.jpg)
James Madison was also, on the
whole, a new democrat, although less completely or enthusiastically so than
Wilson. He favored popular election of
the House instead of election by state legislatures, but his reasons are revealing:
He observed that in some of the states on branch of the Legislature was composed of men already removed from the people by an intervening body of electors. [Actually, only Maryland had such a system]. That if the first branch of the general legislature should be elected by the State Legislatures, the second branch elected by the first, -- the Executive by the second together with the first; and other appointments again made for subordinate purposes by the Executive, the people would be lost sight of altogether, an the necessary sympathy between them and their rulers and officer, too little felt. He was an advocate for the policy of refining the popular appointment by successive filtrations, but though it might be pushed too far.
He later declared that direct popular election of “at least
one branch of the Legislature” necessary to free government, as well as useful
to avoid to great agency of state governments. In short, he favored popular election of the
lower house, but probably not to other offices.
As we have previously seen, his original Virginia Plan called for
election of the upper house by the lower house.
He resisted election of the Senate by state legislatures, mostly because
it gave to great agency in the federal government to states and because he
opposed giving each state equal representation in the Senate and therefore
believed that guarantying each state at least one Senator would make the Senate
too large. He preferred election “by the
people, or thro’ some other channel than the State Legislatures.” This would seem to suggest
that he his favored mode of election of the Senate was by the lower house, but
he preferred election by the people directly to election by state legislatures. Madison also leaned toward popular election
of the chief executive. Wanting the
executive to be independent of the legislature and fearing corruption and
intrigue if election were by the legislature, he favored popular election on
the merits:
The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce and Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally would only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem.
The only problem with such a system was that the southern
states would be at a disadvantage, since much of their population consisted of
non-voting slaves. Madison therefore
proposed the substitution of electors to overcome the difficulty. When his proposal for electors
was rejected, Madison said that with all its imperfections, he preferred this
mode. Even though it was disadvantageous
to the South, local considerations must give way to the general interest. “As an individual from the S. States he was
willing to make the sacrifice.”
Like all
Virginians at the Convention, Madison was a leading champion of the West. “No unfavorable distinctions were admissible
either in point of justice of policy.”
The whole principle of just representation would be subverted by denying
Western states their fair share. When
Gouverneur Morris unblushingly stated that Pennsylvania was better off for
making sure power stayed in the eastern parts of the state, Madison denounced this
as an injustice, just like England, which gave each borough equal
representation despite their very unequal population. He even acknowledged that Virginia, which had
two representatives for each county regardless of population, was guilty of the
same injustice. Madison was particularly
outraged by Morris’ cynicism in assuring the South (which was expected to gain
population relative to the North) that Congress did not need to be required to
make periodic reapportionments because it could be trusted, while at the same
time calling on all existing states to band together to deny the West its fair
share. “To reconcile the gentle[man]
with himself, it must be imagined that he determined the human character by
points on a compass.” Madison seemed to have mixed opinions about property
representation. As we have seen, he
proposed a north-south compromise which would have the lower house be the
guardian of persons and be apportioned by free population and the upper house
be the guardian of property and be apportioned by total population, slave and
free. With regard to the west, however,
he argued that population alone was the proper basis of representation, and
that population was a near enough measure of wealth to be a good measure of a
state’s ability to contribute to public burdens
Madison was
also generally a new democrat in his attitude toward voting
qualifications. He considered it dangerous to allow Congress to set either qualifications for office or for
voting, as these were fundamental articles in a republic and should be
guarantied by the Constitution. Giving
such a power to Congress was begging for it to be abused; either one faction
would manipulate qualifications to keep out another faction, or they could narrow
qualifications in order to subvert the republic and create an aristocracy. He did not consider
it necessary to require any number of years’ citizenship to serve in the either
the Senate or the House because Congress could set any number of years’
residency for citizenship. Such a
restriction was "illiberal" and would discourage immigration from Europeans who
loved liberty and wanted to share it. He opposed requiring land ownership as a
qualification for office:
Every class of citizens should have an opportunity of making their rights be felt & understood in the public Councils. The principle classes into which our citizens were divisible, were the landed the commercial, & the manufacturing. The 2nd & 3rd class yet bear a small proportion to the first. The proportion however will daily increase. . . . It is particularly requisite therefore that the interests of one or two of them should not be left entirely to the care, or the impartiality of the third
Yet Madison had a very severe shortcoming as a new democrat,
one that many people today might regard as disqualifying him as a new democrat
altogether, and one that is all the more surprising in the light of the
foregoing statement. He wanted to restrict the vote to freeholders.
Acknowledging that such a restriction might meet too much popular
resistance to pass, and that too narrow a suffrage could create an aristocracy,
he nonetheless said:
In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of, property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case the rights of property & the public liberty, will not be secure in their hands: or which is the more probable, they wil become the tools of opulence & ambition, in which case there will be equal danger on another side.
Madison did not seem to realize denying the vote to “a great
majority of the people” was the very definition of aristocracy, nor did it
apparently occur to him that the propertyless nonetheless had legitimate
interests that might need to be protected against property holders. It is stranger still that he recognized non-land-holders
had legitimate interests that needed representation and therefore would not
require land ownership as a qualification to holding office. Apparently he would allow the landless to
hold office to represent the interest of non-land-holders, yet disallow those
same non-land-holders from voting! Nor is this an isolated remark. He worried about the danger of internal
insurrections, at least in part because a majority of qualified voters might be
a minority of the total population and the disenfranchised “for obvious reasons
may be more ready to joint the standard of sedition.”* Likewise, one of the purposes he saw for the
Senate was to resist “those who will labour under all the hardships of life
& secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings” who might
some day become a majority of the population.
Madison
favored at least one old democratic principle; he favored doubling the size of
the House, both because 65 members was too small in absolute numbers, since a
quorum would be a dangerously small 38 and because 65 members would be too
thinly taken from the people to have adequate knowledge of local conditions. He favored a three year term for the House,
saying that too frequent elections would make an unstable legislature, keep members
too busy traveling home to run for reelection, and would not give them time to
learn about matters outside their states. He also favored a long term for
the Senate, seven or nine years, to give more stability to the government and
allow it to resist unwise popular pressure as the result of temporary passions
or poorly informed opinions, and to protect the minority from the oppressions
of the majority. He also favored a small Senate, which would
have more “coolness” and “wisdom” than the popular branch.
Madison favored a strong,
independent executive; this was why he opposed election of the executive by the
legislature. The greatest danger was of
the legislature drawing all powers into its vortex; hence the executive needed
to be protected from legislative usurpations. He therefore supported an executive veto. He opposed an absolute veto as “obnoxious to
the temper of this Country” and so drastic the President would hesitate to use
it, but favored joining the judiciary to the executive veto,
both to strengthen his firmness in using it and to prevent him from abusing it
(for instance, from being bribed by a foreign power), favored allowing the President to veto “resolutions” and “votes” as well as bills, and preferred a three-fourths, rather than a two-thirds vote
to overrule a veto. On the other hand, he believed that the executive should be impeachable
to protect against possible “incapacity, negligence or perfidy” on the part of
the executive. Waiting until his term
expired would not be could enough if the problem was serious. He also preferred either to
have judges appointed by the Senate or at
least to allow the Senate to block Presidential appointment of judges.
He took a moderate position on making legislators ineligible to
office. Legislators should be ineligible to offices they create or raise the pay for in order to prevent corruption, but
should not be excluded from office altogether, which would discourage worthy
citizens from running for the legislature. He favored prefacing federal authority to
regulate the militia with the words, “And that the liberties of the people
might be better secured against the dangers of standing armies in time of
peace,” saying that it acknowledged standing armies as an evil, but did not
prevent them when needed.
Finally, and from today’s
perspective most important, Madison said nothing in the convention about a bill
of rights. After the Constitution was
adopted, however, he was the driving factor in adopting a bill of rights. Madison at this time was noted for his theory
that the majority, given the opportunity, will oppress the minority, and that
the only remedy is to enlarge the society so much that it takes in so many
interests that no one interest can dominate and the majority cannot oppress the
majority. Madison tended to express this in terms of
debtors defrauding creditors, or some other popular minority oppressing an
elite minority and has therefore been criticized as a
champion of elites over the common people.
As we have seen above, there is some justice to this criticism. But Madison’s view was broader than
that. One of the greatest champions of
religious liberty, he was well aware of the dangers of a religious majority
oppressing a religious minority. This Virginia slave holder even acknowledged that “We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened
period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man
over man.”
No comments:
Post a Comment