Constitution as a Transition Between Old and New Democracy

It is pointless criticizing the Constitution for not establishing a full-scale new democracy when there was no serious call for a full-scale new democracy as we know it today.  Certainly, new democratic ideas were in circulation, and in a few people, most notably James Wilson, they were starting to take shape into an alternative to old democracy. 

But most people felt less an urgent need for a full-fledged new democracy than alarm at the Constitution’s threat to old democracy.  And, indeed, it defied old democratic principles at almost every turn – no annual elections, a mere sixty-five Representatives for a nation of three million people, a six-year term for the Senate, a strong executive without a council, partial eligibility of legislators to executive office, and no bill of rights.  Only two partial vestiges of old democracy remained.  All money bills had to originate in the House, keeping the power of the purse in the hands of the people, but this power was made largely meaningless because the Senate could change money bills.  Election of Senators by state legislatures could be considered an old democratic feature, because state legislatures could more easily instruct and control representatives than the people as a whole, but this, too, was made meaningless by their six-year terms, which allowed them to defy state legislatures with impunity.

Instead of seeing the Constitution as a rejection of old democracy, as its contemporary opponents did, or as a failure to achieve true new democracy, as some people do now, I believe we should see it as an important document in the transition from old democracy to new.   If the Constitution failed in several new democratic aspects, consider all the new democratic elements that it had.

The House was to be elected by the people directly (unlike the Continental Congress under the Articles) and, although there was no national guaranty of the vote, it was placed on the broadest basis that existed in the states.  Seats in the House were to be apportioned by population only, not by wealth (although the three-fifths rule was problematic), and to be reapportioned every ten years to ensure that it remained proportional to population.  Although the Constitution says the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000 inhabitants, it never specifies that each Congressional district must have equal population.  Nonetheless, it seems to have been generally assumed that each district would, in fact, have equal population. 

Under the original plan, the House was supposed to represent the people and the Senate the states.  If this does not appeal to today’s new democratic sensibilities, keep in mind that in many states at the time, the lower house represented the people and the upper house represented wealth, and many delegates to the Convention, including such democrats as George Mason, expected the U.S. Senate to play a similar role.  Representation of wealth plays no part in the Constitution (with the possible exception of the three-fifths rule).   Given the practice of instructing representatives that was common at the time, it is even possible that the delegates foresaw that presidential electors would be pledged to particular candidates, bringing presidential elections closer to the people than it would appear at first sight.  But most remarkable of all, there were no property or religious restrictions on federal office holders (nor restrictions of race or sex either), only restrictions of age and citizenship.  Of all states, only Pennsylvania completely eliminated property restrictions on office, and only Virginia, New York and (probably) Rhode Island did not have religious restrictions. 

In the years following the adoption of the Constitution, new democracy grew and old democracy slowly withered away.  We are taught to remember and honor the rise of new democracy – the end of restrictions on the vote, popular election of presidential electors and later Senators, the proliferation of elective state and local offices, the end of representation by wealth, the secret ballot and the adoption in many states of initiative and referendum.  We do not hear so much about the decline of old democracy – the end of annual elections, the ever-growing ratio of representation between representatives and voters, the end of instruction of representatives, the strengthening of executives, and our loss of fear of standing armies.  Certainly, the federal Constitution has proven to be amenable to new democratic reform, and our old democratic fears have long since been forgotten.

My object in this paper has not been to idealize old democracy (although perhaps I may be accused of it).  Whatever its other merits, old democracy has one irredeemable flaw – it is completely impractical in a society like ours today.  In a society of our scale, it is simply not possible for the voters to assemble to instruct their representatives.  When the great majority of the population is no longer self-employed, the risk of economic coercion in  any system of open voting is all too real.  Representation in a society as large as ours cannot possibly be in the sort of ratio considered necessary at the time the Constitution was adopted.  And to forego standing armies in today’s world would be nothing short of insanity.  But if my intention is not to idealize old democracy.  It is call into question any oversimplified assumptions about what democracy can be, and to discourage any smug assumptions of simple progress, or the belief that our history has been anything so simple as the story of democracy ever increasing.

Having completed the series on the Constitutional Convention, I plan to give this blog a break for a while.  When I return, it will be to discuss the controversy surrounding the adoption of the Constitution.

Criticisms of the Constitution as Undemocratic

People these days who criticize the Constitution, as originally drafted, as undemocratic do so on new democratic terms.  The undemocratic features of the Constitution as originally drafted are (1) it left in place existing state restrictions on the vote; (2) Senators were elected by state legislatures instead of the people; and (3) the President is elected by the Electoral College instead of the people directly, and at the time presidential electors were generally chosen by state legislatures. 

Yet these are not the arguments people made against the Constitution during the ratification debates.  When opponents of the Constitution criticized it as undemocratic, it was invariably on old democratic grounds.  People criticized the House of Representatives for have a two-year instead of a one-year term, for not being large enough to adequately represent the people, and for allowing Congress to regulate elections (many people feared that Congress would order elections to be held in some inaccessible place to prevent voters from attending) but not for retaining existing state restrictions on the vote.  People criticized the lack of an executive council and said that the President was too powerful or (surprisingly and more often) not powerful enough, but the Electoral College was a very minor source of controversy.  As for the Senate, people criticized its six-year terms, its small numbers, its ability to alter money bills, its equal representation by states (in large states), its role in appointments and treaties, and its role as a court of impeachments.  Election of Senators by the state legislatures was not controversial.  After all, under the Articles of Confederation, all representatives were elected by state legislatures.  Election of the Senate in the same manner merely continued a familiar custom.

In fact, James Wilson, who we have seen was the foremost new democrat at the Convention, made a famous speech in favor of the constitution in which he presented these as important arguments in favor of the Constitution.  Clearly, he said, the central government  could not be intended to destroy state governments if state legislatures set voting qualifications for the House, elect Senators and decide how presidential electors are to be chosen.  These three features show that the new system could not survive without states.*

The Federalist Papers are also revealing, going on the assumption that what they argue most strenuously is a good indication of what was most controversial at the time.  In the section on the House, they devote two essays to defending two-year terms, three essays to defendant Congress’ authority to regulate elections , three essays to arguing that the House is large enough to be safe to liberty and one paragraph to discussing voting qualifications.  Likewise, out of the five essays on the Senate, the election of Senators by state legislatures is dismissed in one short paragraph as “probably the most congenial with public opinion.”  As for the Electoral College,  Hamilton calls it, “almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe criticism or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents”

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*Wilson's speech was reprinted and circulated throughout the states and became the single best known document in favor of the Constitution.  As the earliest major Federalist argument, it effectively became the Federalist playbook that other arguments in favor of the Constitution followed.  The Federalist Papers in many places are simply an expansion on Wilson's arguments and would probably have seemed like a mere recitation of well-worn talking points by Anti-Federalist contemporaries.

Was There a Correlation Between Delegates' Support for Centralization and Democracy?

So, back to the original thesis I proposed, was there any correlation between a delegate’s position on centralization and his position on democracy?  Once one distinguishes between old and new democracy, the question becomes more complicated, but the answer becomes simpler.

First and most obvious, the two extreme nationalists, Alexander Hamilton and George Read, were also among the top advocates of mixed government.  Moderate nationalists also included some mixed government men, notably Gouverneur Morris, Rufus King and, arguably, Charles Pinckney.  But they also included the leading new democrats – James Wilson, James Madison, Nathaniel Gorham and, yes, Edmund Randolph and George Mason.  

Indeed, some nationalistic positions were inherently new democratic.  All nationalists except Charles Pinckney supported popular election of the House, and most favored representation by population.  Granted, some of them (Hamilton, Morris, King) held these positions for nationalistic, rather than democratic reasons, to limit state power, but the effect was democratic whatever the intention.  Significantly, of all these nationalists, only Randolph and Mason took the core old democratic position that legislators should be absolutely ineligible to executive office.  Also significantly, it was these two nationalists, who had significant old democratic as well new democratic views, who refused to sign the Constitution in its final form, partly for old democratic reasons and partly out of concern for state sovereignty.  Randolph worried that Congress’s power to spend money for the “general welfare” and make all laws “necessary and proper” to carry out its other powers were too broad, while Mason reverted to an outright state sovereignty man during the ratification debates.  But neither raised any new democratic objections, such as that state restrictions of the vote remained, or that the President and Senate were not directly elected.

On the other hand, moderates on centralization like Elbridge Gerry and Hugh Williamson and compromisers like Roger Sherman and Benjamin Franklin tended to be old democrats.  Franklin, though he favored the new democratic positions of opposing property restrictions on the vote or office holding, was clearly an old democrat in his distrust of the executive and wish for the power of the purse strings (and, ideally, all power) to be in the hands of the lower house.  Oliver Ellsworth, John Dickinson and the South Carolina moderates do not classify as clearly.  Yet on the core old democratic issue of ineligibility to office, all but Dickinson favored an absolute ineligibility of legislators to executive office. (Dickinson did not weigh in).

As for advocates of state sovereignty, they generally said little on the subject of how the federal government should be organized, being more interested in limiting its power than in structural details.  When they did take a position on the structure of the federal government, it was not necessarily a democratic one.  Luther Martin (Maryland) wanted judges to be chosen by the Senate instead of the executive and favored a ceiling on the size of a peacetime army.  These are both old democratic positions, but in both cases he was more interested in limiting the power of the central government than in democratizing it.  He opposed the new democratic principles of direct popular election of the House or representation by population as threats to the powers of states.  Similarly, William Patterson (New Jersey) in order to maintain state sovereignty was willing to go against not only the new democratic principles of popular election of the House and representation by population, but also the old democratic principle of a numerous legislature:  

With proper powers Congs [i.e., the old Continental Congress] will act with more energy & wisdom than the proposed Nat’l Legislature; being fewer in number, and more secreted & refined by the mode of election.

One might expect advocates of state sovereignty to favor the old democratic principle of short terms for both houses to keep the national legislature under the control of the states, but even this does not appear to have been the case.  It was the New England states of Massachusetts and Connecticut who took the lead in calling for annual terms for the House and less than seven years for the Senate; New York, New Jersey and Delaware all voted for a three-year term for the House, while New York split on a seven-year term for the Senate with New Jersey and Delaware in favor.  

The New Jersey Plan was old democratic in favoring a weak, plural national executive elected by the national legislature.  Overall, advocates of state sovereignty favored limiting the direct agency of the people in the federal government.  They probably did not see that as undemocratic.  Most likely, they saw the central government as so large and remote as to be inherently beyond the people’s control and believed that giving people direct agency in it would simply create a false appearance of democracy.  Real democracy would be best served by limiting the power of this remote government and keeping it at the more manageable state level.  It would be safer to keep agency in the hands of the states than the people, because states would be better able than the people to keep the central government under control.

The Inscrutable South Carolina: Somewhere Between Old Democracy and Mixed Government

If the South Carolina delegation scores low on new democracy, it scores low on old democracy as well, though never endorsing anything like mixed government.  Consider its position on old democracy issues:

Intermediate length terms:  Recall that old democracy set great stock in annual elections, while true advocates of mixed government wanted a Senate that served for life, or at least a very long term and a long term for the executive. South Carolina fit somewhere in between.  South Carolina’s electoral system worked on a two-year cycle so, not too surprisingly, the South Carolinians wanted to synchronize national elections to their cycle.  Rutledge favored a two-year term for the House, and South Carolina joined with New England in opposing a three-year term.  General Pinckney favored a four-year term for the Senate as opposed to a six-year term, fearing that Senators serving a six-year term would settle in at the capital and become alienated from their constituents. None of the other South Carolinians spoke up on the subject, but South Carolina did vote against nine, seven, six  and five year terms.  Charles Pinckney favored a seven-year term for the executive or, alternately, six years with a prohibition on consecutive terms.  Rutledge favored a single seven-year term.  Butler was less clear what the executive term should be, but he opposed too-frequent elections because it was inconvenient for the distant states to send electors often.

No need to restrict money bills to the House:  South Carolina required all money bills to originate in the lower house.  This apparently caused problems because all four South Carolinians opposed requiring money bills to originate in the lower house.  Both Charles Pinckney considered the matter
of no importance.  General Pinckney said South Carolina’s restriction of money bills to the lower house had led to serious disputes between the houses and was often evaded.  Rutledge likewise said the South Carolina restriction was constantly “dividing & heating” the houses and was evaded by the Senate demanding certain changes in order to approve a bill.  Butler saw no need to forbid the Senate from originating money bills, since they were not a House of Lords.

Ambivalence about the executive:  Recall that old democracy views the executive with deep suspicion, while mixed government wants to make the President a sort of limited monarch.  Here, too, South Carolina took an intermediate view.  Three of the four South Carolinians spoke out for a single executive.  Charles Pinckney seconded Wilson’s original motion for a single executive and renewed the motion the next day, though he said the executive should not have the power of war and peace or he would become a monarch.  Rutledge said much the same, and that a single executive would feel the greatest "responsibility."   Butler said that the members of a plural executive would constantly be quarreling and that this would be particularly harmful in military matters. 

Otherwise, it was on executive power that the South Carolina delegates disagreed most.  Charles Pinckney seconded Morris’s motion for an advisory council, but believed the council should not be able to bind the President, or it would either obstruct him or shelter him.  The executive should exercise his veto alone, without joining the department heads or the judges.  He favored a two-thirds, rather than three-quarters vote to override an executive veto. He opposed making the President impeachable by the legislature, saying that making the executive impeachable by the legislature would destroy his independence and would not be necessary if his power could be limited enough. He favored legislative appointment of judges and the treasurer and ambassadors, with sole executive appointment of all other officials.  At the end of the Convention, Charles Pinckney said he was signing the Constitution even though he disapproved of the "contemptible weakness and dependence" of the executive.  

The others said less on the subject.  Rutledge opposed including judges in the executive veto.  He opposed absolute executive appointment of judges as monarchical but favored executive appointment of the treasurer.  Butler considered opposed an absolute executive veto as too much power in danger of abuse and thought the executive should suspend, rather than veto, bad laws.  He would allow the Senate to make treaties of peace without the consent of the President to prevent the President from trying prolong a war in order to aggrandize his own power.  On the other hand, advocated giving the executive the sole power to decide when to go to war, a decision that shocked Elbridge Gerry.  General Pinckney said almost nothing on the subject, except that he favored executive appointment of the treasurer.

Moderate views or opposition to legislative eligibility to executive office:  I would consider this the core, defining issue of old democracy.  The South Carolina delegation generally either favored the restriction or had moderate views. Charles Pinckney did not think legislators should be ineligible to office.  The representatives who had the people’s confidence should not be treated as suspect.  He hoped the legislature would attract talent and become a training ground for future officials.  In order prevent corruption, he proposed to make legislators ineligible to offices they create or increase in pay or requiring them to resign from the legislature upon being appointed.  Rutledge, on the other hand, wanted the national legislature to be ineligible to executive office to keep them “as pure as possible” and prevent corruption.  Butler wanted legislators to be ineligible to office to avoid the corruption that had "ruined" the British government.  Ineligibility only to offices the legislature creates or increases in pay was not sufficient.  General Pinckney did not address the issue.

Bill of Rights:  Charles Pinckney was one of the leading advocates of guarantying the rights of individuals.  He moved for what amounted to a bill of rights, calling for protecting freedom of the press, requiring legislative approval of all troops and strict civilian control of the military, no quartering of troops in people’s houses and no religious tests for office.  He also moved to forbid the suspension of habeas corpus except in emergencies and for only twelve months, to prohibit religious tests for office, to preserve freedom of the press and to guaranty jury trial in civil cases.  General Pinckney also approved of forbidding religious tests for office holding.  Rutledge wanted to declare the writ of habeas corpus inviolable, saying that he could not conceived that suspension would ever be necessary at the same time in all the states. 

Looking over this list of positions, I am inclined to say that the South Carolina delegation's ideology is best described as somewhere between old democracy and mixed government, generally rejecting new democracy.

The Inscrutable South Carolina: Not New Democrats, but Opposed Restrictions on the Vote

South Carolina had four delegates who played a major role in the Convention,  Pierce Butler, Charles Pinckney (Mr. Pinckney), Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (General Pickney) and John Rutledge.  No other state had so many delegates play a major role.  These four had views similar enough to form an ideological pattern.  It rates low on the democratic scale, either by old democratic or new democratic standards, but does not favor the features of a mixed government either.  I have not been able to identify their pattern.  Anyone else’s input in identifying this ideology is welcome. 

The main features supported by the South Carolina delegates were as follows:

Election by legislatures:  Charles Cotesworth Pinckney believed that the people of South Carolina were too rural and scattered to assemble in one place for elections and wanted the House to be elected by the state legislatures or at least leave that open as an option.  Butler considered election by the people "impracticable."  Charles Pinckney considered the people less fit judges than state legislatures.  Rutledge believed representatives chosen by the state legislatures would be more "refined" than ones chosen by the people and more likely to correspond with the sense of the whole community.  Charles Pinckney came out for election of the Senate by state legislatures on similar grounds.  Similarly, most of them favored legislative election of the executive.  Charles Pinckney thought the people would be too easily misled to choose as President and that the large states would always prevail, whereas the legislature would take care to choose someone who would do a good job in executing their laws.  He opposed the Electoral College compared to election of the executive by the legislature.  Rutledge favored election of the executive by the national legislature with only one term allowed.  Butler disagreed; he though election of the executive by the legislature would lead to intrigue and foreign influence and election by the people would be too complex and unwieldy.  He favored electors chosen by state legislatures.

Opposition to property restrictions on the vote:  If this support for election by legislatures does not seem very new democratic, the South Carolina delegation was new democratic in at least one detail -- it opposed property restrictions on the vote.  Butler opposed restricting the vote to freeholders, saying that restrictions on the vote could lead to a "rank aristocracy" like Holland.  Rutledge considered restraining the vote to freeholders "very unadvised" and said it would create divisions among the people and opposition to the Constitution.  Apparently at least one of the Pinckneys agreed, because South Carolina joined every state except Delaware in voting down the proposal.

Property restrictions on office holding:  But if the South Carolina delegates opposed property restrictions on the vote, they favored such restrictions on holding office.  Charles Pinckney seconded  Mason’s motion for the Committee of Detail to set property and citizenship qualifications on the legislature and moved for it to set property qualifications for the executive and judiciary as well, although he though excluding public debtors was going to far.  When, instead, the Committee simply allowed Congress to set its own property qualifications, Charles Pinckney was not satisfied and moved to have specific property restrictions included in the Constitution.  Although he disclaimed wanting any “undue aristocratic influence” and was willing to leave the specific amount open to debate, but he personally favored requiring the President to own $100,000 worth of property clear of debt, federal judges $50,000 and “in like proportion for the members of the Nat’l Legislature.”  The proposal was overwhelmingly rejected.  Rutledge seconded the proposal.  General Pinckney move that Senators, as representatives of the nation's wealth, not be paid in order to ensure that they were rich.  Rutledge served on the Committee of Detail that allowed Congress to set its own property restrictions and explained that the Committee had been unable to come up with property qualifications because they feared that too high qualifications would be unpopular and too low qualifications would be “nugatory.”  He also moved to have the President not receive pay, presumably to ensure that he was rich.  Butler did not address property restrictions on office holding, but he favored requiring a long residency in the United States for naturalized immigrants to hold office, although he was himself an immigrant (from Ireland).

Representation by wealth:  Perhaps part of the reason the South Carolina delegates favored strict property requirements on office holders was that they favored representation by wealth.  Butler and Rutledge wanted representation in the House to be by quotas of contribution, since money was power.  Butler also wanted the Senate to be apportioned by wealth.  “He contended strenuously that property was the only just measure of representation.  This was the great object of Govern’t: the great cause of war; the great means of carrying it on.”   Likewise, Rutledge stated that, “Property was certainly the principal object of Society.”  General Pinckney argued for an established rule of wealth  to be used in apportioning representation and believed that the South should have representation beyond its numbers because of its wealth.  The only exception was Charles Pinckney, who seconded  a proposal to base representation on all free and three-fifths of all slave population.  Yet, not too surprisingly, he later changed his mind and asked that all slaves be included in representation on the grounds that slaves were a source of wealth.

Distrust of the west:  This is a less strongly marked tendency, but it is closely linked to representation by wealth.  Rutledge in particular feared that making representation proportional to population would subject the Atlantic to the western states.  Butler also called for a "balance" between old and new states, which appeared to mean that the Western states should have less representation than their numbers because they had less wealth and would contribute less tax revenue.

Some of Each: Oliver Ellsworth

Much the same can be said of Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut.  Ellsworth was, with Dickinson, one of the leading advocates of the Great Compromise.  Like Dickinson, he combined elements of old democracy, new democracy, and mixed government.  But he did not combine them in the same way as Dickinson.  In fact, his positions on many other issues were almost diametrically opposed to Dickinson’s, showing that one could favor elements of all three systems in very different combinations.  

Unlike Dickinson, Ellsworth opposed restricting the vote to freeholders.  Some of his arguments were simply on the grounds of expediency, such as that people who could vote for state legislatures would resist being denied the vote in federal elections, and that the states were the best judges, but he went further than anyone else on arguing against restrictions on the merits, “Ought not every man who pays a tax, to vote for the representative who is to levy & dispose of his money?” He also favored a one-year term for the House, not so much on the merits as because, “The people were fond of frequent elections and might safely be indulged in one branch of the legislature.”  Thus Ellsworth favored one old and one new democratic principle for the House, but he opposed one of each as well – he opposed enlarging the house, saying that thought most state legislatures were too large and he apparently favored representation by wealth, moving to have representation by all free population and three-fifths of the slaves “until some other rule that shall more accurately ascertain the wealth of the several States can be devised.”  On the other hand, he immediately afterward withdrew his motion and seconded a motion for representation by population with periodic reapportionment, since wealth was impractical to measure.  

On the old democratic side, he apparently favored making legislators ineligible to executive office.  Against old democracy, he did not regard giving the House sole authority to initiate money bills as of any importance.  And his views on qualifications to office are decidedly confusing.  He preferred giving Congress the power to set property qualifications for members to having property qualifications set in the Constitution, saying that it would be too difficult to have find a uniform qualification for all states.  Such as power was “not unexceptionable,” but not dangerous.  Allowing Congress to set qualifications for voters would be more dangerous.  He opposed requiring fourteen years’ citizenship for Senators, favored requiring one year residency in the state represented and opposed disqualifying public debtors from office.*

 Ellsworth took primarily a small state view on election of the executive, favoring electors chosen by state legislatures, with one elector to each 100,000 of a state’s population up to 300,000.  Alternately, he would make the executive elective by the national legislature for a first term and reelected by electors to guaranty his independence.  In any event, he opposed election by the people directly 
because the large states would always win.  He definitely showed some of an old democrat’s distrust of the executive.  He considered a veto, even qualified veto by a single executive dangerous and favored joining the judges to the veto to give greater “wisdom & firmness.”  He also favored having the Senate, rather than the executive, appoint judges since they would be less “open to caresses & intrigues.”  Merely allowing the Senate to reject executive appointments would give the executive the effective power of appointment.  He also favored a council for the President, to consist of the President of the Senate, Chief Justice, and head of the departments of finance, war, foreign affairs, domestic affairs and marine, to advise but not conclude him.

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*That last view, however, may be not so much a new democratic view as the general view of the commercial elite.  All importing merchants were public debtors because they imported merchandise in too large a volume to pay the import taxes all at once.  They would therefore pay a portion of the tax and sign a pledge promising to pay the balance as they sold the goods.

Some of Each: John Dickinson

A few delegates occupy a position somewhere between old and new democracy, favoring features of each about equally, and a few mixed government features as well.

John Dickinson (Delaware):  In his first speech at the Convention, Dickinson said:

A limited monarchy he considered as one of the best Governments in the world. It was not certain that the same blessings were derivable from any other form. It was certain that equal blessings had never yet been derived from the republican form. A limited Monarchy however was out of the question. The spirit of the times – the state of our affairs, forbade the experiment if it were desireable.

 Despite his admiration for limited monarchy, Dickinson seems to have accepted that it was out of the question and showed no actual disposition to institute it.  In particular, he believed that the United States lacked an essential ingredient for a limited monarchy – a nobility. 

With regard to the House of Representatives, he considered it essential that it be elected by the people directly and believed that representation should be apportioned by actual tax revenues, rather than by either population or wealth.  Given that the main source of revenue at the time was taxes on imports and exports, this is a surprising position for a delegate from a state without a major port, but he considered such apportionment a useful incentive for states to pay their tax quotas.  He considered the United States too large for annual elections and favored a three-year term for the House, with one third of all members up for election every year.  With regard to the Senate, he wanted it to have some of the functions of a House of Lords, although he did not go as far in making it “aristocratic” as the more extreme advocates of mixed government.  As we have seen, he was the first to propose giving each state an equal voice in the Senate in exchange for proportional representation in the House.  Senators should be elected by state legislatures, both to give states sufficient agency in the central government and to pass Senators through a “refining” process to make them “consist of the most distinguished characters, distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property,” similar to a House of Lords.   Although he said Senators needed a long terms to guaranty their independence from the state legislatures, although he defined “permanency” as merely a three, five or seven year term.  While many others thought a small Senate would give it greater coolness, Dickinson favored “80 and twice 80” members to balance to lower house.  Only the House should be able to originate money bills because the people should only be taxed by their immediate representatives, and because experience had confirmed the wisdom of such a policy.

Having decided that monarchy was out of the question, Dickinson made no attempt to make the President a monarch; a “firm” executive was not compatible with a republic.  He favored election of the President by the people as the “best and purest source.”  To overcome the difficulty in achieving a majority for any one candidate, he proposed to have the people of each state choose a candidate and either the national legislature or special electors choose among the candidates.  He wanted the executive to be removable by the national legislature upon the request of the majority of states, to have a formal council of advisors, and to wield his veto alone instead of in conjunction with the judiciary, so the people would know who was making the veto and could hold him responsible.

He favored the same odd combination of property restrictions on the vote and lack of property restrictions on office holding that Madison did.  With regard to property restrictions on office holding, “He doubted the policy of interweaving into a Republican constitution a veneration of wealth.  He had always understood that a veneration for poverty & virtue, were the objects of republican encouragement.”  Property requirements would exclude a man of merit who was not rich.  “The best defence (sic.) lay in the freeholders who were to elect the legislature.  Whilst this Source should remain pure, the public interest would be safe.”  But he made it clear that freeholders were “the best guardians of liberty” and only they should vote “as a necessary defence (sic.) agst the dangerous influence of those multitudes without property & without principle with which our Country like all others, will in time abound.”   

In short, Dickinson does not classify easily.  He favors old democratic, new democratic and mixed government features in about equal shares.