The Election of United States Senators
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the organization of governments what
question from one with one hundred
is meant is the people massed and acting as a body. Such a body becomes a distinct department, call it what you please-an assembly, a legislature, a
million of individuals.
wittena gemote, a council of wise men, House of Commons, or what not. As a department of government it must be
subject to the same checks as the Executive. The tyranny of “the people” thus concentrated is as far reaching as
that of a monarch or despot. The general people recognize this fact for in making constitutions they expressly create check reins against their own impulses.
No government could
be
operated unless the people subjected themselves to checks.
I respectfully
maintain that contemporaneous history shows that the natural political trend of our country as our population in creases is towards a representative government; that each day we drift
farther away from a pure democracy; and that the necessity of the people in all of the afl'airs of the government to be represented by political agents has in creased almost tenfold since its formation. He who advocates the application of
pure democratic principles to existing conditions, it seems to me but poorly comprehends our real political, com
mercial and social status. Convinced of the absolute imprac
There are three elements in every organized government; first, the state;
ticability of governing directly, the voters have committed their interests to repre
second, the magistrates (which includes legislative and judicial officers); and third, the people. All internal dis
intervals, either voting directly for the
turbances come from a lack of adjust
ment between these three. It is con ceded the state must have absolute power within the sphere of her operation,
hence the real difficulties lie in a proper division of power-too much to the executive or magistrates or too much to the people, or too little to one or the
other produce discord. The success of a government reaches its climax when by an adjustment of the different parts all work harmoniously. I confess I am amazed at the argument
used by the advocates for this amend
sentatives, whom they choose at stated nominees of party conventions, or, in
the case of Senators, through legislators, duly chosen by them. It is a physical and political impossi bility that any but a representative government can exist here, unless for sooth we agree to a despotism, or divide the country into hundreds of states, each so small in the number of its inhabitants that every member thereof could directly exercise a voice
in it-another remote possibility and one reaching into the confines of a political millenium. At the bottom, however, of this representative govem
ment: that a changed condition of the
ment, we find the people.
country from that which existed when provision was made for electing the Senate by the legislature, demands that the people be now substituted in place of the latter. ON THE CON TRARY 1r rs "ms STRONGEST REASON IN FAVOR or RETAINING OUR PRESENT SYSTEM. A republic with thirteen million of in habitants presents an entirely different
its movers and its inspiration.
They are
They
choose freely their representatives to
political conventions, and govern by exercising a perpetual control over their
political agents, having always in their hands the power to correct the evils, mis takes or shortcomings of the former. The spirit of democracy breathes through and vitalizes all our political forms. Now
