Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v1.djvu/381

Rh near and as close as possible. According to these principles, Mr. Speaker, in this state it is provided, by its Constitution, that the representatives in Congress shall be chosen annually, shall be paid by the state, and shall be subject to recall even within the year—so cautiously has our Constitution guarded against an abuse of the trust reposed in our representatives in the federal government; whereas, by the third and sixth section of the first article of this new system, the senators are to be chosen for six years, instead of being chosen annually; instead of being paid by their states who send them, they, in conjunction with the other branch are to pay themselves out of the treasury of the United States, and an not liable to be recalled during the period for which they are chosen. Thus, sir, for six years, the senators are rendered totally and absolutely independent of their states, of whom they ought to be the representatives, without any bond or tie between them. During that time, they may join in measures ruinous and destructive to their states, even such as should totally annihilate their state governments; and their states cannot recall them, nor exercise any control over them.

Another consideration, Mr. Speaker, it was thought, ought to have great weight to prove that the smaller states cannot depend on the Senate for the preservation of their rights, either against large and ambitious states, or against an ambitious, aspiring President. The Senate, sir, is so constituted that they are not only to compose one branch of the legislature, but, by the second section of the second article, they are to compose a privy council for the President. Hence it will be necessary that they should be, in a great measure, a permanent body, constantly residing at the seat of government. Seventy years are esteemed for the life of a man; it can hardly be supposed that a senator, especially from the states remote from the seat of empire, will accept of an appointment which must estrange him for six years from his state, without giving up, to a great decree, his prospects in his own state. If he has a family, he will take his family with him to the place where the government shall be fixed; that will become his home; and there is every reason to expect that his future views and prospects will centre in the favors and emoluments of the general government, or of the government of that state where the seat of empire is established. In either case, he is lost to his own state. If he places his future prospects in the favors and emoluments of the general government, he will become a dependant and creature of the President. As the system enables a senator to be appointed to office, and without the nomination of the President no appointment can take place,—as such he will favor the wishes of the President, and concur in his measures, who, if he has no ambitious views of his own to gratify, may be too favorable to the ambitious views of the large states, who will have an undue share in his original appointment, on whom he will be more dependent afterwards than on the states which are smaller. If the senator places his future prospects in that state where the seat of empire is fixed, from that time he will be, in every question wherein its particular interest may be concerned, the representative of that state, not of his own.

But even this provision apparently for the security of the state governments, inadequate as it is, is entirely left at the mercy of the general government; for, by the fourth section of the first article, it is expressly provided, that the Congress shall have a power to make and alter all regulations concerning the time and manner of holding elections for senators—a provision expressly looking to, and I have no doubt designed for, the utter 4631