The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce
were special reasons for breaking the party solidity of each section. So far as I have been able to gather, experience has not commended the scheme, and it has not improved the quality of the legislature.
The following differences between the rules governing the two houses are general:
1. The senatorial electoral districts are always larger, usually twice or thrice as large as the house districts, and the number of senators is, of course, in the same proportion smaller than that of representatives.
2. A senator is usually chosen for a longer term than a representative. In twenty-nine states he sits for four years, in one (New Jersey) for three, in thirteen for two, in two (Massachusetts and Rhode Island) for one year only; the usual term of a representative being two years.
3. In most cases the Senate, instead of being elected all at once like the House, is only partially renewed, half its members going out when their two or four years have been completed, and a new half coming in. This gives it a sense of continuity which the House wants.
4. In some states the age at which a man is eligible for the Senate is fixed higher than that for the House of Representatives.11 Other restrictions on eligibility, such as the exclusion of clergymen (which still exists in a few states, and is of old standing), that of salaried public officials (which exists everywhere), that of United States officials and members of Congress, and that of persons not resident in the electoral district (frequent by law and practically universal by custom), apply to both houses. In some states this last restriction goes so far that a member who ceases to reside in the district for which he was elected loses his seat ipso facto.
I have dwelt in an earlier chapter (Chapter 14) on the strength of this local feeling as regards congressional elections, and on the results, to a European eye mostly unfortunate, which it produces. It is certainly no weaker in state elections. Nobody dreams of offering himself as a candidate for a place in which he does not reside, even in new states, where it might be thought that there had not been time for local feeling to spring up. Hence the educated and leisured residents of the greater cities have no chance of entering the state legislature except for the city district wherein they dwell; and as these city districts are those most likely to be in the hands of some noxious and selfish ring of professional politicians, the prospect for such an aspirant is a dark one. Nothing more contributes to make reform difficult than the inveterate habit of choosing residents only as members. Suppose an able and public-spirited man desiring to enter the Assembly or the Senate of his state and shame the offenders who are degrading or plundering it. He may be wholly unable to find a seat, because in his place of residence the party opposed to his own may hold a permanent majority, and he will not be even considered elsewhere. Suppose a group of earnest men who, knowing how little one man can effect, desire to enter the legislature at the same time and work together. Such a group can hardly arise except in or near a great city. It cannot effect an entrance, because the city has at best very few seats to be seized, and the city men cannot offer themselves in any other part of the state. That the restriction often rests on custom, not on law, makes the case more serious. A law can be repealed, but custom has to be unlearned; the one may be done in a moment of happy impulse, the other needs the teaching of long experience applied to receptive minds.
The fact is, that the Americans have ignored in all their legislative as in many of their administrative arrangements, the differences of capacity between man and man. They underrate the difficulties of government and overrate the capacities of the man of common sense. Great are the blessings of equality; but what follies are committed in its name!
The unfortunate results of this local sentiment have been aggravated by the tendency to narrow the election areas, allotting one senator or representative to each district. Under the older Constitution of Connecticut, for instance, the twelve senators were elected out of the whole state by a popular vote. Now the thirty-five senators are chosen by districts, and the Senate is today an inferior body, because then the best men of the whole state might be chosen, now it is possible only to get the leading men of the districts. In Massachusetts, under the Constitution of 1780, the senators were chosen by districts, but a district might return as many as six senators: the assemblymen were chosen by towns,12 each corporate town having at least one representative, and more in proportion to its population, the proportion being at the rate of one additional member for every 275 ratable polls. In 1836 the scale of population to representatives was raised, and a plan prescribed (too complicated to be here set forth) under which towns below the population entitling them to one representative, should have a representative during a certain number of years out of every ten years, the census being taken decennially. Thus a small town might send a member to the Assembly for five years out of every ten, choosing alternate years, or the first five, or the last five, as it pleased. Now, however (Amendments of 1857), the state has been divided into 40 senatorial districts, each of which returns one senator only, and into 175 assembly districts, returning one, two, or, in a few cases, three representatives each. The composition of the legislature has declined ever since this change was made. The area of choice being smaller, inferior men are chosen; and in the case of the assembly districts which return one member, but are composed of several small towns, the practice has grown up of giving each town its turn, so that not even the leading man of the district, but the leading man of the particular small community whose turn has come round, is chosen to sit in the Assembly.
Universal manhood suffrage, subject to certain disqualifications in respect of crime (including bribery and polygamy) and the receipt of poor-law relief, which prevail in many states—in nine states no pauper can vote—is the rule in nearly all the states. Ten states (Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Washington, Kansas, Arizona, California, Oregon, and Illinois) give the suffrage to women. A property qualification was formerly required in many, and lasted till 1888 in Rhode Island, where the possession of real estate valued at $134, or the payment of a tax of at least $1 was required from all citizens not natives of the United States.13 Ten other states require the voter to have paid some state or county tax (some call it a poll tax); but if he does not pay it, his party usually pay it for him, so the restriction is of little practical importance. Massachusetts also requires that he shall be able to read the state constitution in English, and to write his name (Amendment of 1857); Connecticut, that he shall be able to read any section of the constitution or of the statutes, and shall sustain a good moral character (Amendents of 1855 and 1845). This educational test is of no great consequence, partly, no doubt, because illiteracy is not high in either state; and the ballot laws have reduced the need for it. In Massachusetts it is now enforced, but for a while the party managers on both sides agreed not to trouble voters about it. Mississippi prescribes that the person applying to be registered “shall be able to read any section of the Constitution or be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof” (Constitution of 1890).14 Certain terms of residence within the United States, in the particular state, and in the voting districts, are also required. These vary greatly from state to state, but are usually short.
The suffrage is generally the same for other purposes as for that of elections to the legislature, and is in most states confined to male inhabitants. In many states women are permitted to vote at school district elections and on matters affecting libraries; and some confer a direct popular vote or referendum on women taxpayers where a question is submitted to the people. Nowhere is any disability imposed upon married women as such; nor has it been attempted, in the various constitutional amendments framed to give political suffrage to women, accepted in some states, and rejected by the people in others, to draw such a distinction, which would indeed be abhorrent to the genius of American law.
It is important to remember that, by the Constitution of the United States, the right of suffrage in federal or national elections (i.e., for presidential electors and members of Congress) is in each state that which the state confers on those who vote at the election of its more numerous house. That the differences which might exist between one state and another in the width of the federal franchise thus granted, are at present (except in the South) insignificant is due, chiefly to the prevalence of democratic theories of equality over the whole Union, partly perhaps also to the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, which provides that the representation of a state in the federal House of Representatives, and therewith also its weight in a presidential election,