THE DIRECT ELECTION OF UNITED STATES SENATORS ADDRESS IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES A joint resolution was introduced in the Sixty-first Congress (S. J. Res. 134) to amend the fourth paragraph of Section 2, and the first paragraph of Sections 3 and 4 of Article I of the Constitution of the United States. These paragraphs read as follows: Section 2. When vacancies happen in the representation from any State the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies. Section 3. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. Section 4. The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations' except as to the places of choosing Senators. The joint resolution before the Senate, with the proposed changes in the Constitution indicated in italics, was as follows: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators shall be as prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof. [Omits the words: “but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators."] When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the Legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election, as the legislature may direct. This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution. The provision to amend Section 4 of Article I to which Mr. Root earnestly objected in his address of February 10, 1911, was rejected by the Senate before the resolution as a whole was voted upon. On February 28, 1911, the joint resolution, as amended, was put to vote and it failed to pass, two-thirds not having voted therefor, the vote being: yeas, 54; nays, 33. In the Sixty-second Congress, the joint resolution to amend Article I of the Constitution was again introduced (H. J. Res. 39) and passed the House containing the proposed amendment to Section 4 of Article I. In the Senate, Senator Bristow, of Kansas, offered an amendment to the joint resolution which consisted of the omission of the proposed amendment to Section 4 of Article I. Senator Bristow's amendment was adopted and the joint resolution as thus amended, passed the Senate June 12, 1911. The House disagreed to the Senate amendment, and a conference committee was appointed. The conference disagreed, and the Senate insisted upon its amendment. Nearly a year later, on May 13, 1912, the House receded from its disagreement to the Senate amendment, and the joint resolution was then passed without the proposed amendment to Section 4 of Article I. The joint resolution was certified to the Department of State, May 15, 1912, and transmitted to the several state legislatures for action thereon. On May 31, 1913, the Secretary of State, by proclamation, announced that three-fourths of the states (actually 36) having ratified the amendment, it had become valid as the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Root spoke as follows: HE joint resolution now before the Senate contains two separate and distinct amendments of the Constitution of the United States. The first amendment proposed is to change the third section of the first article relating to the election of Senators, so that it shall provide for the election of Senators by the people of the several states instead of their election by the legislatures of the states. That is accompanied by an appropriate provision regarding the filling of vacancies which may occur at such time that they cannot conveniently be immediately filled by an election. The other amendment proposed by the joint resolution is to strike from the fourth section of the first article the provision that— The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators. And to substitute therefor a provision that The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators shall be as prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. That involves two changes in the existing provision. One is to abolish the peremptory command of the Constitution directed to the legislatures of the states, requiring them, as a matter of their duty under the Constitution, to prescribe the times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators, and to substitute for that peremptory command for the performance of a duty under the Constitution a reference to action which the states may or may not take under their own authority. That change is accomplished by inserting the word " as " in the new provisions. I hope I make it clear. The present section 4 of the first article of the Constitution provides that— The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. That is the command of the nation by the sovereign authority of the Constitution to the legislature of each state, requiring it to prescribe the time, places, and manner of electing Senators; and when they act they act in the execution of a mandate from the nation embodied in the national Constitution. Now read the proposed substitute: The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators shall be as prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. If a state prescribes, well and good. It does it under its own authority. If a state does not prescribe, well and good. There is no mandate of the Constitution of the United States requiring the state to do it. It is a clear, distinct, and unquestionable abandonment of the requirement of the Constitution for this fundamental and essential act under national authority for the preservation of the national life. The second change in the fourth section of the first article of the Constitution is made by omitting from that section all authority in Congress to make or alter the regulations which are prescribed. The present section reads: The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators. The proposed substitute for the fourth section reads: The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators shall be as prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. All vestige of national authority as the source of power to perform the act and of national control over the performance of it, or of national power to modify or supplement or compel conformity to national interests, disappears from the provision which is recommended to the Senate in the joint resolution now before us. Mr. President, I am opposed to both of these amendments. I am opposed to changing the election of Senators from the legislatures to the people at the polls, and I am opposed to abandoning the authority of the National Government over the election and the constitution of the members of this branch of the Government. Let me first state the reasons why I am opposed to the change in the manner of electing Senators. It is not wise that the people of the United States should contract the habit of amending the Constitution. Stability in our Government is a matter of vital concern. When America set forth in her great experiment, the almost universal opinion of the world was that she would speedily encounter the disasters that all attempts at popular government had met before that day. The world knew well that the tendency of democratic government was toward frequent change; it knew well that, while all forms of government have weaknesses peculiar to themselves, the weakness of democratic government was its liability to change with the impulse and enthusiasm of the moment, and, through continual changes, to vary from extreme democracy, which men called ochlocracy, on the one hand, to oligarchy and dictatorship on the other. And since the time when our fathers framed the Constitution, half a score of nations, seeking to follow the lines of our experiment, have, in varying degree, and some of them to the last degree of failure, justified such an apprehension. But with us, Mr. President, there has been one great anchor. In our Constitution we have embodied the eternal principles of justice; we have set up a barrier against ourselves. As Ulysses required his followers to bind him to the mast that he might not yield to the song of the siren as he sailed by, so the American democracy has bound itself to the great rules of right conduct, which are essential to the protection of liberty and justice and property and order, and made it practically impossible that the impulse, the prejudice, the excitement, the frenzy of the moment shall carry our democracy into those excesses which have wrecked all our prototypes in history. Mr. President, reverence for that great instrument, the belief of mankind in its perpetuity, the unwillingness of our people to tamper with it or to change it, the sentiments that are gathered around it - these, constituting the basis of stability in our Government, are the most valuable of all the possessions of the nation that inhabits this rich and fertile land. Because the American people stand by their Constitution and are unwilling to yield to suggestions that it be tampered with and altered upon slight provocation, every acre of farm-land, every farm-house and barn, every stock of goods, and every manufactory in the country are of greater value. No change in our Constitution should be permitted to cast a doubt upon its permanency and inviolability, unless there be the weightiest and most commanding reasons. All presumptions are against it. The great public policy of a century is against it. A heavy burden rests upon those who wish to make the change. This is especially true, Mr. President, when a change is proposed which in any degree alters the delicate relations which exist between the national and the state governments, or which in any degree affects or modifies any of those great compromises of the Constitution which enabled the thirteen original colonies, different in interests, in traditions, in size, in population, and in industries, to adjust their different views and to enter into a binding agreement. |