Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/477

Rh elected by the State legislatures, looking upon the legislatures as more representative of the individuality of the States, and also possibly to secure to the highest law-giving body of this country a superior class of men. But in point of fact it is absolutely certain, and it cannot be denied, that, while the constituencies are different, the relation of a Senator, when once elected, to his constituency is in no essential point different from the relation a member of the House of Representatives to his, and I defy denial of this fact. Neither the Senator nor the Representative can be recalled. The Representative and the Senator are equally out of the reach and the control of their respective constituents. With regard to the Senator, therefore, the sovereignty of the State becomes utterly inoperative as soon as the fact of his election is accomplished. When the Senator has once been elected, even before he is sworn into office at that desk, the State has no power to reconsider that election, nor to recall him.

And now, sir, when it is discovered that the election of a Senator has been effected by fraud or bribery, has a sovereign State the power to undo its own act to set itself right? Not at all. Not even the discovery made before the Senator has taken his seat would enable the legislature to reconsider its election. It can, in such a case, only memorialize the Senate of the United States, setting forth the facts, and then the Senate only can act in the case upon its own knowledge and judgment, for the Senator has passed entirely out of control of his State, and entirely within the control of the Senate. Thus, when the people of a State have been defrauded, say by the purchase of a senatorial election, they are, with all their sovereignty, bound hand and foot, and not the State, but only the Senate, can furnish the necessary relief.

Now if the Senate, by virtue of its Constitutional powers, does declare a fraudulent election invalid, does that