Senator

“ Honorable Senators, so swift with criticism and sarcasm, might profit by their example. Perhaps the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] , who is not insensible to scholarship, might learn from them something of its graces. Perhaps the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason] , who finds no sanction under the Constitution for any remonstrance from clergymen, might learn from them something of the privileges of an American citizen. And perhaps the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] , who precipitated this odious measure upon the country, might learn from them something of political wisdom. ”

“ Decorum, the becoming ornament of every functionary, should be the distinguishing trait of an American senator, who combines, in his own office, the united dignities of the executive, the legislative, and the judicial character. ”

“ Show us the constituency, and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of their wishes; the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and resistance of something of their impressiveness. ”

“ A senator of great influence will be naturally ambitious, and desirous of increasing his influence. Will he not be under a temptation to use his influence with the president, as well as his brother senators, to appoint persons to office in the several states, who will exert themselves in elections to get out his enemies or opposers, both in senate and house of representatives, and to get in his friends, perhaps his instruments? ”

“ The Senator is an excellent debater; he always speaks to the point as he understands it; and yet his point is apt to be political. Of course he [Pg 245] speaks as one having authority with his party, in which he is an acknowledged leader. And now, Sir, you will please to remark, he comes forward as leader for the President of the United States. The Senator from Indiana, an old-school Democrat,—he will not deny the appellation,—presents himself as defender of the President. ”

“ The Senate has long enjoyed the reputation of being the best club in the world, but it is more than that. My old friend, Senator Bacon, of Georgia, often said that he preferred the position of senator to that of either President or Chief Justice of the United States. There is independence in a term of six years which is of enormous value to the legislative work of the senator. ”

“ I appeal from the Senator to the Senate. The senator made a flourish which raised a titter in the galleries; it could not have escaped attention, and I appeal from the Senator to Senators who hear me when I say that he varies his statement now. I do not take issue with him upon the phrase “paths of duty;” he may have used those words. But he said that he had stood in the presence of men more dangerous than the Senator he referred to, and he had stood in the presence of either a hundred or a thousand of them, and his heart had not quailed. ”

“ In my humble judgment, the historic Senate, preserving the unrestricted right of amendment and of debate, maintaining intact the time-honored parliamentary methods and amenities which unfailingly secure action after deliberation, possesses in our scheme of government a value which can not be measured by words. The Senate is a perpetual body. In the terse words of an eminent Senator now present: 'The men who framed the Constitution had studied thoroughly all former attempts at Republican government. ”

“ A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington, there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it—which you may do quite unrebuked. ”

“ The President shall be nominated by the King at the opening of each session, from among the hereditary Senators.
The Senate shall choose its other officers, such as registers, sergeants, and doorkeepers.
Every Senator shall lose his place for the crime of high treason, and for dishonorable actions or scandalous conduct, according to the decision of the Senate. A Senator cannot be judged except by the Senate.
The King can appoint to the Senate the son of one, who has lost his place, but he cannot reinstate a Senator degraded by a decision of the Senate. ”

“ You are set in a great office, and in no mean place, but are a Senator forever. Know you not that such a one can attend but little to his household, but he must be oftentimes abroad, ruling or being ruled, or fulfilling some office, or serving in the field, or judging? ”

“ Until a Senator is sworn on the trial of impeachment, according to the requirement of the National Constitution, he is a Senator, free to criticize any public functionary, from the President to the humblest officer ”

“ The Senator has a discretion to judge of it in all cases or in no case. He may take counsel of his own conscience and judgment in every call upon him—or in none. The check that Mr. King promises from the State Legislatures upon their Senators, is nothing more than the natural influence they will have upon the minds and conduct of the Senators, and this, in my apprehension, is more likely to be too much than too little. ”

“ Indeed, while formerly the spectacle of a Senator rising to make a speech before the close of his second year in the Senate was regarded as unusual, it recently has come to be remarked upon if a new man remains in his seat for two months before undertaking to enlighten the Senate as to its duties towards itself and the world. ”

“ The qualifications of a senator shall be the same as those of a member of the House of Representatives. 17. The Senate shall, before proceeding to the despatch of any other business, choose a senator to be the President of the Senate; and as often as the office of President becomes vacant the Senate shall again choose a senator to be the President. The President shall cease to hold his office if he ceases to be a senator. He may be removed from office by a vote of the Senate, or he may resign his office or his seat by writing addressed to the Governor-General. ”

“ Respecting the age at which a person might be elected into the senate during the kingly period, we know no more than what is indicated by the name senator itself, that is, that they were persons of advanced age.—Soon after the establishment of the republic, though at what time is uncertain, the right of appointing senators passed from the gentes into the hands of the consuls, consular tribunes, and subsequently of the censors. ”

“ The senator’s son possesses the right to wear the latus clavus and to attend the meetings of the curia, in which he will one day take an active part; [1900] the eques to whom the symbol has been given may qualify for the Senate through the vigintivirate and the quaestorship. The first steps to office and to the Senate were, as we have seen, usually through the army; but the young soldier who was destined for the Senate differed, in service and in title, from his purely equestrian compeer. ”

“ Sir, I make the obvious point of order that there are no vacancies to fill in the office of United States Senator, and that it does not lie within the province of the delegates chosen to this convention to pledge the party to any man. ”

“ It is a strange thing, an exceedingly strange thing, that when a few Senators in the city of Washington, ill at their houses, give assurance that they can be here to act upon a great public question on the day following this, we should hear a piece of declamation, the Senator appealing to his God, and saying, with an Io triumphe air, 'Well or ill, God has made them ill.' Sir, the god of desolation, the god of darkness, the god of evil is his god. I never expected to hear such objections raised among honorable men; and men to be Senators should be honorable men. ”

“ Such men as he will soon be easily spared; but if any one will turn to the newspaper which contains the senator’s orthodox sermon, they will see by the rejoinder there made, that the preaching senator made as good a figure among his brother senators as my tutor and his performance is destined to make among readers who use reason and common sense when they read. ”

“ Like the new order of patricians, the position of Senator was mainly an honorary and not an executive rank. All the members enjoyed the title of Clarissimus, that of the third grade of nobility, and assembled under the presidency of the Praefect of the city. [593] As a body the Senate was treated with great ostensible consideration by the Emperor, and was never referred to in the public acts without expressions of the highest esteem, such as “the Venerable,” “the Most Noble Order,” “amongst whom we reckon ourselves.” ”

“ King; and no inference can be drawn from what he says, that there is any right or power in a State Legislature to demand obedience or resignation from a Senator, to their instructions. He considers their instructions to be, what in truth and practice they have always been, nothing more than advice or information coming from a high source and entitled to great respect. He says, “the Senate is to be composed of men appointed by the State Legislatures. They will certainly choose those who are most distinguished for their general knowledge. ”

“ Formula Bestowing Rank as a Senator.
Senatorial rank.
'We desire that our Senate should grow and flourish abundantly. As a parent sees the increase of his family, as a husbandman the growth of his trees with joy, so we the growth of the Senate. ”

“ CHAPTER XII—IDLENESS AND BLACK RESOLVES AARON finds a Senate existence inexpressibly dull. He writes his Theodosia: “There is nothing to do here. Everybody is idle; and, so far as I see, the one occupation of a senator is to lie sunning himself in his own effulgence. My colleague, Rufus King, and others I might name, succeed in that way in passing their days very pleasantly. ”

“ In compensation for this exclusion a logical regard for the principle of natural fitness has made the office of Senator almost an office for life, whereby veteran Senators, through repeated re-elections, have been forced, quite naturally, into the aristocratical position; it is only another step to the hereditary. ”

“ The Constitution knows no other check upon the Senators; no other responsibility to the State Legislature, while the Senator acts within and by the admitted powers of his office.
But I am wearying you to death. Let me conclude this interminable epistle by referring to an authority which no man living holds in higher reverence than you do. ”

“ A senator is forever ineligible to any other public office.
19. All the lists made in the departments, in virtue of article 9, are despatched to the Senate: they constitute the national list.
20. It chooses from this list the legislators, the tribunes, the consuls, the judges of cassation, and the commissioners of accounts.
21. It sustains or annuls all the acts which are referred to it as unconstitutional by the Tribunate or the government: the lists of eligibles are included among these acts.
22. Fixed revenues from the national domains are set apart for the expenses of the Senate. ”

“ Section 3 deals with composition of the Senate. A preposition is important here: To become a Senator, a man must be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen. From the beginning, the concept has been that Representatives represent people, or groups of people, or districts of people; Senators speak for the larger, mystical entity of the States themselves. ”

“ No senator was ever served by assistants with greater zeal, fidelity or personal devotion, and yet with one or two exceptions he never by word of mouth in the course of six years gave any expression of his appreciation ”

“ Senators represent the state, and are elected by the body which acts for the state,—by the legislature if in session, temporarily by the governor if it is not.
Clause 3.—Qualifications.
No person shall be a senator, who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, [1] and been nine years a citizen of the United States, [2] and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state from which he shall be chosen. ”

“ Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it. Even the greatest Senators seemed to inspire little personal affection in each other, and betrayed none at all. ”

“ Upon your importunate instance, I devised it of mine own head, in mirth, to try your silence, and whether you could keep counsel. Certes, this senator was a wise man and went safely and warily to work, who to make proof of his wife, whom he took to be no sounder nor surer than a cracked and rotten vessel, would not pour into it either wine or oil, but water only, to see if it would leak and run out. ”

“ We recognize a public sentiment which demands that in the selection of a United States Senator we have regard to that dignity of the office to be filled, its important duties and functions, and the qualifications of the individual with reference thereto. ”

“ Here the post of Delegate to the General Congress, and also of “Senator,” is treated as an “office.”
Surely this is enough. The post of Senator is an office of honor or profit, and a “Senator” is an “officer.”
2. But, assuming that the post of Senator is an “office,” and that a Senator is an “officer,” the question occurs, To what “department of the public service” does he belong?
Clearly he is not of the “military” or “naval” department. But if not “military” or “naval,” he must be “civil.” Here again consult the dictionary. I cite Webster.
[Pg 285]
“Civil. ”