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.