprecedented popularity,
shows at least that the position of our ex-Presidents
has been and is so unsatisfactory as to provoke this
recent if inappropriate and ill-advised suggestion.
[4]
There is no citizen so difficult to classify, none
whose position is in so many respects awkward and
embarrassing, as that of an ex-President of the
United States—yesterday a king, to-day “none
so poor to do him reverence,” the most conspicuous
and at the same time one of the most powerless
private citizens of the republic. Representing not
only the eminence of character which called him to
the Chief Magistracy, but the accumulated distinc-
tion which the successful discharge of its duties
necessarily begets, he is relegated to the comparative
obscurity of private life, unsupported by a single
expression of the nation's gratitude or the slightest
official recognition of the loss the public service
sustains in parting with his unique experience and
trained familiarity with public affairs. He takes
with him into retirement no official rank, no title,
not even a ribbon, nor a perquisite--except the
franking privilege, to distinguish him from the ob-
scurest and least deserving of his countrymen.
Neither has he the privileges and exemptions which
attach to political obscurity. Like an aerolite, the
height from which he has descended makes him an
object of perpetual and costly curiosity. If a man
of moderate means, as most of our Presidents have
been and, it is to be hoped, are likely to be, he is sub-
jected by the very eminence from which he descends,
[5]
to expenses to which no private citizen is liable-
expenses for which the state makes no provisions
and from which there is no graceful or dignified
escape. He lies prostrate, face to the ground, like
the Philistine's Dagon at the very time he deserves
to be regarded as one of the nation's most valuable
assets.
The power of every government consists not in
its laws or its Constitution, but in the respect which
the people entertain for the men who make and
execute these laws and that Constitution; in other
words, in the respect which the people entertain for
their government. The consequences of weakening
the popular respect for public officers are quite as
serious-nay, more serious than extending to them
an exaggerated homage. The President on retiring
from office carries with him wherever he goes no
inconsiderable portion of the dignity with which
he had been invested by the people, and it is idle to
say that the Government does not lose power and
authority when it allows that dignity to be treated
as a negligible quantity, to be trodden under the
feet of men.
Is it necessary to add that such a
systematically brutal policy should no longer be
tolerated? It is neither just to our chief magistrate,
nor good economy, nor good politics.
Congress has occasionally allowed itself to make
[6]
some temporary provision for necessitous ex-Presi-
dents, but, besides being transient in their operation,
these expressions of national sympathy involve in-
vidious discriminations; they humiliate the benefi-
ciary by granting as a favor what might be wisely
conceded for an equivalent which he will be always
quite competent and happy to render, and they
deprive the country of services which he must be
presumed to have become more competent than any
other citizen of the republic to render.
II
The recent proposal to make a drone of an ex-
President by doubling his salary during his term of
office is but an indistinct reverberation of a profound
national sentiment which found quite authoritative
expression in the press, during Mr. Cleveland's ad-
ministration, and again near the unhappy close of
Mr. McKinley's earthly career. On these occasions
it was proposed and earnestly advocated in in-
fluential quarters that the moment the President's
term of office expires, he should become ex officio a
member for life of the Senate of the United States,
with a suitable salary. The necessity of securing
an amendment of the Constitution for such a pro-
vision, and the great difficulties which happily beset
[7]
all attempts to tinker that document, have dis-
couraged most of its friends in Congress hitherto
from farther trying to test the sentiment of the
nation upon it.
It was doubtless a well-intended though futile and
unstatesmanlike effort to avoid these obstacles that
may be presumed to have prompted the proposal
to double the President's salary by an Act of Con-
gress. This alternative has entirely failed to com-
mend itself to the confidence of Congress, even
though lubricated as it was-partly even, because
it was lubricated by a proposal at the same time to
increase the compensations of all whose votes and
influence were needed for its adoption. The im-
plication that a man who has been elevated to the
highest dignity our people can confer for a period
of four or eight years is thereby disqualified from
earning his living or being useful thereafter, was
fatal in itself to such a proposition. “It is jarring
to the average American,” says one of our leading
journals, “to be informed that a man who has been
elected to office by a nation of toilers ought not to
be a toiler himself, but a member of the leisure class
after he ceases to hold office."
Only one year ago and when Mr. Cleveland was
sixty-three years of age, the country would cheer-
fully have accepted his renomination for the Presi-
[8]
dency. Had that been done, there are multitudes
whose opinions are not to be despised, who believed
and still believe he would now be President. No
man who is deemed by competent judges for a third
time fit to be President of this country can be
prudently laid away in camphor or decently shunted
into a catchall as one no longer of any account, as
another Priscus like him, who still lives in a verse of
the Latin satirist,
Before I knew you, Lord and King you were to me,
Now that well I know you, only Priscus you will be.1
Mr. Roosevelt when his term as President expires
will be only fifty-one years of age. He will be an
exception among men of distinction if the remainder
of his days, should they be prolonged, do not prove
the part of his life upon which his biographers will
dwell with most satisfaction.
Because the proposal to double the President's
salary has been deemed impracticable and once prac-
tically rejected without debate by the present Con-
gress, is only another reason for turning our atten-
tion seriously to a plan which secures to the State
the services of an ex-President and the advantages
of his unique experience for the rest of his life, by
1 Quam te non nossem, dominum, regem que vocabam
Quum bene te novi, jam mihi Priscus eris.
Martial CXIII.
[9]
placing him where no one can doubt that he is
capable of being more useful than anywhere else
and in many respects more useful than any other
person:a position which does not involve either
directly or indirectly any humiliation; a position
where, from being the elect of a party, he becomes
the counsellor and protector, not of one party but
of all parties; a representative of no one political
sect, but of the whole nation. With no political
ambition ungratified, his independence as complete
as it can or ought to be in this world; he would then
have no difficulty in consecrating himself entirely
and disinterestedly to his country's service. Having
no patronage to bestow, he would be under no ob-
ligation to meddle unnecessarily with its disposition
by those who have. His sphere of usefulness being
assured, his income would amply provide for all his
wants and leave him no pretext for resorting to
methods, dignified or otherwise, for increasing it.
Whether at home or abroad he would have a well-
defined official rank only lower than that of the
President himself.
The following amendments of the Constitution,
or something substantially like them, would be re-
quired to accomplish this result, the lines in italics
representing the changes required in the present
Constitution.
[10]
Section 3, Article I, of the Constitution shall be
amended so as to read as follows:
The Senate of the United States shall be com-
posed of two Senators from each State, chosen by
the legislature thereof, for six years, and of such
persons as shall have served to the close of a term
as President or acting President of the United
States, and each Senator shall have one vote.
Section 5 of Article I shall be amended to read as
follows:
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a
compensation for their services, to be ascertained by
law and paid out of the Treasury of the United
States. Each President-Senator shall receive for
his compensation a sum equal to
of the
salary which had been allowed to him while Presi-
dent, to be paid also out of the Treasury of the
United States.
III
We have now but one ex-President. Since the ex-
piration of President Washington's term in 1797
we have only twice been without one or more. We
have never had more than four, except for a single
year, in 1861-2, when we had five. The average
[11]
number since Washington became one, has been less
than three.
The following table will show who were ex-Presi-
dents at one and the same time, and who, had they
been entitled to them, would have occupied seats in
the Senate from the year 1797 to March 4th, 1905.
1797 to 1799, Washington
1
1799 to 1801,
0
1801 to 1809, J. Adams
1
1809 to 1817, Adams and Jefferson
2
1817 to 1825, Adams, Jefferson, Madison
3
1825 to 1826, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe
1826 to 1829, Madison, Monroe
2
1829 to 1831, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams
3
1831 to 1836, Madison, J. Q. Adams
2
1836 to 1837, J. Q. Adams
1
1837 to 1841, J. Q. Adams, Andrew Jackson
2
1841 to 1845, J. Q. Adams, A. Jackson, Martin Van
Buren
3
1845 to 1848, J. Q. Adams, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler 3
1848 to 1849, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler
2
1849 to 1853, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K.
Polk
3
1853 to 1857, M. Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard
Fillmore
3
1857 to 1861, M. Van Buren, J. Tyler, M. Fillmore,
F. Pierce
4
1861 to 1862, Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Bu-
chanan
5
1862 to 1868, M. Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, J. Buchanan 3
1868 to 1869, M. Fillmore, Franklin Pierce
2
1869 to 1874, M. Fillmore, Andrew Johnson
2
[12]
1
0
1
2
2
1874 to 1875, Andrew Johnson
1875 to 1877, .
1877 to 1881, U. S. Grant ,
1881 to 1885, U. S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes .
1885 to 1886, R. B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur .
1886 to 1889, R. B. Hayes .
1889 to 1893, R. B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland
1893 to 1897, Benjamin Harrison
1897 to 1901, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland
1901
Grover Cleveland
1
2
1
2
1
However diverse may be the estimates which this
generation may be disposed to place upon the
services which the ex-Presidents of the United
States would have rendered respectively as Presi-
dent-Senators, it is difficult to suppose that any of
them could have failed to prove a substantial ac-
quisition to the legislative department of our gov-
ernment, or that the prospect of such a dignified
termination of their public career would not have
made most, if not all of them, better Presidents even
while in office. It would be difficult to imagine any
measure that would contribute so much to discourage
any disposition to misuse the patronage of the
executive for personal ends as the prospect of taking
a place for life, with a generous salary, in a legisla-
tive assembly scarcely second either in dignity or im-
portance to any other in the world. It would furnish
the Presidential incumbent the strongest inducement
[13]
possible for giving the people an acceptable ad-
ministration, and render him immune to the most
formidable temptations to which he is now exposed.
What law or laws could Congress enact, however
faithfully executed, that could contribute more
effectually to the reformation and perfection of our
Civil Service? Till some provision like this is made
for retiring Presidents, it is idle to expect them to
be as indifferent as it is desirable they personally
should be about a re-election, the customary
evidence of popular approval,-in the language of
the stage, without a single encore, a temptation
which even Washington did not successfully resist.
It is equally idle to expect that any system of Civil
Service reform will result in anything more or better
than a succession of transient disappointing ex-
pedients, until some dignified provision is made for
retiring Presidents.
I am permitted to cite here in further confirmation
of the views already submitted, the opinion of
Charles Francis Adams, the President of the Mass-
achusetts Historical Society, a great-grandson of
one of our Presidents and a grandson of another.
“The plan, as you express it, of 'graduating ex-
Presidents directly into the federal Senate for life,'
is one which has long been a favorite theory with
me. It is a method of political utilization of valuable
[14]
material, otherwise lost, which entirely commends
itself to my judgment.
"The best way always of considering such a prop-
osition is to look at it historically. Consider, there-
fore, for a moment what would have been the prac-
tical result had this theory been engrafted into the
original Constitution. What has been the result
from its not being engrafted there?
"Had it been engrafted there, Washington would
have been an ex officio member of the Senate for
three years. John Adams would have been one for
twenty-five years. Jefferson would have been one
for seventeen years. I cannot, from memory, speak
in regard to Monroe and Madison. They both
would have been senators for a number of years.
That they would have been valuable as such, goes
without saying
“Then follows J. Q. Adams; who, as you know,
was in the national Councils for sixteen years after
his retirement from the presidency. Whether his
services there were of value or otherwise is not for
me to say. I think, however, I incur no risk in say-
ing that, in the popular judgment, and from the
public point of view, those were the most valuable
years of his life.
“Jackson would have been about six years a
senator; Van Buren about twenty-two years.
[15]
"The terms of office of the succeeding Presidents
would all have been short. Coming at once to more
recent days, there is now but one ex-President alive,
another having recently died. Few would be found
in the whole land who would hesitate to say that the
services of neither Grover Cleveland nor Benjamin
Harrison would have been detrimental to the public
interests were one of them in the Senate now, and
had the other been there until his death.
“Having, therefore, considered what might have
been, had this scheme been engrafted on the original
Constitution, let us now consider what has been. We
have lost absolutely the value of the ripe experience,
great abilities and strong sense of patriotism of
such men as Washington, John Adams, Jefferson,
Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, Grover
Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. In more than
one instance, too, these eminent citizens were cut off
from public utility at the maturity of their powers,
and during the best years of their lives as counselors;
while, in more than one case, they themselves have
been not only without occupation, but practically
without means,-objects, almost, of public charity;
- in the cases of Jefferson and Monroe, indeed, -
actually so.
"Such is the historical statement of the case. Now
consider for a moment what possible injury could
[16]
such a way
result. On the one hand, a dignified and adequate
provision would be made for our ex-Presidents, in
that the country would be assured of their
services and counsel. On the other hand, experience
has shown that there never would have been more
than three, at the outside, Senators for life, and, as
a rule, but one. To-day, for instance, there would
be just one; and that one ex-President Cleveland.
“The mere statement of the case seems to me to
carry conviction. We all know how difficult it is to
engraft anything on to the Constitution. Neverthe-
less, the only argument that could be advanced
against this proposition is, that the thing never has
been; therefore it is undesirable it ever should be.
“I submit that this argument is not entitled to
serious consideration."
Believe me, etc.,
CHARLES F. ADAMS.
IV
THOUGH the method here proposed of utilising the
talents and experience of our ex-Presidents has been
received with almost unqualified popular favor, some
questions have been raised about its practicability
which are entitled to careful and unbiased considera-
[17]
tion. One of these questions, bearing the signature
of an eminent member of the New York bar, invites
some comment. He says:
“I should be gratified, for the historic as well as
for the future political interest of your suggestion,
to look up the discussions, if discussions there were,
at the time of the formation of the Constitution on
the subject of life tenures, whether of judges or of
others. My impressions on the subject are so slight
that they are hardly worth stating. No doubt you
have considered, however, the principle which we had
supposed to be essentially American, that, except in
judicial matters, public power of all kinds, high and
low, should be subject to popular renewal and effect-
ive criticism from time to time. I hope as soon as a
few hours of leisure come to me, to look up what
literature there is upon the subject, in addition to
your very persuasive argument.”
How far it would have been wise for the fathers
of the republic to have made “public power of all
kinds, high and low, except in judicial matters, sub-
ject to popular renewal and effective criticism from
time to time” may be a debatable question; but I
think a little reflection will satisfy this correspondent
that it cannot yet be treated as an American prin-
ciple, any more than the Monroe Doctrine can be
treated as international law.
[18]
The army of military pensioners is already several
times more numerous than the entire regular military
and naval service of the United States, and is contin-
ually on the increase. Every officer in both services
is also entitled to be retired with pay for life after a
prescribed term. When General Miles, the com-
manding general of the army, retired from active
service, his country provided him with a liberal
salary for life. But when his superior officer, the
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the
United States, President Roosevelt, retires, he takes
nothing with him but his personal baggage and his
shadow. He is bundled out of the White House
.
with his family with less ceremony than if he were
an insolvent tenant. What possible excuse is there
for this discrimination against the one public ser-
vant who has been honored with the highest office in
his country's gift, in favor of a subordinate whom
he or one of his predecessors must have appointed
and commanded, and upon whom the people have
never had occasion to express their opinion.
The justices of the Supreme Court are appointed
for life, with the privilege of retiring at a certain
age on full pay. These especial conditions are pre-
sumably because of their being experts in juris-
prudence. If there was ever any excuse for making
such an exception in the case of such an expert, is
[19]
not the excuse for making a Senator of an ex-Presi-
dent many times stronger? The ex-President cer-
tainly would carry into the Senate degrees and
kinds of information in regard to governmental af-
fairs which no Senator, however long his period of
service, could pretend to possess. Neither can he be
presumed like the Judge or the General to have sur-
vived his usefulness by the weight of years.
The whole trend of our Civil Service system con-
tradicts the notion “that public power of all kinds,
high and low, should be subject to popular renewal
and effective criticism from time to time,” is in any
sense an American principle-or if it ever was, that
it is such any longer. Every person selected under
our Civil Service law holds his office during good
behavior. In other words, it is as much a life tenure
office as that of a justice of the Supreme Court. The
tendency for many years has been to extend the
operation of that law to all branches of the public
service, national, state and municipal. The essence
of it is that Civil Service functionaries shall not be
subject to popular renewal. So far from it, the chief
if not the whole object of the law, whether wise or
unwise, was to prevent such a renewal.
Of course, in a republic where the people are sov-
ereigns, the legislative power must be confided to
[ 20 ]
representative bodies. It is also true that the Senate
is in the constitutional sense a more representative
body than any of the Executive departments, and
therefore has been made subject to renewal—but
not like the House of Representatives, to popular
renewal. Senators are not elected by the people, but
by the legislatures of the several States, and no
single Senator can be said to represent more than
half a State; and where they disagree, the State may
be
qua ad imperfectly, if at all, represented. A Presi-
dent-Senator, on the other hand, would represent the
whole nation, and of course every State of the
nation; he would also be more free at all times than
any other Senators, from inducements or tempta-
tions—not to say obligations—to misrepresent it, as
he would be beyond the reach of factious or partisan
instructions. He would have the additional ad-
vantage of being the only member whose conduct in
that body could not be suspected of being influenced
by a desire for a re-election either to that or to any
higher office. It gives no preference to any one State
because no one can foresee what States will furnish
the Presidents that are to succeed the present in-
cumbent.
[21]
V
Two questions were raised by one of our leading
public prints in this form:
First: That the ex-President would be a son and
citizen of some particular State which he would
represent, and not the nation at large;
Second: That “a fundamental requirement of our
system of government is that each State shall have
equal representation in the United States Senate,
of which requirement the introduction of an ex-
President would be a violation.
To these objections it may be replied:
First: Should the ex-President prove the “Son
of his State” he would necessarily prove ex officio
far less so than every other member of that body;
and that would be so much to the good, as he would
be no more dependent upon his State than he would
be upon the thermometer for the garments he puts
on in the morning.
Second: In regard to such an amendment inter-
fering with the representation of the States in the
Senate I will here cite a letter from an authority,
.
[ 22 ]
than which I know of none more weighty. The
recent demise of our late Secretary of State, Mr.
John Hay, which has clothed his country in mourn-
ing and swept with clouds of sorrow the whole
civilized world, has removed the only objection to
its publication. In a letter to the writer dated
Washington, D. C., November 18th, 1904, he wrote:
“I recognize the advantages that lie in the sugges-
tion you make, which has been considered from
time to time with more or less attention by members
of Congress and by the newspapers, but I have
heard, perhaps, more of the objections that would
be made to it than you have. A Constitutional
amendment is in itself one of the most difficult
things to bring about under the sun. It requires
so near an approach to absolute unanimity that it
is hardly possible in a matter giving room for any
discussion. The one objection which has hitherto
appeared fatal to the proposition is that it would
destroy the equality of the States in the Senate.
I do not agree with this myself, but it seems to be
effective in the minds of most politicians. In the
present case it would be sufficient to settle the ques-
tion to say: ‘What! do you propose to give New
York four seats in the Senate?
“Yours faithfully,
"JOHN HAY."
>>
[ 23 ]
It is gratifying rather than surprising to learn
that the chief objection made to the proposed dis-
position of ex-Presidents was regarded by Mr. Hay
as frivolous, but, as in his opinion that objection was
shared by so many as to constitute a hitherto fatal
obstacle, it is entitled here to be seriously treated.
As the average of ex-Presidents for the last
hundred years has been less than three in number, it
seems a good deal like borrowing trouble to suppose
that such an addition to the upper house of Congress
would be likely ever to more seriously disturb its
representative quality or political equilibrium than
it was intended, apparently, to be disturbed by our
Conscript fathers. As a matter of fact, however,
there are no two States in this Union the people of
which have equal representation in the United States
Senate, or can ever expect to have, under the present
Constitution.
I might extend this remark to nearly half of the
representation in the lower House of Congress if it
were pertinent to the present discussion. If there
is anything more conspicuous than any other in the
Constitution of the United States Senate, it is the
gross inequality of the representation of the several
States in that body.
The following seventeen States of this Union
occupy thirty-four seats in the United States Senate:
[ 24 ]
Delaware
North Dakota
Florida
Oregon
Idaho
Rhode Island
Louisiana
South Dakota
Maine
Utah
Montana
Vermont
Nevada
Washington
New Hampshire West Virginia
Wyoming
Their aggregate population does not exceed
7,500,000.
The State of New York, with a population already
of over 8,000,000, has but two Senators. Were the
Constitution to confer life Senatorships upon ex-
Presidents, New York, with an average of ten times
the population of these seventeen States together
would have to-day but three. To give New York
the same representation as is now enjoyed by
Nevada, she would be entitled to at least eighty
Senators. Nor is there any politico-differential cal-
culus by which it can be shown that this inequality
in the representation of the States in the Senate is
destined to diminish under our present Constitution.
There are four more territories already clamoring
at Washington for statehood, -New Mexico, Ari-
zona, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory. They only
failed at the last session of Congress because their
[ 25 ]
friends could not agree about the number to be ad-
mitted at once. They are all liable to be admitted
any day as four new and independent States.
Their aggregate population would measure up
according to a report of the Committee on Ter-
ritories but 790,391. They would have eight seats
in the Senate on the basis of population which would
entitle New York to at least twenty-two seats in
addition to the thirty-four she is now constitutionally
entitled to, to equalize her senatorial representation
with that of the seventeen States before named,
which would be at least fifty-four more Senators to
share with Senators Platt and Depew the honor of
representing the Empire State in the upper House
of Congress.
When we reflect that not a treaty with a foreign
nation can be negotiated, no executive or diplomatic
officer of the federal government can be confirmed,
and no appropriation bill for its expenses be passed,
without the approval of a majority of the Senate, it
is difficult to see how with a sober face anyone can
speak of this measure as liable to impair the present
representative character of that body.
The farcical feature of this objection becomes
more conspicuous when we reflect that every Senator
represents not only four times as much power for the
obstruction of legislation as any member of the
[ 26 ]
House of Representatives, but that in addition to
that it has the power which the lower House does not
enjoy, of sharing with the President the control of
all the patronage of the government and of all
our relations, political or commercial, with foreign
powers. On these vital questions, probably within a
year a voter in Arizona will have seventy-nine times
as much influence as any citizen of New York.
I will not presume to judge the motives which
prompt the present majority in Congress to press
the conversion of these four sparsely settled ter-
ritories into few or many States now, but it will be
a surprise to any careful observer of political forces
should either of the new States ever send any but
Republicans to the United States Congress while
that party is in control at both ends of Pennsylvania
Avenue. Many parties may be called, but few
chosen from, but the Republican.
VI
It is a fact worthy of most serious consideration
that the
Thirty-four actual Senators of the seventeen
States hereinbefore first enumerated, occupy
more than one-third of all the seats in our
Senate,
[27]
One seat more than are occupied by all the
Democratic Senators,
More than half as many seats as are occupied
by the party in power,
Hold practically the balance of power in the
confirmation or rejection of every treaty,
In the adoption or rejection of every appro-
priation bill, and upon the
Confirmation of every nomination to office by
the President.
Combined, they have power enough by obstruc-
tion, to control the patronage and to dictate the
entire public policy of the country. Can that be
considered a representative government where the
people of all the States are so misrepresented? Is
it a system worth defending? Is it not still less
worthy of cultivating and expanding?
It was one of the grievances which built
anti-slavery party in our Union that the slave States,
– which were by millions inferior in the number of
their white population, enjoyed for so many years a
representation of their property in the federal Con-
gress and a voting power not enjoyed by the non-
slave-holding States. But the voting power of the
country is far more unequally distributed now than
it ever was in the days of slave representation, and
if, as no one now contests, like causes produce like
up the
[ 28 ]
effects, what has the future in store for us when all
our western and tropical wildernesses are invested
with State sovereignty as they doubtless will be be-
fore another generation comes to the polls?
Perhaps there are some young, ignorant or bold
enough to say that such combinations as result in
civil or foreign wars in this enlightened country are
now impossible; that it is only to the Spanish-Amer-
ican Republics we must look for such brutal and
reckless partisanship. Let us pause a moment to
see what our own history has to say upon that
subject.
VII
THE recognition by our forefathers of the right of
the slave States to have every five of their slaves
reckoned in their congressional representation as
equal to three white men, conferred upon the slave
States privileges and a power in the government of
such importance that when the census of 1860
revealed to the owners of these slaves the fact that
the political power of the country, in spite of these
advantages, had crossed the Potomac, they with
practical unanimity pleaded the doctrine of State
rights, and resolved to withdraw from the Union.
A civil war the most costly in blood as well as treas-
[ 29 ]
ure that had then ever been waged in any Christian
country was the consequence. While objections to
the inequality of representation in this rupture were
reinforced, by a strong moral sentiment against
slavery, this reinforcement cannot be said to have
taken the field until long after the National Union
was threatened. The war did not and could not end
otherwise than it did, in the emancipation of the
slaves and the final elimination of whatever sanction
it had ever been suspected of giving to the South a
representation not enjoyed by the Free States.
Nor is this the only instance in which unequal
representation has led to a defiance of the Consti-
tution, and a defiance too for which the nation has
not yet fully atoned, as it may be said to have done
in the preceding instance.
It was probably only the delicacy of Mr. Tilden's
health which prevented his visiting Washington
during the electoral count of '76, that induced the
American people to tolerate, for four years, the
presidency of one who had not been their choice.
Three States had to be and were corruptly disfran-
chised to prevent Mr. Tilden's installation as our
Chief Magistrate, to which office he had been chosen
by a popular majority of 264,300 and a larger
majority by some 700,000 than had ever been before
[ 30 ]
given by the people of the United States for any
other presidential candidate.
It may be well for every patriotic American to
reflect upon the fact that the three States selected
for that debauchery, Louisiana, Florida and Oregon,
are a part and parcel of the seventeen States above
cited in which these disproportionate shares of
political power were then and are still enjoyed.
A republic can no more be permanently reconciled
to any principle of popular misrepresentation than
our physical system can be reconciled to the insertion
into it of a foreign body. Sooner or later one must
be ejected, or the other succumb.
Statesmen who are in the habit of looking beyond
the chances of their re-election will do well to keep
these two most memorable crises of our national
existence in mind before they make an issue with the
people of this country over the accidental and tem-
porary addition of one or two members to the
Senatorial representation of the State or States
which occasionally furnish a President for the nation.
Experience teaches us that such are the states always
most exposed to inadequate Senatorial representa-
tions. Is it quite fair to assume that the States whose
representation is so disproportionate to that of the
more populous ones, would hesitate assent to the
[ 31 ]
proposed constitutional amendment on the ground
supposed to actuate them by Mr. Hay; the only
ground which to him seemed formidable enough to
be worthy of mention.
Visitors to the Senate Chamber during the present
session of Congress have remarked two vacant seats,
one reserved for a Senator-elect from Kansas, Mr.
Burton, and the other for Mr. Mitchell, a Senator-
elect from Oregon. Both these gentlemen have been
detained at home by their constituents as capable of
rendering them more efficient service in their re-
spective State prisons than in Washington. The
prophets tell us that what has been shall be, and it
would look like a special dispensation of Providence
if our ex-Presidents might supply the places of
Senators-elect whose services at home could not be
dispensed with. Should the seat of Mr. Burton be
at once given to Mr. Cleveland, and in due time that
of Mr. Mitchell to Mr. Roosevelt, would the States
whose representation would be thus supplemented,
would the country, would the Senate, have any good
reason to complain of the change?
Without some resource of this kind, that branch
of our government may be liable to never again have
its full complement of legislators.
Whatever may be the real or imaginary risks of
an attempt to amend the Constitution, no one will
[ 32 ]
presume to compare them with the perils of a civil
war, with which, for almost the identical cause, we
have been once already afflicted, and have very nar-
rowly-some still think unwisely-escaped a second.
VIII
FROM another prominent lawyer' of whom unhappily
the New York bar has been recently bereaved, a
view was taken of the proposal under consideration
which from a less distinguished source might have
been overlooked. He writes:
"I do not enthuse very much on the proposition.
"One of the finest things I ever saw was Grover
Cleveland after his first term, practising law the
same as before he was President. I tried some cases
before him and it did not occur to me that he lost
dignity in acting as referee. I should like to see
every ex-President do the same. Again I greatly
deprecate amending the Constitution.
amendment makes us more familiar with the idea of
amendments and much amending will destroy."
There is a proverb which, though very venerable,
is still quite as good as new—that “it is never too
late to mend." And so far as children of men are
Every
1 Wheeler H. Peckham
[ 33 ]
concerned, the need of amendments never diminishes
however faithfully we practice it. A national con-
stitution which is too weak to bear the risks of mend-
ing what needs mending, is one that we may be sure
is surviving whatever usefulness it had ever been
capable of exerting. I think my learned corre-
spondent entirely underrated the vigor of our federal
Constitution, and that he would have been not a little
embarrassed to name any one of the several amend-
ments to which that instrument has been subjected
which, if submitted now to a popular vote, would be
repealed or in any vital particular modified, or which
has in any degree impaired its value or authority as
fundamental law for a Republic. His view is cer-
tainly not shared by our present Chief Magistrate,
who has allowed the impression to go forth that he
will insist upon at least two amendments to our Con-
stitution if the lawyers declare them necessary to
give effect to measures which he deems important.
In returning to his profession for his livelihood
Mr. Cleveland certainly "did a fine thing,” even if
the practice of living by one's calling were not so
universal in this country as to shock no one by see-
ing it adopted by an officer for whom the people
were made to believe they had no farther use. Mr.
Cleveland however did not find it fine enough to
resume upon his final retirement from the presi-
[ 34 ]
dency, though still young and vigorous enough to
contemplate a third presidential term without ap-
prehension. Fine as it was, I do not believe my
distinguished correspondent would have pretended
for a moment that Mr. Cleveland was as profit-
ably employed, either for his country or himself,
while engaged in settling the sordid controversies
of John Doe and Richard Roe, as he might have
been as a member of the U. S. Senate, where he
could give the country the benefit of his rare ex-
perience in regulating our relations with foreign
governments and in settling the domestic policy
of his own.
What American at all sensitive about the honor
of his country can recall the ex-Presidential years
of General Grant without grieving that he had not
graduated from the White House into the Senate
of the United States instead of being beguiled into
a gambling den in Wall Street?
It may be said that no ex-President of the United
States has ever yet earned his necessary expenses.
In only a few if any cases had they need to. The
only one who ever added anything of moment to
his income after leaving the White House, except
by economy, was John Quincy Adams, whose
neighbors sent him to the lower house of Congress.
There he received a representative's salary until
[35]
his death-a period of some seventeen years. For
fifteen of these years Daniel Webster represented
Massachusetts in the Senate and with incompar-
able distinction as an orator. Yet when history
comes to assign the shares of gratitude which not
only Massachusetts but the nation owes to these
eminent statesmen, to which shall be assigned the
portion of Jacob, and to which the portion of Esau?
Shall the portion of Jacob go to the one who, re-
gardless of party alliances, and the wrath of an
embittered Federal party in 1835 supported Gen-
eral Jackson in compelling France to indemnify
our merchants for the depredations upon our com-
merce by the privateers of Bonaparte, and who
later, in defiance of a hostile Administration and
an almost unanimously hostile Congress, led a for-
lorn hope in favor of the Wilmot Proviso which
resulted in the successful exclusion of slavery from
the Free territories of our country, and finally
from North America? Or shall it go to him who
warred upon President Jackson in his resistance
to the use of Government money by a national
bank for purposes of discount and deposit; who
opposed the annexation of Texas to the United
States; who supported the pro-slavery Compromise
Measures of Henry Clay, and who defended the
[ 36 ]
Fugitive Slave Law? On such an issue it is not diffi-
cult to anticipate the verdict of History.
It is possible that Mr. Adams could have been
no more useful at that time in the Senate than he
was in the House of Representatives, which was
the real field of the battle in which he won his great-
est distinction. But who, in looking back to that
seventeen years of our national history, does not
feel that there was no other one then in either de-
partment of our government whose influence upon
the destinies of this nation was so valuable-I may
say so essential--as that of the ex-President, John
Quincy Adams; no other one whose services there,
could not have been more conveniently and more
cheerfully dispensed with than his? Who knows
when the same qualities which made Mr. Adams
at one time quite the most conspicuous and radiant
member of Congress, may not be again required,
and even to be reinforced with the additional pres-
tige of Senatorial eminence?
The discussion of the problem we have been try-
ing to solve, would still be too brief if it failed to
recognize the very considerable expansion of its
importance within recent years. Almost within the
life of a single generation, three new republics have
entered into diplomatic relations with the United
[37]
States: those of France, of Cuba and of Panama.
The French people have always entertained pro-
found respect for authority, whatever may have
been their occasional states of mind towards its
transient possessors. If we were to set the example
of transforming our ex-Presidents into President-
Senators, France would not be long in following,
and of course all the Spanish-American republics
would go and do likewise and with auspicious con-
sequences not difficult to forecast. The revolutions
by which all these countries have been kept in a
state of seismic disquiet for centuries have usually
resulted from the desire of one usurper out of power
to displace another usurper in power. It is diffi-
cult to conceive any device for the peaceful trans-
mission of the chief magistracy of those countries
and all others professing a recognition of the pop-
ular sovereignty, superior to the one here pro-
posed, of securing their Presidents a dignified
retreat into the upper house of their national legis-
lature respectively with a suitable pension for life.
The Philippine Islands must ultimately be-
come a group
a group of one or of several republics. .
Their present state of colonial dependence is irrecon-
cilable with the fundamental principles of our
government, and to share our system of popular
representation with their inhabitants within any
[38]
definite period of years or centuries is unthinkable.
Then too, the dynastic governments of Europe
are all more or less atrophic. Every year since
England acknowledged the independence of the
United States, the jure divino sovereigns, once so
absolute—their power once only contested by traitors
and outlaws, has been gradually but steadily declin-
ing, until to-day there is no dynastic ruler in Europe
who is not more restricted in his personal freedom
than any of his law-abiding subjects. Few indeed
dare to appear in any public thoroughfare without a
strong police or military escort nor often with one;
not one of them is at liberty to choose the God he
will worship nor the way he will worship it or Him.
.
Not one is at liberty to choose his wife or a mate
for his heir, nor has he a vote or a veto on any
public measure. The time does not seem to be
far distant when there will be no crowned head
in Europe who would not be grateful to enjoy
the ampler power of an American President with
the prospect guaranteed to him by a Constitu-
tion of laying aside his executive uniform at the ex-
piration of a prescribed term of service for the robe
of a life President-Senator.
It requires no special fervor of the imagination
to foresee the day when these President-Senators
would of themselves constitute an aristocracy
[ 39 ]
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 07337 0689
whom all the world would delight to honor. They
would never be numerous, but, as the elect of the
nations, with no political aspirations to gratify,
with a greater familiarity with the needs and inter-
ests of each other's governments and peoples than
could ever be possessed by any other body or asso-
ciation, they would inevitably be drawn into sympa-
thetic relations with one another, and as a body
possess an Ecumenicity shared by no other body
or corporation known to history, for the adjust-
ment of the differences and promotion of harmony
among the various political and racial divisions of
the human family. Shall not the blessing promised
to the peacemaker descend first upon this exalted
confraternity of President-Senators, as the most de-
serving ministers of the Prince of Peace as the sun
puts its crown of golden light at dawn upon the
loftiest peak of Mont Blanc before any of its
humble Alpine brothers emerge from their nocturnal
obscurity?
[ 40 ]
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