would be rashness to affirm that thirty years is too long a period for a due maturity and probation.1

§ 730. The next qualification is citizenship. The propriety of some limitation upon admissions to office, after naturalization, cannot well be doubted. The Senate is to participate largely in transactions with foreign governments; and it seems indispensable that time should have elapsed sufficient to wean a senator from all prejudices, resentments, and partialities, in relation to the land of his nativity, before he should be intrusted with such high and delicate functions.2 Besides, it can scarcely be presumed that any foreigner can have acquired a thorough knowledge of the institutions and interests of a country until he has been permanently incorporated into its society, and has acquired by the habits and intercourse of life the feelings and the duties of a citizen. And if he has acquired the requisite knowledge, he can scarcely feel that devoted attachment to them which constitutes the great security for fidelity and promptitude in the discharge of official duties. If eminent exceptions could be stated, they would furnish no safe rule, and should rather teach us to fear our being misled by brilliancy of talents, or disinterested patriotism, into a confidence which might betray or an acquiescence which might weaken, that jealousy of foreign influence which is one of the main supports of republics. In the convention it was at first proposed that the limitation should be four years; and it was finally altered by a vote of six States against four, one being divided, which was afterwards confirmed by a vote of eight States to three. This subject has been already somewhat considered in another place; and it may be concluded by adopting the language of the Federalist on the same clause: "The term of nine years appears to be a prudent mediocrity between a total exclusion of adopted citizens, whose merit and talents may claim a share in the public confidence, and an indiscriminate and hasty admission of them, which might create a channel for foreign influence in the national councils." 4

§ 731. The only other qualification is, that the senator shall,

1 Rawle on the Constitution, 37; 1 Kent's Comm. Lect. 11, p. 214; 1 Tuck. Black. Comm. App. 223.

2 The Federalist, No. 62.

3 Journ. of Convention, 218, 238, 239, 248, 249.

The Federalist, No. 62; Rawle on the Constitution, 37; 1 Kent's Comm. Lect. 11, p. 214.

when elected, be an inhabitant of the State for which he is chosen. This scarcely requires any comment; for it is manifestly proper that a State should be represented by one who, besides an intimate knowledge of all its wants and wishes and local pursuits, should have a personal and immediate interest in all measures touching its sovereignty, its rights, or its influence. The only surprise is, that provision was not made for his ceasing to represent the State in the Senate as soon as he should cease to be an inhabitant. There does not seem to have been any debate in the convention on the propriety of inserting the clause as it now stands. (a)

§ 732. In concluding this topic, it is proper to remark that no qualification whatsoever of property is established in regard to senators, as none had been established in regard to representatives. Merit, therefore, and talent have the freest access open to them into every department of office under the national government. Under such circumstances, if the choice of the people is but directed by a suitable sobriety of judgment, the Senate cannot fail of being distinguished for wisdom, for learning, for exalted patriotism, for incorruptible integrity, and for inflexible independence.1

§ 733. The next clause of the third section of the first article respects the person who shall preside in the Senate. It declares that "the Vice-President of the United States shall be president of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided;" and the succeeding clause, that "the Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a president pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice-President, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States."

§ 734. The original article, as first reported, authorized the Senate to choose its own president and other officers; and this was adopted in the convention.2 But the same draft authorized the president of the Senate, in case of the removal, death, resignation, or disability of the President, to discharge his duties. When at a late period of the convention it was deemed advisable

1 See The Federalist, No. 27.

2 Journal of Convention, pp. 218, 240.

8 Journal of Convention, 225, 226.

(a) The States cannot add to these qualifications nor impose disabilities. See note to § 629, supra.

that there should be a Vice-President, the propriety of retaining him as presiding officer of the Senate seems to have met with general favor, eight States voting in the affirmative and two only in the negative.1

§ 735. Some objections have been taken to the appointment of the Vice-President to preside in the Senate. It was suggested in the State conventions that the officer was not only unnecessary, but dangerous; that it is contrary to the usual course of parliamentary proceedings to have a presiding officer who is not a member; and that the State from which he comes may thus have two votes instead of one.2 It has also been coldly remarked by a learned commentator that "the necessity of providing for the case of a vacancy in the office of President doubtless gave rise to the creation of that officer; and for want of something else for him to do whilst there is a President in office, he seems to have been placed, with no very great propriety, in the chair of the Senate." 3

§ 736. The propriety of creating the office of Vice-President will be reserved for future consideration, when, in the progress of these commentaries, the constitution of the executive department comes under review. The reasons why he was authorized to preside in the Senate belong appropriately to this place.

§ 737. There is no novelty in the appointment of a person to preside as speaker who is not a constituent member of the body over which he is to preside. In the House of Lords, in England, the presiding officer is the lord chancellor or lord keeper of the great seal, or other person appointed by the king's commission; and if none such be so appointed, then it is said that the Lords may elect. But it is by no means necessary that the person appointed by the king should be a peer of the realm or lord of Par

1 Journal of Convention, 325, 339.

22 Elliot's Debates, 359, 361; 3 Elliot's Debates, 37, 38.

3 1 Tucker's Black. Comm. Appx. 224; Id. 199, 200. It is a somewhat curious circumstance in the history of Congress, that the exercise of the power of the Vice-President in defeating a bill for the apportionment of representatives in 1792 has been censured, because such a bill seemed (if any) almost exclusively fit for the House of Representatives to decide upon (1 Tuck. Black. Comm. App. 199, 200, 225); and that a like bill, to which the Senate interposed a strong opposition, in 1832, has been deemed by some of the States so exceptionable, that this resistance has been thought worthy of high praise. There is some danger in drawing conclusions from a single exercise of any power against its general utility or policy.

4 See 2 Amer. Museum, 557; The Federalist, No. 68.

liament.1 Nor has this appointment by the king ever been complained of as a grievance, nor has it operated with inconvenience or oppression in practice. It is, on the contrary, deemed an important advantage both to the officer and to the house of peers, adding dignity and weight to the former, and securing great legal ability and talent in aid of the latter. This consideration alone might have had some influence in the convention. The Vice-President being himself chosen by the States, might well be deemed, in point of age, character, and dignity, worthy to preside over the deliberations of the Senate, in which the States were all assembled and represented. His impartiality in the discharge of its duties might be fairly presumed; and the employment would not only bring his character in review before the public, but enable him to justify the public confidence, by performing his public functions with independence and firmness and sound discretion. A citizen who was deemed worthy of being one of the competitors for the Presidency, could scarcely fail of being distinguished by private virtues, by comprehensive acquirements, and by eminent services. In all questions before the Senate he might safely be appealed to as a fit arbiter upon an equal division, in which case alone he is intrusted with a vote.

§ 738. But the strong motive for this appointment was of another sort, founded upon State jealousy and State equality in the Senate. If the speaker of the Senate was to be chosen from its own members, the State upon whom the choice would fall might possess either more or less than its due share of influence. If the speaker were not allowed to vote, except where there was an equal division, independent of his own vote, then the State might lose its own voice;2 if he were allowed to give his vote and also a casting vote, then the State might, in effect, possess a double vote. Either alternative would of itself present a predicament sufficiently embarrassing. On the other hand, if no casting vote were allowed in any case, then the indecision and inconvenience might be very prejudicial to the public interests in case of an equality of votes. It might give rise to dangerous feuds or intrigues, and create sectional and State agitations. The smaller States might well suppose that their interests were less secure and less guarded than they ought to be. Under such

3

1 1 Black. Comm. 181; 3 Black. Comm. 47; 1 Tuck. Black. Comm. App. 224. 2 The Federalist, No. 68.

8 Ibid.

circumstances, the Vice-President would seem to be the most fit arbiter to decide, because he would be the representative, not of one State only, but of all, and must be presumed to feel a lively interest in promoting all measures for the public good. This reasoning appears to have been decisive in the convention and satisfactory to the people.1 It establishes that there was a manifest propriety in making the arrangement conducive to the harmony of the States and the dignity of the general government. And as the Senate possesses the power to make rules for its own proceedings, there is little danger that there can ever arise any abuse of the presiding power. The danger, if any, is rather the other way, that the presiding power will be either silently weakened or openly surrendered, so as to leave the office little more than the barren honor of a place, without influence and without action.

§ 739. A question involving the authority of the Vice-President, as presiding officer in the Senate, has been much discussed in consequence of a decision recently made by that officer. Hiherto the power of preserving order during the deliberations of the Senate, in all cases where the rules of the Senate did not specially prescribe another mode, had been silently supposed to belong to the Vice-President, as an incident of office. It had never been doubted, much less denied, from the first organization of the Senate; and its existence had been assumed as an inherent quality, constitutionally delegated, subject only to such rules as the Senate should from time to time prescribe. In the winter session of 1826, the Vice-President decided, in effect, that, as president of the Senate, he had no power of preserving order, or of calling any member to order, for words spoken in the course of debate, upon his own authority, but only so far as it was given and regulated by the rules of the Senate. This was a virtual surrender of the presiding power (if not universally, at least in that case) into the hands of the Senate, and disarmed the officer even of the power of self-protection from insult or abuse, unless the Senate should choose to make provision for it. If, therefore, the Senate should decline to confer the power of preserving order, the Vice-President might become a mere

1 2 Elliot's Debates, 359, 360, 361; 3 Elliot's Debates, 37, 38, 51, 52.

21 American Annual Register, 86, 87; 3 American Annual Register, 99; 4 Elliot's Debates, 311 to 315.