view. That end is, I submit, exactly the same to-day which Aristotle had
in view more than twenty centuries ago. It is, not to solve all
political problems, but to put political problems as they arise in the
hands of those whom he termed the "best,"--but whom we know as the most
intelligent, observant and expert,--to be, through their agency, in the
way of ultimate solution. If, adopting every ill-considered and
half-fledged measure of so-called reform which might be the fancy of the
day, we incorporated them in our fundamental law, but one thing could
result therefrom,--ultimate confusion. The Constitution is neither a
legislative crazy-quilt nor a receptacle of fads. To make it such is in
every respect the reverse of scientific. The work immediately in hand,
therefore, is to devise such changes in the fundamental law as will tend
most effectually to bring about the solution of issues as they may
arise, by the most expert, observant and reliable. This accomplished, if
its accomplishment were only practicable, all possible would have been
done; and the necessary and inevitable readjustment of things would, in
politics as in medicine and in science, be left to solve itself as
occasion arose. Provision cannot be made against every contingency.
This premised, the Constitution of the United States is an instrument
through which powers are delegated by several local communities to a
central government. The instrument, it was originally held, should be
strictly construed and the powers delegated limited; and in this
respect, with certain alterations made obviously necessary to meet
changed conditions, I would return to the fundamental idea of
the framers.
In saying this I feel confidence also that here in South Carolina at
least I shall meet with an earnest response. The time is not yet remote
when local self-government worked salvation for South Carolina, as for
her sister States of the Confederacy. You here will never forget what
immediately followed the close of our Civil War. As an historic fact,
the Constitution was then suspended. It was suspended by act of an
irresponsible Congress, exercising revolutionary but unlimited powers
over a large section of the common country. You then had an
illustration, not soon to be forgotten, of concentration of legislative
power. An episode at once painful and discreditable, it is not necessary
here to refer to it in detail. Appeal, however, was made to the
principle of local self-government,--it was, so to speak, a recurrence
to the theory of State Sovereignty. The appeal struck a responsive,
because traditional, chord; and it was through a recurrence to State
Sovereignty as the agency of local self-government that loyalty and
contentment were restored, and, I may add, that I am here to-day.
Ceasing to be a Military Department, South Carolina once more became a
State. Not improbably the demand will in a not remote future be heard
that State lines and local autonomy be practically obliterated. In that
event, I feel a confident assurance that, recurring in memory to the
evil days which followed 1865, the spirit of enlightened conservatism
will assert itself here and in the sister States of what was once the
Confederacy; and again it will prevail. In the future, as in the past,
you in South Carolina at least will cling to what in 1876 proved the ark
of your social and political salvation.
Taking another step in the discussion of changes, the Constitution is
founded on that well-known distribution and allocation of powers first
theoretically suggested by Montesquieu. There is a division, accompanied
by a mutual limitation of authority, through the Judiciary, the
Executive, and the Legislative. As respects this allocation, how would I
modify that instrument? I freely say that the tendency of my thought,
based on observation, is to conservatism. I have never yet in a single
instance found that when the people of this or any other country
accustomed to parliamentary government desired a thing, they failed to
obtain it within a reasonable limit of time. Hasty changes are wisely
deprecated; but I think I speak within limitation when I say that
neither in the history of Great Britain,--the mother of Parliaments--nor
in the history of the United States, has any modification which the
people, on sober second thought, have considered to be for the best,
long been deferred. Action, revolutionary in character, has not, as a
rule, been needful, or, when taken, proved salutary. This is a record
and result that no careful student of our history will, I take it, deny.
Such being the case, so far as our Judiciary is concerned, I do not
hesitate to say I would adhere to older, and, as I think, better
principles, or revert to them where they have been experimentally
abandoned. It took the Anglo-Saxon race two centuries of incessant
conflict to wrest from a despotic executive, practically an autocracy,
judicial independence. That was effected through what is known as a
tenure during good behavior, as opposed to a tenure at the will of the
monarch. This, then, for two centuries, was accepted as a fundamental
principle of constitutional government. Of late, a new theory has been
propounded, and by those chafing at all restraint--constitutionally
lawless in disposition--it is said the Recall should also be applied to
the Judiciary. Having, therefore, wrested the independence of the
Judiciary from the hand of the Autocrat, we now propose to place it, in
all trustfulness, in the hands of the Democrat. To me the proposition
does not commend itself. It is founded on no correct principle, for the
irresponsible democratic majority is even more liable to ill-considered
and vacillating action than is the responsible autocrat. In that matter
I would not trust myself; why, then, should I trust the composite
Democrat? In the case of the Judiciary, therefore, I would so far as the
fundamental law is concerned abide by the older and better considered
principles of the framers.
Next, the Executive. Again, we hear the demand of Democracy,--the
Recall! Once more I revert to the record. This Republic has now been in
working operation, and, taken altogether, most successful operation,
for a century and a quarter. During that century and a quarter we have
had, we will say, some five and twenty different chief magistrates.
There is an ancient and somewhat vulgar adage to the effect that the
proof of a certain dietary article is in its eating. Apply that homely
adage to the matter under consideration. What is the lesson taught? It
is simply this,--during a whole century and a quarter of existence there
has not been one single chief executive of the United States to whom the
arbitrary Recall could have been applied with what would now be agreed
upon as a fortunate result. In the Andrew Johnson impeachment case was
it not better that things were as they were? On the other hand, every
one of the seven independent, self-respecting Senators who then by a
display of high moral courage saved the country from serious prejudice
would have been recalled out-of-hand had the Recall now demanded been in
existence. Its working would have received prompt exemplification; as it
was, the recall was effected in time, and after due deliberation. The
delay occasioned no public detriment. In this life, experience is
undeniably worth something; and the experience here referred to is
fairly entitled to consideration. No political system possible to devise
is wholly above criticism,--not open to exceptional contingencies or to
dangers possible to conjure up. Such have from time to time arisen in
the past; in the future such will inevitably arise. This consideration
must, however, be balanced against a general average of successful
working; and I confidently submit that, weighing thus the proved
advantage of the system we have against the possibilities of danger
which hereafter may occur, but which never yet have occurred, the scale
on which are the considerations in favor of change kicks the beam.
In view, however, of the growth of the country, the vastly increased
complexity of interests involved, the intricacy and the cost of the
election processes to which recourse is necessarily had, I would
substitute for the present brief tenure of the presidential office--a
tenure well enough perhaps in the comparatively simple days which
preceded our Civil War--a tenure sufficiently long to enable the
occupant of the presidential chair to have a policy and to accomplish at
least something towards its adoption. As the case stands to-day, a
President for the first time elected has during his term of four years,
one year, and one year only, in which really to apply himself to the
accomplishment of results. The first year of his term is necessarily
devoted to the work of acquiring a familiarity with the machinery of the
government, and the shaping of a policy. The second year may be devoted
to a more or less strenuous effort at the adoption of the policy thus
formulated. As experience shows, the action of the third and fourth
years is gravely affected--if not altogether perverted from the work in
hand--by what are known as the political exigencies incident to a
succession. Manifestly, this calls for correction. The remedy, however,
to my mind, is obvious and suggests itself. As the presidency is the
one office under our Constitution national in character, and in no way
locally representative, I would extend the term to seven years, and
render the occupant of the office thereafter ineligible for reëlection.
Seven years is, I am aware, under our political system, an unusual term;
and here my ears will, I know, be assailed by the great "mandate"
cackle. The count of noses being complete, the mind of the composite
Democrat is held to be made up. It only remains to formulate the
consequent decree; and, with least possible delay, put it in way of
practical enforcement. Again, I, as a publicist, demur. It is the old
issue, that between instant action and action on second thought,
presented once more. Briefly, the experience of sixty years strongly
inclines me to a preference of matured and considerate action over that
immediate action which notoriously is in nine cases out of ten as
ill-advised as it is precipitate. Only in the field of politics is the
expediency of the latter assumed as of course; yet, as in science and
literature and art so in politics, final, because satisfactory, results
are at best but slowly thrashed out. As respects wisdom, the modern
statute book does not loom, monumental. Its contemplation would indeed
perhaps even lead to a surmise that reasonable delay in formulating his
"mandate" might, in the case of the composite Democrat as in that of the
individual Autocrat, prove a not altogether unmixed, and so in the end
an intolerable, evil.
Thus while a change of the Executive and Legislative branches of the
government might not be always simultaneously effected, by selecting
seven years as the presidential term the election would be brought
about, as frequently as might be, by itself, uncomplicated by local
issues connected with the fortunes or political fate of individual
candidates for office, whether State, Congressional, or Senatorial; and
during the seven years of tenure, four, at least, it might reasonably be
anticipated, would be devoted to the promotion of a definite policy, in
place of one year in a term of four, as now. If also ineligible for
reelection, there is at least a fair presumption that the occupant of
the position might from start to finish apply himself to its duties and
obligations, without being distracted therefrom by ulterior personal
ends as constantly as humanly held in view.
Having thus disposed of the Judiciary and the Executive, we come to the
Legislative. And here I submit is the weak point in our American
system,--manifestly the weak point, and to those who, like myself, have
had occasion to know, undeniably so. I am here as a publicist; not as a
writer of memoirs: so, on this head, I do not now propose to dilate or
bear witness. I will only briefly say that having at one period, and for
more than the lifetime of a generation, been in charge of large
corporate and financial interests, I have had much occasion to deal with
legislative bodies, National, State and Municipal. That page of my
experiences is the one I care least to recall, and would most gladly
forget. I am not going to specify, or give names of either localities or
persons; but, knowing what I know, it is useless to approach me on this
topic with the usual good-natured and optimistic, if somewhat unctuous
and conventional, commonplaces on general uprightness and the tendency
to improved conditions and a higher standard. I know better! I have seen
legislators bought like bullocks--they selling themselves. I have
watched them cover their tracks with a cunning more than vulpine. I have
myself been black-mailed and sandbagged, while whole legislative bodies
watched the process, fully cognizant at every step of what was going on.
This, I am glad to say, was years ago. The legislative conditions were
then bad, scandalously bad; nor have I any reason to believe in a
regeneration since. The stream will never rise higher than its source;
but it generally indicates the level thereof. In this case, I can only
hope that in my experience it failed so to do. Running at a low level,
the waters of that stream were deplorably dirty.
That the legislative branch of our government has fallen so markedly in
public estimation is not, I think, open to denial. To my mind, under the
conditions I have referred to, such could not fail to be the case. It
has, consequently, lost public confidence. Hence this popular demand for
immediate legislation by the People,--this twentieth-century appeal to
the Agora and Forum methods which antedate the era of Christ. It is true
the world outgrew them two thousand years ago, and they were discarded;
but, living in a progressive and not a reactionary period, all that, we
are assured, is changed! The heart is no longer on the right-hand side
of the body. To secure desired results it is only necessary to start
quite fresh, as a mere preliminary discarding all lessons of experience.
Such reasoning does not commend itself to my judgment. On the contrary,
the failure of the American legislative to command an increasing public
confidence, while both natural and obvious, is, if my observation guides
me to conclusions in any degree correct, traceable to two reasons. So
far as government is concerned, the law-making branch is assumed to be
made up of the wisest and the most expert. Meanwhile, it is as a matter
of fact chosen by the process I have not over-respectfully referred to
as the counting of noses; and, moreover, by an unwritten law more
binding than any in the Statute Book, that counting of noses is with us
localized. In other words, when it comes to the choice of our
law-makers, reducing provincialism to a system we make the local
numerical majority supreme, and any one is considered competent to
legislate. He can do that, even if by common knowledge he is incompetent
or untrustworthy in every other capacity. Localization thus becomes the
stronghold of mediocrity, the sure avenue to office of the second-and
third-rate man,--he who wishes always to enjoy his share of a little
brief authority, to have, he also, a taste of public life. In this
respect our American system is, I submit, manifestly and incomparably
inferior to the system of parliamentary election existing in Great
Britain, itself open to grave criticism. In Great Britain the public man
seeks the constituency wherever he can find it; or the constituency
seeks its representative wherever it recognizes him. The present Prime
Minister of Great Britain, for instance, represents a small Scotch
constituency in which he never resided, but by which he was elected more
than twenty years ago, and through which he has since consecutively
remained in public life. On the other hand, look at the waste and
extravagance of the system now and traditionally in use with us. To get
into public life a man must not only be in sympathy with the majority of
the citizens of the locality in which he lives, but he must continue to
be in sympathy with that majority; or, at any election, like Mr. Cannon
in the election just held, where for any passing cause a majority of his
neighbors in the locality in which he lives may fail to support him, he
must go into retirement. I cannot here enlarge on this topic, vital as I
see it; I have neither space nor time, and must, therefore, needs
content myself with the "hints" of Paracelsus. I will merely say that as
an outcome this localized majority system practically disfranchises the
more intelligent and the more disinterested, the more individual and
independent of every constituency. It reduces their influence, and
negatives their action. It operates in like fashion everywhere. My
field of observation has been at home, here in America; but it has been
the same in France. For instance, while preparing this address I came
across the following in that most respectable sheet, the London
_Athenaum_. A very competent Frenchman was there criticising a recent
book entitled "Idealism in France." Reference was by him made to what,
in France, is known as the "_scrutin d'arrondissement,"_ or, in other
words, the district representative system. The critic declares that this
system has there "created a party machine which has brought the country
under the sway of a sort of Radical-Socialist Tammany, and bound
together the voter and the deputy by a tie of mutual corruption, the
candidate promising Government favors to the elector in return for his
vote, and the elector supporting the candidate who promises most. Hence
a policy in which ideas and ideals are forgotten for personal and local
interests, as each candidate strives to outbid his rivals in the bribes
that he offers to his constituents. Hence, finally, a general lowering
in the tone of French home politics, every question being made
subservient by the deputies to that of their reëlection."
I would respectfully inquire if the above does not apply word for word
to the condition of affairs with which we are familiar in America.
But let me here again cite a concrete case, still fresh in memory;
nothing in abstract discussion tells so much. Take the late Carl
Schurz. If there was one man in our public life since 1865 who showed a
genius for the parliamentary career, and who in six short years in the
United States Senate--a single term--displayed there constructive
legislating qualities of the highest order, it was Carl Schurz. Yet at
the end of that single senatorial term, for local and temporary reasons
he failed to obtain the support of a majority, or the support of
anything approaching a majority, of those composing the constituency
upon which he depended. Consequently he was retired from that
parliamentary position necessary for the accomplishment, through him, of
best public results. Yet at that very time there was no man in the
United States who commanded so large and so personal a constituency as
Carl Schurz; for he represented the entire Germanic element in the
United States. Distributed as that element was, however, with its vote
localized under our law, unwritten as well as statutory, there was no
possibility of any constituency so concentrating itself that Carl Schurz
could be kept in the position where he could continue to render services
of the greatest possible value to the country. I, therefore, confidently
here submit a doubt whether human ingenuity could devise any system
calculated to lead to a greater waste of parliamentary ability, or more
effectually keep from the front and position of influence that
legislative superiority which was the arm of Aristotle to secure.
"Cant-patriotism," as your Francis Lieber termed it; and, on this
score, he waxed eloquent. "Do we not live in a world of cant," he wrote
from Columbia here to a friend at the North seventy-five years ago,
"that cant-patriotism which plumes itself in selecting men from within
the State confines only. The truer a nation is, the more essentially it
is elevated, the more it disregards petty considerations, and takes the
true and the good from whatever quarter it may come. Look at history and
you find the proof. Look around you, where you are, and you find it
now." And, were Lieber living to-day, he would find a striking
exemplification of the consequences of a total and systematic disregard
of this elementary proposition in studying the United States Senate from
and through its reporters' gallery. The decline in the standards of that
body, whether of aspect, intelligence, education or character, under the
operation of the local primary has been not less pronounced than
startling. The outcome and ripe result of "cant-patriotism," it affords
to the curious observer an impressive object-lesson,--provincialism
reduced to a political system; what a witty and incisive French writer
has recently termed the "Cult of Incompetence." Speaking of conditions
prevailing not here but in France, this observer says:--"Democracy in
its modern form chooses its' delegates in its own image.... What ought
the character of the legislator to be? The very opposite, it seems to
me, of the democratic legislator, for he ought to be well-informed and
entirely devoid of prejudice." Taken as a whole, and a few striking
individual exceptions apart, are those composing the Senate of the
United States conspicuous in these respects? They certainly do not so
impress the casual observer. That, as a body, they increasingly fail to
command confidence and attention is matter of common remark. Nor is the
reason far to seek. It would be the same as respects literature, science
and art, were their representatives chosen and results reached through a
count of noses localized, with selection severely confined to
home talent.
I am well aware of the criticism which will at once be passed on what I
now advance. Local representation through choice by numerical majorities
within given confines, geographically and mathematically fixed, is a
system so rooted and intrenched in the convictions and traditions of the
American community that even to question its wisdom evinces a lack of
political common-sense. It in fact resembles nothing so much as the
attempt to whistle down a strongly prevailing October wind from the
West. The attempt so to do is not practical politics! In reply, however,
I would suggest that such a criticism is wholly irrelevant. The
publicist has nothing to do with practical politics. It is as if it were
objected to a physician who prescribed sanitation against epidemics that
the community in question was by custom and tradition wedded to filth
and surface-drainage, and could not possibly be induced to abandon them
in favor of any new-fangled theories of soap-and-water cleanliness. So
why waste time in prescribing such? Better be common-sensed and
practical, taking things as they are. In the case suggested, and
confronted with such criticism, the medical adviser simply shrugs his
shoulders, and is silent; the alternative he knows is inescapable. After
a sufficiency of sound scourgings the objecting community will probably
know better, and may listen to reason; in a way, conforming thereto. So,
also, the body politic. If Ephraim is indeed thus joined to idols, the
publicist simply shrugs his shoulders, and passes on; possibly, after
Ephraim has been sufficiently scourged, he may in that indefinite future
popularly known as "one of these days" be more clear sighted and wiser.
None the less, so far as our national parliamentary system is concerned,
could I have my way in a revision of the Constitution, I would increase
the senatorial term to ten years, and I would, were such a thing within
the range of possibility, break down the system of the necessary
senatorial selection by a State of an inhabitant of the State. If I
could, I would introduce the British system. For example, though I never
voted for Mr. Bryan and have not been in general sympathy with Mr.
Roosevelt, yet few things would give me greater political satisfaction
than to see Mr. Bryan, we will say, elected a Senator from Arizona or
Oregon, Mr. Roosevelt elected from Illinois or Pennsylvania, President
Taft from Utah or Vermont. They apparently best represent existing
feelings and the ideals prevailing in those communities; why, then,
should they not voice those feelings and ideals in our highest
parliamentary chamber?