Senators, Election

of by Popular Vote. The House of Representatives, by a very large vote, May, 1900, recommended an amendment to our Federal Constitution providing that the two Senators allotted to each State shall be chosen by the people thereof instead of by the Legislature. A similar demand was made in the National Democratic platform, July 4, 1900. The question having become, thercfore, a political i ue, it is well to know what view of the matter was taken by the authors of our Federal organic law. When the method of choosing the members of the Senate came up for debate in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, proposed that the Senators should be chosen not, indeed, directly by the people, but by electors chosen by the people. Oliver Ells worth, of Connecticut, replied: ‘‘The State Legislatures are more competent to make a judicious choice than the people at large. Without the existence and co-operation of the States a republican government cannot be supported over so great an extent of country. We know that the people of the States are strongly attached to their Constitutions. If you hold upa system of general government destructive of their constitutional rights they will oppose it. The only chance we have to support a general government is to graft it on the State Governments.” Dick in son, of Delaware, supported by the smaller States, insisted upon the election of the members of the second branch (the Senate) by the State Legislatures, and the demand was accepted in the Committee of the Whole and subsequently affirmed in the Convention by all the States except Penusylvania and Virginia. It is noteworthy that the opposition of the last-named State was based upon the belief that the election of Senators by the State Legislatures would involve an equal representation of the States in the Senate or second branch of the Federal A embly. Such equal representation Virginia long and strenuously opposed. It was at an early stage of the proceedings at Philadelphia that the demand of the smaller States that their delegates in the Senate or second branch of the Federal A embly should be chosen by the State Legislatures was formally conceded by a large majority. No attempt was afterward made to recede from the position. Had such an attempt been made succe fully the proposed Constitution would never have been adopted by the smaller States. They considered the election of Senators by the State Legislatures e ential to their permanent retention of the right of equal representation in the Senate; for, they argued, Senators representing directly vast populations would, sooner or later, insist upon proportionate weight in the second branch of the Federal A embly. So long, on the other hand, as Senators, being chosen by State Legislatures, simply represent their State in its corporate capacity, the authority of a Senator’s mandate would remain unaffected by the number of inhabitants in his Commonwealth. 416