Popular Assembly Research Articles

The Usurped Powers of the Senate

A century of constitutional government in the United States has served to emphasize the wisdom of Hamilton's warning of “the tendency of the legislative authority to absorb every other.” He clearly foresaw and attempted to guard against, dangers that today are only too apparent. “In governments purely republican,” he wrote, “this tendency is almost irresistible. The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter; as if the exercise of its rights, by either the executive or the judiciary, were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity. They often appear disposed to exert an imperious control over the other departments; and, as they commonly have the people on their side, they always act with such momentum as to make it very difficult for the other members of the government to maintain the balance of the Constitution.”Never did human ingenuity devise a more nicely balanced system of government than when the framers of the Constitution allocated to the executive and to the legislature the exercise of powers not to be infringed by the other; but like many things human the intent has been perverted. Every person familiar with the Constitution, the debates in the convention, and the writings of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay in The Federalist, must know that the purpose of the framers of the Constitution was to create a system of government by which the President should become neither the creature nor the controller of the legislature; and by vesting certain exclusive powers in the popular branch and certain other powers in the Senate to provide that the line of demarcation between the two houses should not be overstepped.

Evolution of the American Voter

SOME historical scholar, devoted by taste and habits to close research, might well examine the records still accessible of our colonial age, to ascertain the laws and usages which prevailed before the American Revolution in each of the thirteen original colonies concerning the elective franchise.1 For this is a subject whose exposition must depend, not upon a priori reasoning, but upon the facts. So far as the charters of that long adolescent period afford any light they make but three things plainly evident: (i) That voting was common in all these colonies under one reservation or another; (2) that in Rhode Island and Connecticut, under those highly liberal charters from Charles II. which served each state for a considerable space of this nineteenth century after royalty had been abolished, and in Massachusetts, too, under her earliest grants, this elective franchise was largely exercised; (3) that, for most of our colonial period at least, in most of the other colonies the voter's right was usually confined to the choice of local town and county officers and of local representatives in that single popular assembly or legislative branch which resembled the House of Commons in the mother country. But when we reach I776, and the era during which these thirteen commonwealths shook off united the British yoke and organized state governments apart, most of the written state constitutions are seen disclosing local predilections attaching to the right of elector. And from that date forward the evolution of the American voter may be fairly traced through a comparative study of these fundamental frameworks. No doubt under the earliest constitutions of such Revolutionary states the franchise was bestowed upon the people in accordance mainly with colonial practice and sentiment. Rhode Island and Connecticut, to be sure, retained colonial charters which left the matter largely to legislative discretion; but the other eleven states established constitutions for themselves. To take the first period of about twelve years which preceded the adoption of our federal constitution (I 776-1788), comparison shows a certain homogeneousness in the policy of admitting freemen to participate by their votes in a representative and republican state government; while at the same time appeared various points of difference. In general the voter was to be a male resident of the state, at least twenty-one years lDr. Cortlandt F. Bishop, in his recent History of Elections in the American Colonies (III. Columbia College Studies, No. I), supplies a scholarly essay on this topic. ( 665 )

Evolution of the American Voter

SOME historical scholar, devoted by taste and habits to close research, might well examine the records still accessible of our colonial age, to ascertain the laws and usages which prevailed before the American Revolution in each of the thirteen original colonies concerning the elective franchise.1 For this is a subject whose exposition must depend, not upon a priori reasoning, but upon the facts. So far as the charters of that long adolescent period afford any light they make but three things plainly evident: (i) That voting was common in all these colonies under one reservation or another; (2) that in Rhode Island and Connecticut, under those highly liberal charters from Charles II. which served each state for a considerable space of this nineteenth century after royalty had been abolished, and in Massachusetts, too, under her earliest grants, this elective franchise was largely exercised; (3) that, for most of our colonial period at least, in most of the other colonies the voter's right was usually confined to the choice of local town and county officers and of local representatives in that single popular assembly or legislative branch which resembled the House of Commons in the mother country. But when we reach I776, and the era during which these thirteen commonwealths shook off united the British yoke and organized state governments apart, most of the written state constitutions are seen disclosing local predilections attaching to the right of elector. And from that date forward the evolution of the American voter may be fairly traced through a comparative study of these fundamental frameworks. No doubt under the earliest constitutions of such Revolutionary states the franchise was bestowed upon the people in accordance mainly with colonial practice and sentiment. Rhode Island and Connecticut, to be sure, retained colonial charters which left the matter largely to legislative discretion; but the other eleven states established constitutions for themselves. To take the first period of about twelve years which preceded the adoption of our federal constitution (I 776-1788), comparison shows a certain homogeneousness in the policy of admitting freemen to participate by their votes in a representative and republican state government; while at the same time appeared various points of difference. In general the voter was to be a male resident of the state, at least twenty-one years lDr. Cortlandt F. Bishop, in his recent History of Elections in the American Colonies (III. Columbia College Studies, No. I), supplies a scholarly essay on this topic. ( 665 )

On an Unedited Rhodian Inscription

I found this inscription in the ruins of a church called Agia Irenè, about a quarter of an hour's distance from the village of Apolakkia in Rhodes. This village is situated near the sea on the south-west side of the island (see my Travels and Discoveries, i., p. 198).This inscription contains part of two decrees, of which the first was passed by the κοινόν of the Euthalidai. The upper part of the stone being wanting, we only know the latter part of this first decree, from which we learn that a crown had been voted by the κοινόν to Sosikrates, son of Kleonymos, a Netteian, and that this honour was to be publicly proclaimed in the usual manner. We learn further that it was necessary that this decree should be confirmed by a Boulè, ‘senate,’ and Demos, ‘popular assembly,’ to the control of which the Euthalidai were subject.