[1] The election of a vice-president was, of course, involved also.
William A. Wheeler was the Republican candidate, and Thomas A.
Hendricks the Democratic.
[2] A second set of electoral ballots had also been sent in from
Vermont, where Hayes had received a popular majority vote of 24,000.
As these ballots had been transmitted in an irregular manner, the
president of the Senate refused to receive them, and was sustained in
this action by the upper House.
ELECTORS (Ger. _Kurfursten_, from _Kuren_, O.H.G. _kiosan_, choose,
elect, and _Furst_, prince), a body of German princes, originally seven
in number, with whom rested the election of the German king, from the
13th until the beginning of the 19th century. The German kings, from the
time of Henry the Fowler (919-936) till the middle of the 13th century,
succeeded to their position partly by heredity, and partly by election.
Primitive Germanic practice had emphasized the element of heredity.
_Reges ex nobilitate sumunt_: the man whom a German tribe recognized as
its king must be in the line of hereditary descent from Woden; and
therefore the genealogical trees of early Teutonic kings (as, for
instance, in England those of the Kentish and West Saxon sovereigns) are
carefully constructed to prove that descent from the god which alone
will constitute a proper title for his descendants. Even from the first,
however, there had been some opening for election; for the principle of
primogeniture was not observed, and there might be several competing
candidates, all of the true Woden stock. One of these competing
candidates would have to be recognized (as the Anglo-Saxons said,
_geceosan_); and to this limited extent Teutonic kings may be termed
elective from the very first. In the other nations of western Europe
this element of election dwindled, and the principle of heredity alone
received legal recognition; in medieval Germany, on the contrary, the
principle of heredity, while still exercising an inevitable natural
force, sank formally into the background, and legal recognition was
finally given to the elective principle. _De facto_, therefore, the
principle of heredity exercises in Germany a great influence, an
influence never more striking than in the period which follows on the
formal recognition of the elective principle, when the Habsburgs (like
the Metelli at Rome) _fato imperatores fiunt: de jure_, each monarch
owes his accession simply and solely to the vote of an electoral
college.
This difference between the German monarchy and the other monarchies of
western Europe may be explained by various considerations. Not the least
important of these is what seems a pure accident. Whereas the Capetian
monarchs, during the three hundred years that followed on the election
of Hugh Capet in 987, always left an heir male, and an heir male of full
age, the German kings again and again, during the same period, either
left a minor to succeed to their throne, or left no issue at all. The
principle of heredity began to fail because there were no heirs. Again
the strength of tribal feeling in Germany made the monarchy into a
prize, which must not be the apanage of any single tribe, but must
circulate, as it were, from Franconian to Saxon, from Saxon to Bavarian,
from Bavarian to Franconian, from Franconian to Swabian; while the
growing power of the baronage, and its habit of erecting anti-kings to
emphasize its opposition to the crown (as, for instance, in the reign of
Henry IV.), coalesced with and gave new force to the action of tribal
feeling. Lastly, the fact that the German kings were also Roman emperors
finally and irretrievably consolidated the growing tendency towards the
elective principle. The principle of heredity had never held any great
sway under the ancient Roman Empire (see under EMPEROR); and the
medieval Empire, instituted as it was by the papacy, came definitely
under the influence of ecclesiastical prepossessions in favour of
election. The church had substituted for that descent from Woden, which
had elevated the old pagan kings to their thrones, the conception that
the monarch derived his crown from the choice of God, after the manner
of Saul; and the theoretical choice of God was readily turned into the
actual choice of the church, or, at any rate, of the general body of
churchmen. If an ordinary king is thus regarded by the church as
essentially elected, much more will the emperor, connected as he is with
the church as one of its officers, be held to be also elected; and as a
bishop is chosen by the chapter of his diocese, so, it will be thought,
must the emperor be chosen by some corresponding body in his empire.
Heredity might be tolerated in a mere matter of kingship: the precious
trust of imperial power could not be allowed to descend according to the
accidents of family succession. To Otto of Freising (_Gesta Frid._ ii.
1) it is already a point of right vindicated for itself by the
excellency of the Roman Empire, as a matter of singular prerogative,
that it should not descend _per sanguinis propaginem, sed per principum
electionem_.
The accessions of Conrad II. (see Wipo, _Vita Cuonradi_, c. 1-2), of
Lothair II. (see _Narratio de electione Lotharii_, M.G.H. _Scriptt._
xii. p. 510), of Conrad III. (see Otto of Freising, _Chronicon_, vii.
22) and of Frederick I. (see Otto of Freising, _Gesta Frid._ ii. 1) had
all been marked by an element, more or less pronounced, of election.
That element is perhaps most considerable in the case of Lothair, who
had no rights of heredity to urge. Here we read of ten princes being
selected from the princes of the various duchies, to whose choice the
rest promise to assent, and of these ten selecting three candidates, one
of whom, Lothair, is finally chosen (apparently by the whole assembly)
in a somewhat tumultuary fashion. In this case the electoral assembly
would seem to be, in the last resort, the whole diet of all the princes.
But a _de facto_ pre-eminence in the act of election is already, during
the 12th century, enjoyed by the three Rhenish archbishops, probably
because of the part they afterwards played at the coronation, and also
by the dukes of the great duchies--possibly because of the part they too
played, as vested for the time with the great offices of the household,
at the coronation feast.[1] Thus at the election of Lothair it is the
archbishop of Mainz who conducts the proceedings; and the election is
not held to be final until the duke of Bavaria has given his assent. The
fact is that, votes being weighed by quality as well as by quantity (see
DIET), the votes of the archbishops and dukes, which would first be
taken, would of themselves, if unanimous, decide the election. To
prevent tumultuary elections, it was well that the election should be
left exclusively with these great dignitaries; and this is what, by the
middle of the 13th century, had eventually been done.
The chaos of the interregnum from 1198 to 1212 showed the way for the
new departure; the chaos of the great interregnum (1250-1273) led to its
being finally taken. The decay of the great duchies, and the narrowing
of the class of princes into a close corporation, some of whose members
were the equals of the old dukes in power, introduced difficulties and
doubts into the practice of election which had been used in the 12th
century. The contested election of the interregnum of 1198-1212 brought
these difficulties and doubts into strong relief. The famous bull of
Innocent III. (_Venerabilem_), in which he decided for Otto IV. against
Philip of Swabia, on the ground that, though he had fewer votes than
Philip, he had a majority of the votes of those _ad quos principaliter
spectat electio_, made it almost imperative that there should be some
definition of these principal electors. The most famous attempt at such
a definition is that of the _Sachsenspiegel_, which was followed, or
combated, by many other writers in the first half of the 13th century.
Eventually the contested election of 1257 brought light and definition.
Here we find seven potentates acting--the same seven whom the Golden
Bull recognizes in 1356; and we find these seven described in an
official letter to the pope, as _principes vocem in hujusmodi electione
habentes, qui sunt septem numero_. The doctrine thus enunciated was at
once received. The pope acknowledged it in two bulls (1263); a cardinal,
in a commentary on the bull _Venerabilem_ of Innocent III., recognized
it about the same time; and the erection of statues of the seven
electors at Aix-la-Chapelle gave the doctrine a visible and outward
expression.
By the date of the election of Rudolph of Habsburg (1273) the seven
electors may be regarded as a definite body, with an acknowledged right.
But the definition and the acknowledgment were still imperfect. (1) The
composition of the electoral body was uncertain in two respects. The
duke of Bavaria claimed as his right the electoral vote of the king of
Bohemia; and the practice of _partitio_ in electoral families tended to
raise further difficulties about the exercise of the vote. The Golden
Bull of 1356 settled both these questions. Bohemia (of which Charles
IV., the author of the Golden Bull, was himself the king) was assigned
the electoral vote in preference to Bavaria; and a provision annexing
the electoral vote to a definite territory, declaring that territory
indivisible, and regulating its descent by the rule of primogeniture
instead of partition, swept away the old difficulties which the custom
of partition had raised. After 1356 the seven electors are regularly the
three Rhenish archbishops, Mainz, Cologne and Trier, and four lay
magnates, the palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of
Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia; the three former being vested with
the three archchancellorships, and the four latter with the four offices
of the royal household (see HOUSEHOLD). (2) The rights of the seven
electors, in their collective capacity as an electoral college, were a
matter of dispute with the papacy. The result of the election, whether
made, as at first, by the princes generally or, as after 1257, by the
seven electors exclusively, was in itself simply the creation of a
German king--an _electio in regem_. But since 962 the German king was
also, after coronation by the pope, Roman emperor. Therefore the
election had a double result: the man elected was not only _electus in
regem_, but also _promovendus ad imperium_. The difficulty was to define
the meaning of the term _promovendus_. Was the king elect _inevitably_
to become emperor? or did the _promotio_ only follow at the discretion
of the pope, if he thought the king elect fit for promotion? and if so,
to what extent, and according to what standard, did the pope judge of
such fitness? Innocent III. had already claimed, in the bull
_Venerabilem_, (1) that the electors derived their power of election, so
far as it made an emperor, from the Holy See (which had originally
"translated" the Empire from the East to the West), and (2) that the
papacy had a _jus et auctoritas examinandi personam electam in regem et
promovendam ad imperium_. The latter claim he had based on the fact that
he anointed, consecrated and crowned the emperor--in other words, that
he gave a spiritual office according to spiritual methods, which
entitled him to inquire into the fitness of the recipient of that
office, as a bishop inquires into the fitness of a candidate for
ordination. Innocent had put forward this claim as a ground for deciding
between competing candidates: Boniface VIII. pressed the claim against
Albert I. in 1298, even though his election was unanimous; while John
XXII. exercised it in its harshest form, when in 1324 he ex-communicated
Louis IV. for using the title and exerting the rights even of king
without previous papal confirmation. This action ultimately led to a
protest from the electors themselves, whose right of election would have
become practically meaningless, if such assumptions had been tolerated.
A meeting of the electors (_Kurverein_) at Rense in 1338 declared (and
the declaration was reaffirmed by a diet at Frankfort in the same year)
that _postquam aliquis eligitur in Imperatorem sive Regem ab Electoribus
Imperii concorditer, vel majori parte eorundem, statim ex sola electione
est Rex verus et Imperator Romanus censendus ... nec Papae sive Sedis
Apostolicae ... approbatione ... indiget_. The doctrine thus positively
affirmed at Rense is negatively reaffirmed in the Golden Bull, in which
a significant silence is maintained in regard to papal rights. But the
doctrine was not in practice followed: Sigismund himself did not venture
to dispense with papal approbation.
By the end of the 14th century the position of the electors, both
individually and as a corporate body, had become definite and precise.
Individually, they were distinguished from all other princes, as we have
seen, by the indivisibility of their territories and by the custom of
primogeniture which secured that indivisibility; and they were still
further distinguished by the fact that their person, like that of the
emperor himself, was protected by the law of treason, while their
territories were only subject to the jurisdiction of their own courts.
They were independent territorial sovereigns; and their position was at
once the envy and the ideal of the other princes of Germany. Such had been
the policy of Charles IV.; and thus had he, in the Golden Bull, sought to
magnify the seven electors, and himself as one of the seven, in his
capacity of king of Bohemia, even at the expense of the Empire, and of
himself in his capacity of emperor. Powerful as they were, however, in
their individual capacity, the electors showed themselves no less powerful
as a corporate body. As such a corporate body, they may be considered from
three different points of view, and as acting in three different
capacities. They are an electoral body, choosing each successive emperor;
they are one of the three colleges of the imperial diet (see DIET); and
they are also an electoral union (_Kurfurstenverein_), acting as a
separate and independent political organ even after the election, and
during the reign, of the monarch. It was in this last capacity that they
had met at Rense in 1338; and in the same capacity they acted repeatedly
during the 15th century. According to the Golden Bull, such meetings were
to be annual, and their deliberations were to concern "the safety of the
Empire and the world." Annual they never were; but occasionally they
became of great importance. In 1424, during the attempt at reform
occasioned by the failure of German arms against the Hussites, the
_Kurfurstenverein_ acted, or at least it claimed to act, as the
predominant partner in a duumvirate, in which the unsuccessful Sigismund
was relegated to a secondary position. During the long reign of Frederick
III.--a reign in which the interests of Austria were cherished, and the
welfare of the Empire neglected, by that apathetic yet tenacious
emperor--the electors once more attempted, in the year 1453, to erect a
new central government in place of the emperor, a government which, if not
conducted by themselves directly in their capacity of a
_Kurfurstenverein_, should at any rate be under their influence and
control. So, they hoped, Germany might be able to make head against that
papal aggression, to which Frederick had yielded, and to take a leading
part in that crusade against the Turks, which he had neglected. Like the
previous attempt at reform during the Hussite wars, the scheme came to
nothing; the forces of disunion in Germany were too strong for any central
government, whether monarchical and controlled by the emperor, or
oligarchical and controlled by the electors. But a final attempt, the most
strenuous of all, was made in the reign of Maximilian I., and under the
influence of Bertold, elector and archbishop of Mainz. The council of
1500, in which the electors (with the exception of the king of Bohemia)
were to have sat, and which would have been under their control,
represents the last effective attempt at a real _Reichsregiment_.
Inevitably, however, it shipwrecked on the opposition of Maximilian; and
though the attempt was again made between 1521 and 1530, the idea of a
real central government under the control of the electors perished, and
the development of local administration by the circle took its place.
In the course of the 16th century a new right came to be exercised by
the electors. As an electoral body (that is to say, in the first of the
three capacities distinguished above), they claimed, at the election of
Charles V. in 1519 and at subsequent elections, to impose conditions on
the elected monarch, and to determine the terms on which he should
exercise his office in the course of his reign. This _Wahlcapitulation_,
similar to the _Pacta Conventa_ which limited the elected kings of
Poland, was left by the diet to the discretion of the electors, though
after the treaty of Westphalia an attempt was made, with some little
success,[2] to turn the capitulation into a matter of legislative
enactment by the diet. From this time onwards the only fact of
importance in the history of the electors is the change which took place
in the composition of their body during the 17th and 18th centuries.
From the Golden Bull to the treaty of Westphalia (1356-1648) the
composition of the electoral body had remained unchanged. In 1623,
however, in the course of the Thirty Years' War, the vote of the count
palatine of the Rhine had been transferred to the duke of Bavaria; and
at the treaty of Westphalia the vote, with the office of imperial butler
which it carried, was left to Bavaria, while an eighth vote, along with
the new office of imperial treasurer, was created for the count
palatine. In 1708 a ninth vote, along with the office of imperial
standard-bearer, was created for Hanover; while finally, in 1778, the
vote of Bavaria and the office of imperial butler returned to the counts
palatine, as heirs of the duchy, on the extinction of the ducal line,
while the new vote created for the Palatinate in 1648, with the office
of imperial treasurer, was transferred to Brunswick-Luneburg (Hanover)
in lieu of the one which this house already held. In 1806, on the
dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the electors ceased to exist.
LITERATURE.--T. Lindner, _Die deutschen Konigswahlen und die
Entstehung des Kurfurstentums_ (1893), and _Der Hergang bei den
deutschen Konigswahlen_ (1899); R. Kirchhofer, _Zur Entstehung des
Kurkollegiums_ (1893); W. Maurenbrecher, _Geschichte der deutschen
Konigswahlen_ (1889); and G. Blondel, _Etude sur Frederic II_, p. 27
sqq. See also J. Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_ (edition of 1904), c. ix.;
and R. Schroder, _Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte_, pp.
471-481 and 819-820. (E. Br.)