Legislator

“ The legislator seeks to obtain that office for his retainer from the executive, representing it as an appointment to be made in the public interest, while in fact it is the carrying out of a private bargain. ”

“ Had but one been able to do it ever so crudely—could one but have made a reasonable pretence of an ability to stumble through the opening paragraphs of the Constitution of the United States,—that man would inevitably and unanimously have been elected a full-blown Legislator. ”

“ Legislation is a profession as much as medicine or law or journalism, the practice of which, to gain leadership, must be long and continuous, until proposed public measures and their treatment worked out in the drudgery of the committee room, become as familiar as the variety of questions submitted to lawyers and physicians. The prolonged and exacting labour as a journalist which had given Raymond his great reputation, must, in a measure, have been repeated as a legislator to give him similar leadership in Congress. ”

“ The term of service and the technical independence of a legislator might well be more restricted than that of an executive; but even a legislator should be granted as much power and independence as he may need for the official performance of his public duty. ”

“ Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, and our legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly representative of the people, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political system. ”

“ For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation? ”

“ It is not to be wondered at that the politicians of the nineteenth century look upon society as an artificial production of the legislator's genius. This idea, the result of a classical education, has taken possession of all the thinkers and great writers of our country.
To all these persons, the relations between mankind and the legislator appear to be the same as those which exist between the clay and the potter. ”

“ I can not close this communication, gentlemen, without recommending to your most favorable consideration the interests of this District. Appointed by the Constitution its exclusive legislators, and forming in this particular the only anomaly in our system of government—of the legislative body being elected by others than those for whose advantage they are to legislate—you will feel a superadded obligation to look well into their condition and to leave no cause for complaint or regret. The seat of Government of our associated republics can not but be regarded as worthy of your parental care. ”

“ It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. ”

“ If, in consideration of the great importance and dignity of the trust, it were made a rule that every person appointed a member of the Legislative Commission, unless removed from office on an address from Parliament, should be a peer for life, it is probable that the same good sense and taste which leave the judicial functions of the peerage practically to the exclusive care of the law lords would leave the business of legislation, except on questions involving political principles and interests, to the professional legislators ”

“ Of these, more than eleven hundred are actual Legislators, besides the hundred in this House, and those above stairs. These all act in the States, counties, townships, and hundreds, in separate but relative circles, so as to preclude a partial attention to any one scene, to the exclusion of another. The whole country is full of well-constituted organs of the people's will. Many of these Legislatures are in session twice a year, and all of them annually. ”

“ In order that this may {349} be done and done in all fairness and justice, we elect some citizens to make laws and term them legislators. We elect others to enforce or administer the laws, and term them executives--the President, the governor, and the mayor coming under this head. ”

“ We choose legislators, and divide them into two branches, a Senate and a House of Representatives, each to aid and check the other. If a bill pass one house, and seem unjust to the other, it is set aside. If both approve of it, a third person has still a qualified negative ”

“ Legislation presupposes legislators, and to have the right kind of legislators involves the necessity of the laboring classes giving sufficient time and attention to the matter of nominations and elections to insure that those who will represent their true interests shall be returned. ”

“ So the judiciary and, the executive are limited by the laws and Institutions. The legislature is chosen by the people to represent the people; that is, It is chosen to represent and to organize the Ideas, and to express the sentiments, of the people; not to organize sentiments which are in advance of the people, or which are behind the people. The political legislator is restricted by the ideas of the people: if he wants what they do not want, then they do not want him. If senator Wilson had a million of men and women in Massachusetts who entertained the sentiments and ideas of Mr. ”

“ My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyrick upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those, whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which in its original might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. ”

“ The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove his mission. ”

“ Former legislators held the opinion that they were elected to represent and maintain the interests of their constituents—not to withdraw for the sake of indulging some petulant or romantic impulse because they could not have their own way. ”

“ and the authority of making penal laws can only reside with the legislator, who represents the whole society, united by the social compact. ”

“ It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition. ”

“ The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands. ”

“ It becomes the duty of the General Government, by which we will suppose the Vice-President to mean the Legislature, to apply to the States for a grant of the disputed power. But what is the Legislature? The Legislature is a complex being, composed of the President and two elective assemblies, comprehending two hundred and eighty-five persons. It is the duty, it seems, of these two hundred and eighty-five persons, in their political capacity, to apply to the States for a grant of new powers. ”

“ Here are provisions determining the main features of the Government, the distribution of powers in the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial departments, and the manner in which they shall be respectively constituted,—securing to the President, with the consent of the Senate, the appointment of Governor, Secretary, and Judges, and to the people only the election of the Legislature,—and even ordaining the qualifications of voters, the salaries of the public officers, and the daily compensation of the members of the Legislature. ”

“ The man who is capable of writing, in cool blood, that our interest lies in an absolute subjection to parliament, is capable of writing or saying any thing for the sake of his pension. A legislature that has so often discovered a want of information concerning us and our country; a legislature interested to lay burdens upon us; a legislature, two branches of which, I mean the lords and commons, neither love nor fear us! ”

“ The functions of the legislature are originative, those of the judiciary expository, and those of the President executory. The one gives birth to that which the other expounds and explains, and the third, when understood and explained, carries into effect. To create an office, then, is in its nature a legislative function. And to define and fix the tenure of an office which is in the process of creation, is also in its nature a legislative function. ”

“ Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives. You have also a Senate, constituted by your state legislatures, by men in whom you place the highest confidence, and forming another representative branch. Then, again, you have an executive magistrate, created by a form of election which merits universal admiration. In the form of this government, and in the mode of legislation, you find all the checks which the greatest politicians and the best writers have ever conceived. What more can reasonable men desire? ”

“ Your Legislature is not only supreme in the usual sense of the word, but they have literally, all the powers of society. Can you—can you possibly grant anything new? Have you any power which is not already granted to your General Assembly? ”

“ Can congress create an office and define the tenure thereof? By the constitution all the legislative power of the federal government is committed to congress, and by the last clause of the 8th section of article 1, all the residuary or discretionary power of the general government is also lodged in congress. The legislative is the only creative element in our government, and precedes in logical succession as well as in actual experience the action of the other departments, inasmuch as they only act upon that which the legislative power has brought into existence. ”

“ Confiding in the wisdom of the Legislature, and in its recognition of the supremacy of the people, the Executive relies upon the adoption of such legislation as will secure a full, free, and fair expression of their will. Should the Legislature in its wisdom deem it necessary to call a convention of delegates fresh from the people, the Executive would not oppose the same, but he would suggest that the people be the tribunal of the last resort, and that no action be considered final until it has been submitted to them. ”

“ Elective functions—Deputation—Elective councils.—There is a whole class of functionaries, if it be permitted to say so, who owe their origin to election, and who are the mandataries of the people, either in municipal councils, or in general councils, or in the great elective bodies of the State, the Senate and House of Representatives. (See Civil instruction.) The principle of the sovereignty of the people requires that for all its interests, communal, departmental or national, the country have a deliberative voice by means of its representatives. ”

“ The King's commission to his governor, which grants the power of government, and directs the calling of a legislature, and the establishing courts, at the same time that it fixes the governor's power, according to the several powers and directions granted and appointed by the commission and instructions, adds, "and by such further powers, instructions, and authorities, as shall, at any time hereafter, be granted or appointed you, under our signet or sign manual, or by our order in our privy council." ”

“ The Legislature, under this Constitution, consists of a Governor, a Legislative Council, composed of life members nominated by the Crown, and a House of Representatives elected by the people, under a franchise which practically amounts to household suffrage. ”

“ The members of Congress being more numerous than the other departments, do not individually incur a proportionate degree of responsibility. What a Legislature does is done by many, or rather by no one ”

“ Yet a distinction between a Convention and a Legislature is, in that State, a palpable absurdity, even by their own laws; for there is no constitution in the State, except its laws, which are always repealable by an ordinary Legislature; and the laws and uniform practice, from the first organization of the government, declare that the Legislature has all the power of all the people. A convention therefore can have no more power, and differs no more from an ordinary Legislature, than one Legislature does from another. ”

“ In the beginning of the passage quoted, he refers to the State Legislatures, as the bodies who are to check, by their instructions, the wanderings of the Senators. In the conclusion he is made to say—“When they (the Senators) hear the voice of the people dictating to them their duty,” &c. Now, it can hardly be pretended that the Legislature and the people are identically the same; or that a vote of the Legislature by a majority of one—or by any majority, can always be said to be the voice of the people. ”

“ The government being divided into branches, executive and legislative, in all contests between them the people have divided into the favorers of one or the other. From their dread of the executive, and affection to their representatives, they have always sided with the legislature. ”

“ We who have studied our republican institutions and understand the limits of the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the government, are aware that the legislature, directly representing the people, is the primary source of power, above all courts and constitutions. ”

“ They do not say the judges, simply, but the judges of the supreme and inferior courts shall hold their offices during good behaviour. They say, therefore, to the Legislature, you may judge of the propriety, the utility, the necessity, of organizing these courts; but when established, you have done your duty. Anticipating the course of passion in future times, they say to the Legislature, you shall not disgrace yourselves by exhibiting the indecent spectacle of judges established by one Legislature removed by another. We will save you also from yourselves. ”