Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/542

516 Mr. WILLIAMSON espoused it, as a reasonable precaution against the undue influence of the Senate.

Mr. SHERMAN liked the arrangement as it stood, though he should not be averse to some amendments. He thought, he said, that if the legislature were to have the eventual appointment, instead of the Senate, it ought to vote in the case by states,—in favor of the small states, as the large states would have so great an advantage in nominating the candidates.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS thought favorably of Mr. Gerry's proposition. It would free the President from being tempted, in naming to offices, to conform to the will of the Senate, and thereby virtually give the appointments to office to the Senate.

Mr. WILSON said, that he had weighed carefully the report of the committee for remodeling the constitution of the executive; and, on combining it with other parts of the plan, he was obliged to consider the whole as having a dangerous tendency to aristocracy; as throwing a dangerous power into the hands of the Senate. They will have, in fact, the appointment of the President, and, through his dependence on them, the virtual appointment to offices; among others, the officers of the judiciary department. They are to make treaties; and they are to try all impeachments. In allowing them thus to make the executive, and judiciary appointments, to be the court of impeachments, and to make treaties which are to be laws of the land, the legislative, executive and judiciary powers are all blended in one branch of the government. The power of making treaties involves the case of subsidies; and here, as an additional evil, foreign influence is to be dreaded. According to the plan as it now stands, the President will not be the man of the people, as he ought to be; but the minion of the Senate. He cannot even appoint a tide-waiter without the Senate. He had always thought the Senate too numerous a body for making appointments to office. The Senate will, moreover, in all probability, be in constant session. They will have high salaries. And with all these powers, and the President in their interest, they will depress the other branch of the legislature, and aggrandize themselves in proportion. Add to all this, that the Senate, sitting in conclave, can, by holding up to their respective slates various and improbable candidates, contrive so to scatter their votes, as to bring the appointment of the President ultimately before themselves. Upon the whole, he thought the new mode of appointing the President, with some amendments, a valuable improvement; but he could never agree to purchase it at the price of the ensuing parts of the report, nor befriend a system of which they make a part.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS expressed his wonder at the observations of Mr. Wilson, so far as they preferred the plan in the printed report to the new modification of it before the House; and entered into a comparative view of the two, with an eye to the nature of Mr. Wilson's objections to the last. By the first, the Senate, he observed, had a voice in appointing the President out