No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution saw the Senate as their paramount creation. To James Madison, it was “the great anchor of the government,” and in his seminal plans for a new national government, the Senate figured as the most prominent and powerful institution, to be endowed with a potent combination of legislative, executive, and judicial prerogatives that were greater and more wide-ranging than those of either the House or the president. In the four months that the Framers met in Philadelphia, they spent more time and energy deliberating on the Senate than on any other single institution or issue, devoting most of the first seven critical weeks to the upper house, and thereafter, though more scattered, the equivalent of another week or two of consideration. In contrast, they focused on the House, executive, and federal judiciary for a few weeks each at most, and spent even less time on such vital issues as sectionalism and slavery. By the end of the Convention, the Framers had created an imposing chamber, possessing far more power and autonomy than any other upper house heretofore created in independent America. Small wonder, then, that in assessing the work of the Convention, the influential delegate from Connecticut, Roger Sherman, pronounced it “the most important branch in the government.” Smaller wonder still that the Framers would comprise over half the membership of the first Senate.
1. Madison, James to Jefferson, Thomas, Oct. 24, 1787, in Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911) 3: 133Google Scholar; Sherman, Roger to Adams, John, July 1787, in Kurland, Philip B. and Lerner, Ralph, eds., The Founders' Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 2: 232Google Scholar.
2. Swanstrom, Roy, The United States Senate, 1787–1801 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985), 37Google Scholar.
3. James Madison, Federalist No. 62, in Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John, The Federalist Papers, Rossiter, Clinton, ed. (New York: New American Library, 1961), 388CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Probably Madison, Federalist No. 63, in ibid., p. 384; further references to the authorship of No. 63 will note it as Madison.
4. Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic (New York: Norton, 1969), 559Google Scholar.
5. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 150.
6. Wood, Creation, p. 559; Harrold, Frances, “The Upper House in Jeffersonian Political Theory,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 78 (1970): 286Google Scholar.
7. Wood, Gordon S., “Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution,” in Beeman, Richard, Botein, Stephen, and Carter, Edward C. II, eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1987), 69Google Scholar; Terence Ball, “‘A Republic—If You Can Keep It,’” in Ball, Terence and Pocock, J. G. A., eds., Conceptual Change and the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 140Google Scholar. Emphasis in original.
8. Bryan, Samuel, “Centinel, Letter I,” in Storing, Herbert J., ed., The Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 19Google Scholar. Emphasis in original. Lowndes, Rawlins in Elliot, Jonathan, ed., Debates of the Several Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1888), 4: 311Google Scholar.
9. Ibid., ed. Farrand, 3: 463.
10. See Formisano, Ronald P., “Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789–1840,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974): 473–487Google Scholar.
11. McDonald, Forrest, Novus Ordo Sedorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), 143Google Scholar.
12. In this paper, the term conservative elites describes those who would later draft and/or support the ratification of the Constitution. Most scholars have preferred one of two other terms: cosmopolitan elites or court party elites. According to Richard Beeman in his Introduction to Beyond Confederation, eds. Beeman et al., the term “cosmopolitan elites” has been usefully defined to embrace the proponents' essential commercial and national orientation, but he questionably suggests that those who would come to oppose the Constitution were provincial or less than sophisticated. In contrast, the term “court party elite” has several advantages. Not only has it also been usefully defined to embrace the proponents' commercial and national orientation while avoiding the suggestion that Anti-Federalists were provincial; it also calls attention to the important influence of British political thought. However, it has the disadvantage of slighting the degree to which proponents were uniquely American, with positions on such indigenous issues as sectionalism, interstate relations, and state-central government relations forming an integral part of their identity. The term “conservative elites” builds on the strengths of these competing terms and avoids their limitations. In addition to embracing the proponents' commercial and national orientation and implying a significant British component, it allows for their uniquely American nature.
13. Gordon S. Wood, “Interests and Disinterestedness,” in Beyond Confederation, 85. For other descriptions of gentlemen in post-Revolutionary society, see Wood, , The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar; Fischer, David Hackett, The Revolution of American Conservatism (New York: Harper & Row, 1965)Google Scholar; Pole, J.R., Political Representation in England & the Origins of the American Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966)Google Scholar; and Ellis, Joseph J., After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979)Google Scholar.
14. Shalhope, Robert E., The Roots of Democracy (Boston: Twayne, 1990), 4Google Scholar.
15. Ibid.
16. Wood, “Interests,” 85.
17. Debates, ed. Elliot, 2: 247.
18. Adams, John, “Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America,” in Adams, Charles Francis, ed., The Works of John Adams (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 4: 392Google Scholar.
19. Robert Proud, quoted in Selsam, J. Paul, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936), 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20. Shalhope, Roots, 18–25.
21. Wood, Creation, 230.
22. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 36, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 217.
23. Main, Social Structure, 268.
24. Case, Stephen, “A Short Receipt for the Continental Disease,” 1782, Political Sermons of the Founding Era: 1730–1805, Sandoz, Ellis, ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991), 770Google Scholar.
25. Jay, John to Hamilton, Alexander, May 8, 1778, in Styrett, Harold C., ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 1: 483Google Scholar.
26. Lienesch, Michael C., New Order of the Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 76, 69Google Scholar.
27. Morris, quoted in Nedelsky, , Private Properly and the Limits of American Constitutionalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 70Google Scholar.
28. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 12, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, p. 91.
29. McCoy, Drew R., The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1980), 74Google Scholar.
30. Gales, Joseph, comp., The Debates and Proceedings of the Congress of the United States (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834–1856), 1st Congress, 8 06 1789, p. 433Google Scholar.
31. Madison, James, Note to his Speech on the Right of Suffrage, ca. 1821, in Records, ed. Farrand, , 3: 450Google Scholar.
32. Madison, Federalist 51, in Hamilton et al., Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, p. 325.
33. Madison, James to Monroe, James, Oct. 5, 1786 in Hunt, Gaillard, ed., The Writings of James Madison (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1901), 2: 273Google Scholar.
34. James Madison, Federalist No. 51, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, p. 324.
35. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 422; Madison, Federalist No. 44, in Hamilton et al.. The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, p. 281.
36. Madison, Federalist 10, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, p. 78.
37. Ibid.
38. Randolph in Records, ed. Farrand, 1:18; Madison, to Jefferson, Thomas, August 12, 1786, in Madison, The Papers of James Madison, ed. Rutland, Robert A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 9: 95; Madison, Federalist 44, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 28Google Scholar.
39. W. R. Davis in the North Carolina Convention, in Records, ed. Farrand, 3: 349–350.
40. Rush to Elias Boudinot, July 9, 1788, in Butterfield, L.H., ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton: Published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1951), 1: 471Google ScholarPubMed.
41. See McDonald, Forrest, We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitutiion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), chapter 9Google Scholar.
42. Ibid., 73.
43. Parsons, Theophilus, “The Essex Result,” 1778Google Scholar, in American Political Writing, eds. Hyneman and Lutz, 1: 490; quoted in Wood, Creation, 479 .
44. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 15, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 107.
45. Taylor, Robert J., Western Massachusetts in the Revolution (Providence: Brown University Press, 1954), 166Google Scholar.
46. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 18.
47. Madison, Federalist No. 48, in ibid., 308.
48. Jefferson, Thomas, “Notes on Virginia,” in Koch, Adrienne and Peden, William, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Modern Library, 1944), 236, 237Google Scholar.
49. Wood, Creation, chapter VI; Pole, Political Representation, part 3.
50. Madison, “Vices of the System,” in Madison, Papers, ed. Rutland, 9: 355, 9: 354.
51. Adams, Zabdiel, “An Election Sermon,” 1782, in American Political Writing, eds. Hyneman and Lutz, 1: 552Google Scholar. The reference to Ezekiel's vision of the living creatures and the wheel derives from Ezekiel's prophecies in the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel.
52. James Madison, Federalist 44, in ibid., 281.
53. On the dominance of assemblies, see Wood, Creation, chapter 5.
54. Debates, ed. Elliot, 2: 317.
55. Madison, Federalist No. 44, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 282–283.
56. Madison, “Federalist No. 38,” in ibid., 238.
57. James Madison, “Preface to Debates in the Convention of 1787,” in Records, ed. Farrand, 3: 548; 2: 8.
58. Hamilton, “Federalist No. 15,” in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 107.
59. Records, ed. Farrand, 1:256.
60. King, Rufus to Gerry, E., May 14, 1786 in King, Charles R., ed., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1894), 1: 135Google Scholar.
61. Demophilus, , “The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English [,] Constitution,” 1776, in American Political Writings, eds. Hyneman, and Lutz, , 1: 356Google Scholar.
62. On American borrowings and adaptations, see Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum; and Wood, Creation.
63. Shalhope, Roots of Democracy, chapter 1.
64. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 288.
65. Madison, Federalist No. 47, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 302–303. Emphasis in original.
66. A Democratic Federalist. Nov. 26, 1787, in The Founders' Constitution, eds. Kurland and Lerner, 2:209. Emphasis in original.
67. One of the People, Nov. 23, 1776, Pennsylvania Evening Post, in The Founders' Constitution, eds. Kurland and Lerner, 1: 361.
68. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 288; A Democratic Fed'list, November 26, 1787, in The Founders' Constitution, eds. Kurland and Lerner, 1: 361.
69. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 159.
70. Ibid., 1: 20.
71. Frances Harrold, “The Upper House in Jeffersonian Political Theory,” 285.
72. Hamilton, Federalist No. 36, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 217, and Hamilton, Federalist No. 35, in Ibid., 214.
73. Eidelberg, Paul, The Philosophy of the American Constitution (New York: Free Press, 1968), 50–51Google Scholar.
74. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 60, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 369.
75. Ibid., 1: 20.
76. Ibid..
77. Ibid., 1: 24.
78. Ibid., 1: 25.
79. Ibid., 1:21.
80. Ibid.
81. Phillips Payson, “A Sermon,” 1778, in American Political Writing, eds. Hyneman and Lutz, 1: 531.
82. Madison, Federalist No. 10, in Hamilton et. al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter. 82.
83. Wood, Creation, 483, 411. Emphasis in original.
84. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 562.
85. Madison, Federalist No. 48, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 308.
86. Madison, Federalist No. 51, in Ibid., 320.
87. Hamilton, “Federalist No. 71,” in Ibid., 433.
88. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 179.
89. Of the other two small states, Rhode Island refused to send a delegation to the Convention, while the delegation from New Hampshire would not attend the Convention until July 23, 1787.
90. Rakove, Jack N., “The Great Compromise: Ideas, Interests, and the Politics of Constitution Making,” William and Mary Quarterly XLIV, 3rd Series (1987): 434Google Scholar.
91. Pole, Political Representation, 363–364.
92. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 463.
93. Zagarri, Rosemarie, The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776–1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 65, 64Google Scholar.
94. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 178.
95. Ibid., 1: 167.
96. Ibid., 1: 461.
97. Ibid., 1: 49, 1: 50.
98. Ibid., 1: 155–156.
99. Voting at the Constitutional Convention was conducted on the basis of state delegations. The position of a majority of a state's delegates determined the delegation's vote. If the delegates were evenly divided, the delegation's vote was also recorded as a division.
100. Ibid., 1: 201.
101. Ibid., 1: 449.
102. Ibid., 1:447 Emphasis in original.
103. Ibid., 1:316:449.
104. Ibid., 1:448, 1:449
105. Ibid., 1:428; 1:490.
106. Ibid., 1:428; 1:406; 1:154; 1:490.
107. Ibid., 1:167
108. Ibid.m 1:578
109. Ibid., 1: 259. Emphasis in original.
110. Ibid., 1: 321.
111. While New York was a large state, its delegation often took the same position as most small-state delegations. As Zagarri explains in The Politics of Size, p. 65, New York “had prospered under the Confederation, and they resisted any strengthening of the national government at the state's expense.”
112. Ibid., 1: 468.
113. Ibid., 1: 468–469. Emphasis added.
114. Ibid., 1: 522. Emphasis in original.
115. Ibid., 1: 524.
116. Ibid., 2: 7.
117. I applied factor analysis to a transposed matrix with roll-call votes as cases (rows) and states as variables (columns), estimating the factor solution with unweighted least squares (ULS), using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). As the first step in the factor analysis, I identified those Convention votes related to the creation of the Senate as watchdog. Because of the difficulty in judging the substantive implications of procedural votes to postpone, adjourn, and so forth, I excluded them from consideration. I identified watchdog votes as those that dealt with the state legislative election of senators and the equal apportionment of Senate seats to each state. Because the mode by which House members would be elected and apportioned was decided during the same time, and was from the start closely linked with decisions on Senate selection and apportionment, I also included votes on this topic. All together, I analyzed 49 of the total 569 roll call votes cast at the Convention. They were votes 3, 4, 5, 7, 29, 32, 37, 40, 41, 65, 67, 71, 72, 87, 105, 106, 108, 110–112, 115, 118, 120, 122–129, 134, 136–145, 147, 149–152, 154, and 156. These numbers are the same as those contained in the Journal portion of Records, ed. Farrand.
Second, I prepared the database on these questions using the voting data that Jillson, Calvin C. has conveniently assembled in Appendix A of Constitution Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal Convention of 1787 (New York: Agathon Press, 1988)Google Scholar. However, where Jillson excluded those votes by state delegations in which they divided, I included them on the grounds that they supply valuable information on that state's issue positions. I assigned them a value of 1.5, halfway between aye, with a value of 1, and no, with a value of 2. The inclusion of divided votes follows Arend Lijphart's treatment of abstentions in bloc votes in the U.N. General Assembly. See Lijphart, , “The Analysis of Bloc Voting in the General Assembly: A Critique and a Proposal”, American Political Science Review bl (12 1963): 910Google Scholar. On factor analysis generally, see Kim, Jae-On and Mueller, Charles W., Introduction to Factor Analysis (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978)Google Scholar and Kim, and Mueller, , Factor Analysis: Statistical Methods and Practical Issues (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978)Google Scholar. For an important application of factor analysis to the work of the Constitutional Convention as a whole, see Jillson, Calvin C., “Constitution-Making: Alignment and Realignment in the Federal Convention of 1787”, American Political Science Review 75 (09 1981): 598–612Google Scholar, which is incorporated in his larger work, Constitution Making.
118. Factor scores are ranked by absolute values. The sign of the factor score reflects direction, not magnitude.
119. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 423.
120. Ibid.
121. Ibid., 1: 373.
122. Ibid., 1: 372–373.
123. Ibid., 1: 427.
124. Because it preserved the intermediate position of divided votes, city block was the measure of distance chosen. The use of this measure of distance ruled out those methods of cluster analysis based on Euclidean distance. Of the cluster methods still viable, the average linkage between groups was selected because it provided a solution between the extremes produced by single linkage and complete linkage methods.
On cluster analysis, see Alderderfer, Mark S. and Blashfield, Roger K., Cluster Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985)Google Scholar; Everitt, Brian, Cluster Analysis, 2nd. ed. (New York: Halsted Press, 1980)Google Scholar.
125. Those votes analyzed were: 58, 59, 60, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, and 103. Numbers used are those in Farrand, ed., Records of the Federal Convention.
126. Madison, James to –, 03 1836 [sic], in Records, ed. Farrand, , 3: 538Google Scholar.
127. Records, ed. Farrand, 2: 5.
128. Ibid., 2: 94. Emphasis in original
129. Ibid., 2: 94.
130. The members of the committee of detail were chair John Rutledge of South Carolina, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, Edmund Randolph of Virginia, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania.
131. Records, ed. Farrand, 2: 290.
132. Ibid., 2: 292.
133. Ibid., 2: 292.
134. The following roll call votes were analyzed: 205, 206, 207, 255, 268, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 292, 293, 558. They are numbered as they are in Records, ed. Farrand.
135. Main, Upper House, 225.
136. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 287.
137. Roy Swanstrom, The United States Senate, 1787–1801, 162. Following ratification, state legislatures did issue instructions and during the Senate's first two decades of existence, Senators often obeyed them although they were under no legal obligation to do so. After this period, while legislatures continued to issue them, Senators increasingly ignored them and the practice died out. See Swift, Elaine K., “Reconstitutive Change in the U.S. Congress: The Early Senate, 1789–1841,” Legislative Studies Quarterly XIV (05 1989): 175–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
138. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 112.
139. Ibid., 1: 150.
140. Ibid.
141. Ibid.
142. Eidelberg, The Philosophy of the American Constitution, 91. Emphasis in original.
143. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 426–427; 2: 291. Property requirements were also dropped because many Framers thought a national standard difficult to formulate and potentially a bar to the service of those whose wealth was otherwise invested. See Ibid., 2: 121–124.
144. John Jay, Federalist No. 3, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 43.
145. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 298; Debates, ed. Elliot, 2: 298.
146. Jay, Federalist No. 64, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 391.
147. Madison, Federalist No. 63, in Ibid., 384.
148. James McClurg to James Madison, August 5, 1787, in Hutson, James H., ed., Supplement to Max Farrand's The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 205Google Scholar; quoted by Benjamin Rush to Richard Price, June 2, 1787, in Records, ed. Farrand, 3: 33; William Pierce, ”Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention,” in Ibid., 3: 89; Madison to William Short, June 6, 1787, in Ibid., 3: 37.
150. Jay, Federalist No. 64, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 395; Phillips Payson, 1778, “A Sermon,” in American Political Writing, eds. Hyneman and Lutz, 1: 528.
151. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 428; 2: 204. Might wealthy Senators nonetheless be tempted to aggrandize themselves and their colleagues of more modest means to make their fortunes? In The Federalist Papers, Madison anticipated this obvious objection. Because the Framers were ever aware that men were not “angels,” and “[e]nlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” the Constitution, the country's territorial expanse, and other conditions all provided numerous checks and balances to prevent such an abuse of power (Madison, Federalist No. 51, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 323; Madison, Federalist No. 10, ibid., 80). While The Federalist Papers, which soft-pedaled the Constitution's elitist nature, emphasized the importance of checks and balances, behind the closed doors o the Convention, the Framers discussed their primary reliance senators would be primarily drawn from the landed, manufacturing, and commercial interests, they would not thereby be ‘the tools of opulence and ambition.’ Rather, they would be committed to quashing ‘symptoms of a leveling spirit,’ yet willing to forego ‘illicit advantage’ or ‘artful misrepresentations’ to champion the greater good (Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 423; Madison, Federalist No. 63, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, p. 384).
152. Madison, Federalist No. 52, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 329.
153. Records, ed. Farrand, 3: 454.
154. Madison, Federalist No. 62, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 380.
155. Hamilton, Federalist No. 71, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 434.
156. Debates, ed. Elliot, 2: 302.
157. Ibid., 2: 319. Emphasis in original.
158. Ibid., 2: 319; 2: 317. Emphasis in original.
159. Ibid., 2: 320.
160. Hamilton, Federalist No. 30, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 188. While the House alone would possess the power to originate “[a[ll Bills for raising Revenue,” Madison observed that “[e]xperience proved” that this afforded the lower chamber no advantage over the upper. “If seven States in the upper branch wished a bill to be originated,” he explained, “they might surely find some member from some of the same States in the lower branch who would originate it (Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 527).”
161. Madison, Federalist No. 63, in Ibid., 384.
162. Hamilton, Federalist No. 66, in Ibid., 403. Emphasis in original.
163. Hamilton, Federalist No. 70, in Ibid., 423.
164. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 66.
165. Madison, Federalist No. 48, in Ibid., 309.
166. Hamilton, Federalist No. 70, in Ibid., 423.
167. Madison, Federalist No. 47, in Ibid., 302.
168. Hamilton, Federalist No. 70, in Ibid., 430.
169. Madison, Federalist No. 63, in Ibid., 383.
170. Records, ed. Farrand, 1: 156; 1: 151.
171. Ibid., 1: 87.
172. Madison, Federalist No. 63, in Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, 389.
173. Webster, Noah, “An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” 1787, in Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, ed. Ford, Paul Leicester (Brooklyn, NY: n.p., 1888), 37–38Google Scholar.
174. Madison, Federalist No. 63, in Ibid., 390. Emphasis added.
175. Swift, “Reconstitutive Change in the U.S. Congress.”
176. It was this reconstitution of the Senate from an American House of Lords to a distinctively American kind of upper chamber that saved it from the fate of the institution on which it was based. Unlike the Senate, the British House of Lords responded too little, too late to the same kind of pressures for change. Faced throughout the nineteenth century with successive waves of suffrage expansion, popular demands for greater governmental activism, and other democratic forces, it refused to reconstitute itself, preferring to conserve its aristocratic form and functions as long as possible. In the early twentieth century, of course, the House of Lords was finally forced to reconstitute. Under the government's threat of creating numerous new peers to break the impasse, the chamber passed the Parliament Act of 1911, thereby approving the removal of its primary power of absolute veto. This reconstitution effectively consigned the Lords to the wholly ancillary place it now occupies in British government. See Southern, David, “Lord Newton, the Conservative Peers and the Parliament Act of 1911,” in Jones, Clyve and Jones, David Lewis, eds., Peers, Politics and Power: The House of Lords, 1603–1911 (London: Hambledon Press, 1986)Google Scholar.
177. See, for example, Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), chapter 2Google Scholar.
178. See, for example, White, Leonard D., The Federalists (New York: Free Press, 1948)Google Scholar.