.jpg)
Another leading but not total old democrat with some
openness to new democracy was Hugh Williamson.
His main departure from old democratic principles was that he lacked the
New Englanders’ fetish with very frequent elections. He did not speak up on length of term for the
House and favored a six year term for the Senate over seven years simply
because six years were easier to stagger at two-year intervals. In particular, he did not favor a
very short term for the executive. He proposed a six-year term, saying that too frequent elections were too expensive
and discouraged the best characters. With a limit to a
single term, he would even agree to ten or twelve years. When the other delegates agreed to a
four-year term, Williamson preferred six or seven years.
Otherwise,
Williamson was generally an across-the-board old democrat, especially on the
issues that did not greatly interest Sherman.
He spoke three times on behalf of enlarging the House.
He also strongly opposed allowing the Senate to originate money bills,
saying that requiring someone in the House to propose them would allow the
people to mark him. He said that he agreed to equality in the Senate only in exchange for requiring the House to
originate money bills,* seconded a motion forbidding the Senate from altering any bill for raising
revenue, and urged people who considered the issue
unimportant to “indulge” ones who did consider it important, adding that he
could not agree to give the Senate any additional powers if it could originate
money bills.
Closely related, in Williamson’s mind, was the issue of ineligibility to
office. At a time when the Senate was
allowed to originate money bills, he likened it to a House of Lords that could
originate money bills and said that ending ineligibility to office would allow
legislators to cut out offices for each other.
“Bad as the Constitution has been made by expunging the restriction on
the Senate concerning money bills, he did not make it worse by expunging the
present Section [on ineligibility].” Yet he later seconded a motion to make
legislators ineligible only to offices they create.
His record on a variety of other measures is mixed. He did not support did not a ceiling on the size of the
army, saying that restrictions on the length of appropriations was the best
safeguard and favored a ban on ex post facto laws and a guarantee of trial by jury in civil cases.
With regard
to the executive, Williamson favored election by the national legislature. He considered the
difference between election by the legislature and by the people to be like the
difference between appointment by lot and by choice. The people would not know eminent characters
outside of their states and the winner would come from the largest state. The independence of the executive could be protected by allowing him only one term. If election was to be by the people, he favored requiring everyone to vote for three candidates because at least some
of the three would be from another state. Although he ultimately agreed to the
Electoral College, he considered it too "aristocratic" for the Senate to break
electoral deadlocks.
Williamson also generally seemed to distrust executive power. He preferred a three-man executive to
one-man, saying that different sections of the country had different interests
that needed to be represented, and besides, a single executive would be too
much like a king, and would try to remain in office for life and pass the
office on to his children. He also favored making the executive
impeachable for “mal-practice or neglect of duty.” He originally opposed the executive veto,
preferring to require a two-thirds vote of the legislature on all laws, although he later became reconciled to an executive veto and for a time
even favored requiring a three-quarters vote to override a veto, although he later changed his mind back to two-thirds to avoid giving the
President too much power.
On new
democratic issues, Williamson had a more mixed record. He opposed restricting the vote to
freeholders. The
national legislature should not be allowed to set its own qualifications, or
they might limit membership to a “particular description” of men, such as
lawyers, but he favored requiring nine, rather than seven,
years’ citizenship to serve in the Senate. He was also more ambivalent toward the West
than Sherman. He favored representation
by population rather than by wealth, except for the Western states, which he
would represent on an equal basis only if their property was equal to the
Atlantic states. He
firmly favored requiring Congress to make periodic reapportionments, saying that he “was for making it the duty of the Legislature to do what was right
& not leaving it at liberty to do or not do it.” Yet he distrusted the West, saying that
western states would be poor and unable to pay their share and should therefore
be limited in power or they would try to shift too much of the tax burden onto
commerce.
Williamson, by the way, though he represented North Carolina, was a native of Pennsylvania, who lived for some time in New England and ended his life in New York, and a merchant by trade. He may therefore have been closer to the views of the commercial elite on the Western states than to the views of most of his follow Southerners.
*Interestingly enough, when the proposal was originally made, Williamson dismissed requiring money bills to originate with the House as insignificant,
saying that it would be better to require money bills to originate in the
Senate, which would be more closely watched.
No comments:
Post a Comment