CHAPTER IV THE THE SENATE HE present Senate of the United States, if all elections were complete, would consist of ninety memComposition bers, two members from each of the forty-five of the Senate. States.' By the Constitution which created the Senate, the Senators are chosen by the legislatures of Method of their respective States for a term of six years, Election. and each Senator has one vote. A Senator is required: Qualifications of Senators. To be thirty years of age; To have been nine years a citizen of the United States; and To be, at the time of his election, an inhabitant of that State for which he is chosen. No Senator can hold any other office under the United States. The the Senate: The Vice-President of the United States is the presiding officer of the Senate. He votes only in case of a tie. The Vice-President, unlike the Speaker of the President of House, is not a member of the body over which he presides. He can therefore claim no right to vote, except in case of a tie. The Senate may choose, with its other officers, a President pro tempore, who presides in the absence of the Vice-President, or Right to The English House of Lords has about 592 members; the French Senate, 300; the German Bundesrath, 58. The latter body represents the German states. when the latter shall exercise the office of President of the United States. The President pro tempore, as a member of the Senate, may claim a vote on any question at issue, but, having voted once, he cannot, of course, vote again even in case of a tie. Al- pro Tempore. ways in a tie vote the pending measure is lost.' The President Classes of Senators. At the first organization of the Senate its members were divided, according to the Constitution, into three classes, -the seats of the Senators of the first class to be vacated at the expiration of the second year, of the second class at the expiration of the fourth year, of the third class at the expiration of the sixth year. Senators from a new State are assigned by lot to two of these classes. One of the newly elected Senators may fall into a class whose term expires in two years, the other into a class whose term expires in four years, or in six. By this provision the two Senatorships from the same State can never be vacant at the same time. So when Senators are elected from a new State one of them may serve for only two years and the other for four. However, such Senators are usually re-elected by their States for a full term. The Senate a Permanent or Continuous Body. The Senate is called a continuous, or permanent body, because it has in every Congress two-thirds of the same members as in the Congress just preceding. The body does not change all at once, as do assemblies created by a single popular 1In 1868, while the Senate was sitting as a court in the impeachment trial of President Johnson, Senator Wade, of Ohio, was President pro tempore of the Senate. His right to vote on the charges of impeachment was disputed, although the Chief Justice was presiding, on the ground that Wade was directly personally interested in the result of the vote, since if Johnson had been removed Wade would have become acting President. Wade based his right to vote on the constitutional provision that no State shall be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate except by its own consent, and if his right to vote were denied Ohio would have but one vote in the Senate. By the decision of the Senate, Wade was allowed to vote. He voted for the impeachment and removal of the President. election, but undergoes an "unceasing process of gradual renewal." "Always changing, it is forever the same." This permanent character qualifies the Senate to help conduct the foreign policy of the nation and adds to the traditional dignity of the Senate.' the Senate. How Filled. A vacancy from a State, occurring by death or resignation during a recess of the State legislature, is filled by Vacancies in temporary appointment by the State governor until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall then fill the vacancy. It has been recently determined, however, that the Senate, which is the judge of the election of its own members, will not recognize the appointment by a governor in case an intervening legislature fail to elect. The failure of a State to elect, when opportunity is offered to its legislature, is construed as equivalent to the State's consent that it be deprived of equal representation in the Senate. The governor may appoint only to vacancies "which happen during the recess of the legislature." "Happen is here interpreted to refer only to vacancies created by accident, not to those created by law. It is the duty of a State to provide for election in advance of a legal vacancy. Vacancies may "happen" by death, resignation, expulsion, and by accepting an incompatible office. But the governor may not fill any vacancy which he finds existing when the legislature is in recess. In that case, a senatorial candidate who has the favor of the governor would need to have only enough supporters in the legislature to prevent an election. If the legislature be forced to adjourn without electing the Senator, the governor could take the selection into his own hands.' 1 Bryce, vol. i., p. 103. See Foster on the Constitution. Case of Lee Mantle of Montana, Aug. 23, 1893, Congressional Globe. Speech of Senator Burrows of Michigan, in the Quay case, April 14, 1900. Such are the more or less familiar constitutional provisions touching the composition of the Senate. The origin of the Senate is of historical interest and of political significance. Origin of the Senate. A Diplomatic Body. As is well known, the so-called Congress of the old Confederation consisted of but a single house. This body, as we have seen in our notice of the old Confederation, was more of a diplomatic body than a legislature. We have seen that, in the old Congress, questions were determined by the voices of States, and the The Congress voice of any one State was equal in weight to the of the Old Convoice of any other. The members were State federation: delegates,—they were elected by States, were rather than a paid by the States, and could be recalled by Law-Making the States. The Congress was to consider certain definite subjects, which the States, through their delegates, had assigned to it for consideration. The old Congress was lacking in the two prime requisites of a governing body: it could not enforce a law nor collect a tax. There is a political absurdity involved in the assertion which we sometimes hear, that the old Confederation could make laws but could not enforce them; for a socalled government which has no law-enforcing power has really no law-making power. What such a body makes may be a proclamation, or resolution, or recommendation, but not a law. It is evident that the men who framed the Confederation did not look upon its Congress as a law-making body, except to a very limited extent, and that strictly specified. If a law-making body as part of a real government had been intended by our fathers when their States formed a league in 1781, they would doubtless have formed their Congress after the pattern of every government, save two, of which they had any working experimental knowledge. That is, they would have given their legislature the bicameral, not the unicameral, form. The bicameral form of legislature is the form of two houses. All of the original State legislatures, except Pennsylvania and Georgia, had the bicam The eral system, and all the later States, except Vermont in its early history, have followed this pattern. The advantage of two houses was thought to be that one should act as a check on the haste and error of the other. In several of the Colonies the upper houses were only small executive bodies, appointed to assist the governor, with power to check legislation by a suspensive veto. But after the Revolution these soon came to be co-ordinate houses of legislation. In America the need of two chambers came to be deemed “an axiom in political science, on the belief that the innate tendency of an assembly to become hasty, tyrannical, and corrupt needs to be checked by the coexistence of another house of equal authority." 1 This theory was pretty deeply imbedded in the minds of the framers of our Constitution. So when they came together in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, to provide for a new Congress-for a really effective government-the first two propositions of importance coming before them were: (1) That the right of voting in the new national legislature ought to be proportional either to wealth or to inhabitants; that it ought not to be, as it had been, one State, one vote; (2) That this legislature should consist of two houses. The proposition for a bicameral, or a two-house, legislature was agreed to on the second day of the Convention 'The Constitution of Pennsylvania of 1786, that of Georgia of 1777, and the two Constitutions of Vermont, 1786 and 1793, all provided for only one house in the Legislature. Each provided for an Executive Council with power of checking or delaying the acts of the law-making body. Georgia created two houses in 1789, Pennsylvania in 1790, and Vermont in 1839. On the division of the legislature, see Bryce, vol. i., p. 480; Kent's Commentaries on the American Constitution, vol. i., pp. 208-210; Story's Commentaries, pp. 548-590. |