Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/441

1787.] but barely remind the members from the smaller states of the compromise by which the larger states were entitled to this privilege.

Col. MASON. This amendment removes all the objections urged against the section as it stood at first. By specifying purposes of revenue, it obviated the objection that the section extended to all bills under which money might incidentally arise. By authorizing amendments in the senate, it got rid of the objections that the senate could not correct errors of any sort, and that it would introduce into the House of Representatives the practice of tacking foreign matter to money bills. These objections being removed, the arguments in favor of the proposed restraint on the Senate ought to have their full force. First, the Senate did not represent the people, but the states, in their political character. It was improper, therefore, that it should tax the people. The reason was the same against their doing it as it had been against Congress doing it. Secondly, nor was it in any respect necessary, in order to cure the evils of our republican system. He admitted, that notwithstanding the superiority of the republican form over every other, it had its evils. The chief ones were, the. danger of the majority oppressing the minority, and the mischievous influence of demagogues. The general government of itself will cure them. As the states will not concur at the same time in their unjust and oppressive plans, the general government will be able to check and defeat them, whether they result from the wickedness of the majority, or from the misguidance of demagogues. Again, the Senate is not, like the House of Representatives, chosen frequently, and obliged to return frequently among the people. They are to be chosen by the states for six years—will probably settle themselves at the seat of government—will pursue schemes for their own aggrandizement—will be able, by wearying out the House of Representatives, and taking advantage of their impatience at the close of a long session, to extort measures for that purpose. If they should be paid, as he expected would be yet determined and wished to be so, out of the national treasury, they will, particularly, extort an increase of their wages. A bare negative was a very different thing from that of originating bills. The practice in England was in point. The House of Lords does not represent nor tax the people, because not elected by the people. If the Senate can originate, they will, in the recess of the legislative sessions, hatch their mischievous projects for their own purposes, and have their money bills cut and dried (to use a common phrase) for the meeting of the House of Representatives. He compared the case to Poyning's law, and signified that the House of Representatives might be rendered, by degrees, like the Parliament of Paris, the mere depository of the decrees of the Senate. As to the compromise, so much had passed on that subject that he would say nothing about it. He did not mean, by what he had said, to oppose the permanency of the Senate. On the contrary, he had no repugnance to an increase of it, nor to allowing it a negative, though the Senate was not, by its present constitution, entitled to it.