ERROR OF DE TOCQUEVILLE, IN RELATION TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
I have had occasion several times to notice the errors of Monsieur
de Tocqueville, in his work upon American democracy. That work is
authority in Europe, where it has appeared in several languages;
and is sought by some to be made authority here, where it has been
translated into English, and published with notes, and a preface
to recommend it. It was written with a view to enlighten European
opinion in relation to democratic government, and evidently with
a candid intent; but abounds with errors to the prejudice of that
form of government, which must do it great mischief, both at home
and abroad, if not corrected. A fundamental error of this kind--one
which goes to the root of representative government, occurs in
chapter 8 of his work, where he finds a great difference in the
members comprising the two Houses of Congress, attributing an
immense superiority to the Senate, and discovering the cause of
the difference in the different modes of electing the members--the
popular elections of the House, and the legislative elections of the
Senate. He says:--
"On entering the House of Representatives at Washington, one
is struck with the vulgar demeanor of that great assembly. The
eye frequently does not discover a man of celebrity within its
walls. Its members are almost all obscure individuals, whose
names present no associations to the mind; they are mostly
village lawyers, men in trade, or even persons belonging to
the lower classes of society. In a country in which education
is very general, it is said that the representatives of the
people do not always know how to write correctly. At a few
yards' distance from this spot is the door of the Senate,
which contains within a small space a large proportion of
the celebrated men in America. Scarcely an individual is to
be found in it, who does not recall this idea of an active
and illustrious career. The Senate is composed of eloquent
advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and
statesmen of note, whose language would at all times do honor
to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe. What,
then, is the cause of this strange contrast? and why are the
most able citizens to be found in one assembly rather than in
the other? Why is the former body remarkable for its vulgarity,
and its poverty of talent, whilst the latter seems to enjoy a
monopoly of intelligence and of sound judgment? Both of these
assemblies emanate from the people. From what cause, then,
does so startling a difference arise? The only reason which
appears to me adequately to account for it is, that the House of
Representatives is elected by the populace directly, and that of
the Senate is elected by an indirect application of universal
suffrage; but this transmission of the popular authority through
an assembly of chosen men operates an important change in it, by
refining its discretion and improving the forms which it adopts.
Men who are chosen in this manner, accurately represent the
majority of the nation which governs them; but they represent
the elevated thoughts which are current in the community, the
generous propensities which prompt its nobler actions, rather
than the petty passions which disturb, or the vices which
disgrace it. The time may be already anticipated at which the
American republics will be obliged to introduce the plan of
election by an elected body more frequently into their system of
representation, or they will incur no small risk of perishing
miserably among the shoals of democracy."--_Chapter 8._
The whole tenor of these paragraphs is to disparage the
democracy--to disparage democratic government--to attack
fundamentally the principle of popular election itself. They
disqualify the people for self-government, hold them to be incapable
of exercising the elective franchise, and predict the downfall
of our republican system, if that franchise is not still further
restricted, and the popular vote--the vote of the people--reduced
to the subaltern choice of persons to vote for them. These are
profound errors on the part of Mons. de Tocqueville, which require
to be exposed and corrected; and the correction of which comes
within the scope of this work, intended to show the capacity of the
people for self-government, and the advantage of extending--instead
of restricting--the privilege of the direct vote. He seems to
look upon the members of the two Houses as different orders of
beings--different classes--a higher and a lower class; the former
placed in the Senate by the wisdom of State legislatures, the latter
in the House of Representatives by the folly of the people--when the
fact is, that they are not only of the same order and class, but
mainly the same individuals. The Senate is almost entirely made up
out of the House! and it is quite certain that every senator whom
Mons. de Tocqueville had in his eye when he bestowed such encomium
on that body had come from the House of Representatives! placed
there by the popular vote, and afterwards transferred to the Senate
by the legislature; not as new men just discovered by the superior
sagacity of that body, but as public men with national reputations,
already illustrated by the operation of popular elections. And
if Mons. de Tocqueville had chanced to make his visit some years
sooner, he would have seen almost every one of these senators, to
whom his exclusive praise is directed, actually sitting in the other
House.
Away, then, with his fact! and with it, away with all his fanciful
theory of wise elections by small electoral colleges, and silly
ones by the people! and away with all his logical deductions,
from premises which have no existence, and which would have us
still further to "refine popular discretion," by increasing and
extending the number of electoral colleges through which it is to be
filtrated. Not only all vanishes, but his praise goes to the other
side, and redounds to the credit of popular elections; for almost
every distinguished man in the Senate or in any other department
of the government, now or heretofore--from the Congress of
Independence down to the present day--has owed his first elevation
and distinction, to popular elections--to the direct vote of the
people, given, without the intervention of any intermediate body,
to the visible object of their choice; and it is the same in other
countries, now and always. The English, the Scotch and the Irish
have no electoral colleges; they vote direct, and are never without
their ablest men in the House of Commons. The Romans voted direct;
and for five hundred years--until fair elections were destroyed by
force and fraud--never failed to elect consuls and prætors, who
carried the glory of their country beyond the point at which they
had found it.
The American people know this--know that popular election has
given them every eminent public man that they have ever had--that
it is the safest and wisest mode of political election--most free
from intrigue and corruption; and instead of further restricting
that mode, and reducing the masses to mere electors of electors,
they are, in fact, extending it, and altering constitutions to
carry elections to the people, which were formerly given to the
general assemblies. Many States furnish examples of this. Even the
constitution of the United States has been overruled by universal
public sentiment in the greatest of its elections--that of President
and Vice-President. The electoral college by that instrument,
both its words and intent, was to have been an independent body,
exercising its own discretion in the choice of these high officers.
On the contrary, it has been reduced to a mere formality for the
registration of the votes which the people prepare and exact. The
speculations of Monsieur de Tocqueville are, therefore, groundless;
and must be hurtful to representative government in Europe, where
the facts are unknown; and may be injurious among ourselves, where
his book is translated into English, with a preface and notes to
recommend it.
Admitting that there might be a difference between the appearance
of the two Houses, and between their talent, at the time that
Mons. de Tocqueville looked in upon them, yet that difference, so
far as it might then have existed, was accidental and temporary,
and has already vanished. And so far as it may have appeared, or
may appear in other times, the difference in favor of the Senate
may be found in causes very different from those of more or less
judgment and virtue in the constituencies which elect the two
Houses. The Senate is a smaller body, and therefore may be more
decorous; it is composed of older men, and therefore should be
graver, its members have usually served in the highest branches of
the State governments, and in the House of Representatives, and
therefore should be more experienced; its terms of service are
longer, and therefore give more time for talent to mature, and for
the measures to be carried which confer fame. Finally, the Senate
is in great part composed of the pick of the House, and therefore
gains double--by brilliant accession to itself and abstraction from
the other. These are causes enough to account for any occasional,
or general difference which may show itself in the decorum or
ability of the two Houses. But there is another cause, which is
found in the practice of some of the States--the caucus system and
rotation in office--which brings in men unknown to the people, and
turns them out as they begin to be useful; to be succeeded by other
new beginners, who are in turn turned out to make room for more
new ones; all by virtue of arrangements which look to individual
interests, and not to the public good.
The injury of these changes to the business qualities of the House
and the interests of the State, is readily conceivable, and very
visible in the delegations of States where they do, or do not
prevail--in some Southern and some Northern States, for example. To
name them might seem invidious, and is not necessary, the statement
of the general fact being sufficient to indicate an evil which
requires correction. Short terms of service are good on account
of their responsibility, and two years is a good legal term; but
every contrivance is vicious, and also inconsistent with the
re-eligibility permitted by the constitution, which prevents the
people from continuing a member as long as they deem him useful to
them. Statesmen are not improvised in any country; and in our own,
as well as in Great Britain, great political reputations have only
been acquired after long service--20, 30, 40, and even 50 years; and
great measures have only been carried by an equal number of years of
persevering exertion by the same man who commenced them. Earl Grey
and Major Cartwright--I take the aristocratic and the democratic
leaders of the movement--only carried British parliamentry reform
after forty years of annual consecutive exertion. They organized
the Society for Parliamentry Reform in 1792, and carried the reform
in 1832--disfranchising 56 burgs, half disfranchising 31 others,
enfranchising 41 new towns; and doubling the number of voters by
extending the privilege to £10 householders--extorting, perhaps, the
greatest concession from power and corruption to popular right that
was ever obtained by civil and legal means. Yet this was only done
upon forty years' continued annual exertions. Two men did it, but it
took them forty years.
The same may be said of other great British measures--Catholic
emancipation, corn law repeal, abolition of the slave trade, and
many others; each requiring a lifetime of continued exertion from
devoted men. Short service, and not popular election, is the evil
of the House of Representatives; and this becomes more apparent by
contrast--contrast between the North and the South--the caucus,
or rotary system, not prevailing in the South, and useful members
being usually continued from that quarter as long as useful; and
thus with fewer members, usually showing a greater number of men who
have attained a distinction. Monsieur de Tocqueville is profoundly
wrong, and does great injury to democratic government, as his theory
countenances the monarchial idea of the incapacity of the people for
self-government. They are with us the best and safest depositories
of the political elective power. They have not only furnished to the
Senate its ablest members through the House of Representatives, but
have sometimes repaired the injustice of State legislatures, which
repulsed or discarded some eminent men. The late Mr. John Quincy
Adams, after forty years of illustrious service--after having been
minister to half the great courts of Europe, a senator in Congress,
Secretary of State, and President of the United States--in the full
possession of all his great faculties, was refused an election by
the Massachusetts legislature to the United States Senate, where
he had served thirty years before. Refused by the legislature, he
was taken up by the people, sent to the House of Representatives,
and served there to octogenarian age--attentive, vigilant and
capable--an example to all, and a match for half the House to the
last. The brilliant, incorruptible, sagacious Randolph--friend of
the people, of the constitution, of economy and hard money--scourge
and foe to all corruption, plunder and jobbing--had nearly the same
fate; dropped from the Senate by the Virginia general assembly,
restored to the House of Representatives by the people of his
district, to remain there till, following the example of his friend,
the wise Macon, he voluntarily withdrew. I name no more, confining
myself to instances of the illustrious dead.
I have been the more particular to correct this error of De
Tocqueville, because, while disparaging democratic government
generally, it especially disparages that branch of our government
which was intended to be the controlling part. Two clauses of the
constitution--one vesting the House of Representatives with the
sole power of originating revenue bills, the other with the sole
power of impeachment--sufficiently attest the high function to which
that House was appointed. They are both borrowed from the British
constitution, where their effect has been seen in controlling the
course of the whole government, and bringing great criminals to
the bar. No sovereign, no ministry holds out an hour against the
decision of the House of Commons. Though an imperfect representation
of the people, even with the great ameliorations of the reform act
of 1832, it is at once the democratic branch, and the master-branch
of the British government. Wellington administrations have to retire
before it. Bengal Governors-General have to appear as criminals
at its bar. It is the theatre which attracts the talent, the
patriotism, the high spirit, and the lofty ambition of the British
empire; and the people look to it as the master-power in the working
of the government, and the one in which their will has weight. No
rising man, with ability to acquire a national reputation, will quit
it for a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. Our House of
Representatives, with its two commanding prerogatives and a perfect
representation, should not fall below the British House of Commons
in the fulfilment of its mission. It should not become second to
the Senate, and in the beginning it did not. For the first thirty
years it was the controlling branch of the government, and the one
on whose action the public eye was fixed. Since then the Senate
has been taking the first place, and people have looked less to
the House. This is an injury above what concerns the House itself.
It is an injury to our institutions, and to the people. The high
functions of the House were given to it for wise purposes--for
paramount national objects. It is the immediate representation of
the people, and should command their confidence and their hopes.
As the sole originator of tax bills, it is the sole dispenser of
burthens on the people, and of supplies to the government. As sole
authors of impeachment, it is the grand inquest of the nation, and
has supervision over all official delinquencies. Duty to itself,
to its high functions, to the people, to the constitution, and to
the character of democratic government, require it to resume and
maintain its controlling place in the machinery and working of our
federal government: and that is what it has commenced doing in the
last two or three sessions--and with happy results to the economy of
the public service--and in preventing an increase of the evils of
our diplomatic representation abroad.