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Roger Sherman (who Madison sometimes spells "Sharman") was another leading old democrat, although not
so completely across-the-board as Gerry, and also more open to at least some
new democratic ideas, especially with regard to the western states.
He opened by opposing one important new
democratic principle; he wanted election to the House of Representative to be
by state legislatures instead of by the people, with the comment, “The people .
. . immediately should have as little to do as may be about the
Government. They want [lack] information and
are constantly liable to be misled.” His concern was
not just distrust of the people, but fear for the future of states, which he believed would be weakened if not allowed to participate in the new government. He also favored election of the
Senate by state legislatures.
At the same time, he acted as an old democrat, calling for the House to
serve annual terms, since “Representatives ought to return
home and mix with the people. By
remaining at the seat of Gov’t they would acquire habits of the place which
might differ from those of their Constituents.” Given that it
was also around the same time that Sherman was arguing that there was no need
for “another” branch of the legislature, to be elected by the people, it is clear that there was nothing contradictory or paradoxical in
Sherman’s position. He favored a
one-house legislature, elected to one-year terms by the state legislatures,
with each state having an equal vote, in other words, he wanted to keep the
same system as the articles of Confederation.
Yet, just as Sherman was one of the leading proponents of the Great
Compromise, he also acceeded to popular election of the House and two-year terms
so readily as to leave one wondering if he was showing statesmanship or
spinelessness.
Sherman
also opposed long terms for the Senate, regarding either seven years or nine as too long, although he would agree to four, five or six
years. It was in response to a proposal
for a nine-year term that Sherman made his comment that, “Frequent elections
are necessary to preserve the good behavior of rulers,” and adding that if
rulers behaved well, they would be reelected and the government would be
stable. Connecticut was stable, and look
how frequent elections were there! He favored making members of the national
legislature ineligible to executive offices as a source of corruption and undue
executive influence. He also showed at least some
distrust of standing armies, with the comment that “He should himself he said
like a reasonable restriction on the number and continuance of an army in time
of peace.” Yet he considered it safe to
limit military appropriations to two years instead of one, since a legislature
serving two-year terms might only meet every two years. At the same time he considered “frequent”
meetings of the legislature essential to liberty, presumably to keep the
executive from becoming too powerful.
But above
all else, Sherman showed himself an old democrat in his fear of executive
power. He went further than any other
delegate in wishing to subordinate the executive to the legislature:
MR. SHERMAN was for the appointment by the Legislature, and for making him [the chief executive] absolutely dependent on that body, as it ws the will of that which was to be executed. An independence of the Executive on the supreme Legislature, was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing.*
Nor did Sherman originally even see the reason to specify
how many members the chief executive should have. Since the executive was “nothing more than an
institution for carrying out the will of the Legislature,” the legislature should
have the discretion to decide how many members there would be. When James Wilson pointed out that
all states had a single executive, Sherman agreed that a single executive was,
after all, the proper choice, but that, just as every state had an executive
council, and the national executive should have a council as well. He favored a three-year term for
the executive, with indefinite re-eligibility and giving the
legislature authority to remove the executive at will. He strongly opposed an executive for “good
behavior,” saying that being reeligible was the best guaranty of the
executive’s good behavior.
Significantly, almost everyone else at the Convention believed that if
the executive were to be elected by the legislature, then he should be
ineligible to a second term to ensure his independence from the
legislature. Although Sherman gave as
his reason for making the President reeligible that we should not get rid of
the best man for the job. It seems
likely that Sherman wanted to make the President reeligible in order to destroy
his independence from the legislature.
He also opposed or at least a absolute veto. “No one man could be found so far above all
the rest in wisdom.” He also opposed involving judges in
the veto and opposed requiring the President to sign “every
order, resolution or vote” except for votes to spend money. He definitely preferred a
two-third vote to a three-quarters to override a veto:
[T]he States would not like to see so small a minority and the President, prevailing over the general voice. In making laws regard should be had to the sense of the people, who are to be bound by them, and it was more probable that a single man should mistake or betray this sense then the Legislature.
Sherman also wanted the legislature, not the executive to
appoint judges, feared allowing the
President to appoint military officers lest he use them to create a military
dictatorship, and favored requiring the consent of the Senate for the
President to issue pardons, as well as having the legislature instead of
the executive appoint the treasurer.
Unlike
Gerry, however, Sherman did not support all old democratic principles. He saw no need to increase the size of the
House, preferring 50 to 65 members. He also saw no need to prohibit the Senate from
originating money bills, saying that the Senate was not a House of Lords, and
that the Connecticut Senate to originate money bills without harm. He saw no need for a bill of
rights, regarding the state bills of rights as sufficient, no need to guaranty freedom of the press, since the power of Congress did not
reach the press, and no need to forbid religious tests for
office holding.
Sherman had
mixed opinions on new democracy. As we
have seen, he opposed popular election of the House, Senate, or President. He also opposed making currently naturalized
foreigners eligible to federal offices, saying that it was the states, not the
federal government, that had offered them citizenship. On the other hand, he held a new democratic
opinion toward the western states. To
the suggestion that the western states should not be represented on the same
scale as the Atlantic states, Sherman said that the number of people was the
proper basis for representation, and that if representation was to be by
wealth, it would be measured by population. Sherman favored treating the western states
as equals at least in part because he believed they would never have more population
than the Atlantic states or, if they did, it was too far in the future to
consider. But he also said that they
were preparing a Constitution for posterity, who were as likely to live in the
west as the old states and should therefore not be discriminated against.
Originally, Sherman opposed requiring Congress to make periodic
reapportionments to match population shifts, but after listening to the
arguments of the Virginians, he agreed that specific rules needed to be laid
down. This was a
statesmanlike position for a New Englander to take, considering that they
expected their region to be the loser from it.
*This was very much a minority view. The general view followed Montesquieu, that separation of powers was essential for liberty, and that combining executive and legislative powers was tyranny.
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