Welcome back. We're talking about Article I of the United States Constitution, which focuses on the Congress of the United States. And we're focusing particular attention on the structure of that Congress. The House of Representatives, elected by the people. And we've been talking about whether it's really genuinely living up to that promise that it will be representative of the people. The anti-Federalists in the 1780s were worried that it really wouldn't be. That it would be too small to be genuinely representative. And the Federalists countered that you don't want it to be too big either. Okay, five people's probably too small, fifty's better we concede. Is five hundred unambiguously better than fifty? Okay, maybe. Even if that were so, although almost no state legislature has 500. Would 5,000 be better than 500? Would 50,000 be better than 5,000? At a certain point said the Federalists. Though, if the legislature is too big, you can't really have a conversation among individuals. It will actually not be able to get any work done. It will just sort of degenerate into cacophony. So, there has to be a balance, said the Federalists. And here's another reason that there needs to be a balance. Your national laws to be filtered through a body of distinguished statesmen, of people who know a little bit more than the average voter. The average voter should pick someone who is going to be expert at the art of legislation. Who might know a little more about the rest of America, about the rest of the world. Because Congress will be legislating in regards, not to just an individual neighborhoods, which pot hole needs to be fixed where. But great continental and global affairs. So not that many people, say the Federalists, are gonna be able to understand all of that. So you want a select body of representatives who are going to be able to have the confidence of the voters. But also the expertise necessary to provide for good governance and be able to monitor the executive branch and the judicial branch. So, the Federalists say there needs to be a balance. And the anti-Federalists said yes, but you got the balance wrong, it's too small. The Constitution says that you only have to have a minimum of 13, one per state, in the House of Representatives, that's not enough. And you provide for some maximums and you've initially said 91 total, 26 in the Senate 65 in the House, that's too small. And the Federals say, okay, maybe we miscalculated. We promise that soon the Congress will grow, we'll have a bigger House of Representatives as soon as we get a first census, and then Indeed they did that. The Federals make an other argument that because of geography and travel it's gonna be more expensive to have a big House of Representatives, cuz people are gonna have to travel greater distances, and taxpayers are gonna have to pay for all of that. This was a special concern at the Philadelphia convention for the states that were far from the center. Because in the Articles of Confederation, you only need to send two people, and you get your vote in Congress whether you send two delegates or seven. You have to send your delegation, but you don't need to send more people in order to cast your vote. Under this new Constitution, the voting in both the House and the Senate is per capita by individual rather than by state, so a state is gonna want its representatives, all its senators to show up. That's gonna be an additional expense, especially if the state is far from the center, to pay for that travel. Here's one thing that the Federalists said. The national government should pay for these representatives and these senators. They shouldn't have to be paid for by the state governments. That should be a national obligation. And by the way, we are gonna pay these folks. And that's a democratic idea, because if we don't pay them, then only great men of immense wealth as a practical matter are going to be able to serve. So here's a democratic reform. We will provide for payment of our law makers. And today you might begrudge the legislatures that. Well you might say, well they don't do very much. Are they really earning their salary? But, just think about it for a minute. If we didn't pay them, only the wealthy would be able to serve. In England they don't start paying members of the House of Commons until 1911, but America's Constitution is way ahead of its time. In the states, only Pennsylvania had provided in its Constitution for payment for its lawmakers, and that was understood as a great Democratic reform and the Federal Constitution Article One copied that. In effect, a lot of the Federal Constitution copies the best state practices. So Massachusetts and New Hampshire had ordained their constitutions by a kind of special popular participatory event, and the preamble said we're gonna do the same. Pennsylvania pays for its lawmakers, we're gonna do the same for that. Pennsylvania has no property qualifications. For its lawmakers. Anyone can serve. We're gonna follow that model. So Article 1 provides for no property qualifications to be in the House of Representatives, no property qualifications to be in the Senate. Every State had property qualifications for members of the upper House. But the Constitution didn't. Now a couple of states didn't have upper Houses, but the 11 states that did had special property qualifications but not the Senate of the United States. You could be a senator even if you didn't have enough property to vote for your state legislature. We, the Federalists say, wanna open this system up to people of talent. In the House of Commons, it calls itself the English House of Commons, but actually you needed to own a considerable amount of property to be a member of the House of Commons. No property qualifications whatsoever. So the Federalists say, we're opening it up to people of merit, of all sorts. And the anti-Federalists say, yeah but you've made it so small, the House of Representatives is a practical matter only people with fame and reputations over pretty broad geographic are gonna be able to win. You've formally opened the game up to everyone, but they said you've kind of rigged it in favor of the famous and the powerful. So that's the conversation. The Federalists not only have no property qualifications, in the Constitution in article one for the legislature. No religious qualifications either, that's pretty striking. And who gets to vote? There's no federal definition of a right to vote, no federal property qualifications for the House. The Constitution simply says if you are eligible to vote for the lower house of your state legislature you are eligible to vote for the House of Representatives. That's the broadest franchise imaginable at the time in America. In many states there were stricter property qualifications for voting for the senate, stricter property qualifications for the state senate, the state upper house. Stricter property qualifications for voting for the state governor, and so the most expansive franchise in most of the states was for the lower house of the state legislature. And that's the electorate that will get to pick you as House of Representatives members. And remember, in the Articles of Confederation, you didn't get to vote directly for your Congresspersons. Under the Articles of Confederation, they're picked by the state legislature, but in this new government they're gonna be picked by the people. Why? Because in the Articles of Confederation the states are basically taxed, they're requisitioned. They're told to pay up certain money into federal coffers. They often don't do it, but they're taxed and they're represented, state governments as such. In this new Constitution, since the new federal government, the new Congress, will be able to impose taxes on individuals, individuals should be represented in that new government. Remember what the American Revolution is all about. No taxation without representation. Parliament didn't represent us, so it shouldn't be able to tax us. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states were represented, so only they could be taxed. But in this new entity, because individuals are gonna be taxed, they're gonna have to be represented. This House of Representatives is really supposed to derive from the people. Here's another number in the Constitution, age qualifications. Now you might think that's undemocratic. You need to be 25 years old to be a member of the House of Representatives, 30 to be a senator. You might think well, that's limiting the people's choices. The Federalist said, au contraire, these age goals are actually deeply egalitarian in their structure. Why? Cuz who's gonna have the name recognition to get elected to Congress at the age of 24 or 23 or 22 or 21 or 18 or 16, for that matter? The only people that could get elected at that young an age would actually be famous people, famous sons of famous fathers sharing the same first and last names. We're going to, by having minimum age qualifications, open our system up to talent of all sorts. So that as a practical matter, if you're famous, maybe, and your father is some famous politician, go into your state legislature first and prove your track record. And then only after you're 25 years old and you have some record of your own, will you be eligible for the House of Representatives. And only after you're 30, will you be eligible for the Senate. And if we don't have that, here's what will happen. States will start sending their most famous people to the national capital at a very young age, hoping that they'll generate, get seniority, and become famous in the continental politics at an early age, and that will eventually benefit the state. And so states are gonna have incentives to send people younger and younger so that their most distinguished citizens get more clout in federal politics. And if one state does it, another state will do it, and that will create a race to the bottom with states having a temptation to send younger and younger folks. And that will lead to a kind of aristocracy cuz the younger folks, they're gonna be picked. If that were the world, would be well-born people, people with famous names. So, although it might seem to be a restriction on the voters to say you can't vote for someone 24, 23, or 22, we're doing it for egalitarian reasons, to open the thing up. So if you're 30 years old and you don't have a lot of property, you're eligible to be in the Senate. And you will, as long as your fellow citizens hold you in high regard, you're a school teacher, you're a war hero, it's not about whether you have property or not, it's about whether you have virtue. And we're gonna trust ordinary voters to pick the people that they think are best and we're gonna pay those people even if they don't have independent wealth in order to do the public's business in the national capital which soon will become Washington, DC, of course. Now here's another number in Article 1, two. The members of the House of Representatives are elected every two years, and the fed will say, look, this is pretty good. In Parliament, they're supposed to be elected every seven years, but they're often not elected in, but Parliament is allowed to change the rules in the middle of the game. So they say seven years. But here for the House of Commons, here our House of Commons, our House of Representatives, is gonna be elected every two years. And it will be fixed. It can't be manipulated by the incumbent legislators the way it can in Parliament. Parliament has the flexibility to move elections up or to move them back. But it's gonna be every two years, fixed, come hell or high water, and that's a deep democratic idea, say the force of the Constitution. And even the Senate is every six years. So even our upper house is gonna be more accountable than the lower house of the English Parliament. And the anti-Federalists, not so fast. You shouldn't just be comparing the new congress to England, compare it to the states. In the states, basically we have annual election for members of the lower house, and here you're doing it every two years rather than every year. And the Federalists in response say, yeah, but remember geography. For state legislators, the states are more compact. You can move more quickly from your state House of Representatives back to your home. But here you're gonna have to go maybe from the extremes of the continent from New Hampshire or Massachusetts, from Georgia, to some centrally located capital. It's gonna take longer to travel and you're gonna need to bone up on continental issues and foreign affairs stuff. That's gonna take some time, there's gonna be more of a learning curve. And so two years makes sense given the unique geography of a continental regime that we're trying to create. So that's why, and by the way, more frequent elections, say the Federalists, aren't always and everywhere better. If one year is so much better than two, and having an election every one year, well, would it be better still to have an election every six months? How about every three months? How about every month? So the Federalist says there's gonna be a balance, and two years strikes a sensible balance. So those are some the main features of the Congress end of the Constitution. Some remarkably democratic features that ordinary people get to vote, elections are every two years, we're going to pay lawmakers, we're not going to have any property qualifications for federal lawmakers even in the upper house. And we're not gonna have any property qualifications, because we are trying to create a genuine republic of the people. Remember, the Federalists have to persuade ordinary people to vote for the Constitution. The Preamble, which says, we, the people, that's only gonna work if we, the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution. Well, of course, they're gonna have to vote for it, and will they vote for it if it has all sorts of elitist features in it? And so the Federalists try to persuade their fellow citizens that it doesn't have, it's not filled with elites as features but genuinely democratic features, paying lawmakers, no property qualifications. No religious qualifications, by the way, for lawmakers either. The age limits, which might seem to limit the voters, are, in fact, in the name of an egalitarian democratic spirit. That's the Federalist argument. Here's one other thing they say. They say, oh, let me, before I get to a final point about what they say about the apportionment of the House and Senate. Let me mention one other feature of this building. It needs to be large enough to accommodate Enough lawmakers from around the country, but also the viewing public, the galleries. The Constitution doesn't, in so many words, guarantee a right for the viewing public to show up, but the Federalists say, listen, our system is going to be open and from the beginning the House of Representatives is open to public view, to public eyes. The Senate very soon follows suit. So, this building is a big building, this capitol building, cuz it's the people's house. It's where you can go to watch the people's business being conducted, publicly, in the House of Representatives, in the Senate with large galleries. The White House is a different kind of place. And we'll talk about Article II and the presidency later on. It's the private dwelling of one person who does a lot of his work in secret. It's not there for public inspection. You don't want that building to look like Buckingham Palace, Versailles, some great palatial estate. Cuz that's one person, but the legislature, Article 1, that's the people's branch. Very distinctively, what you want, a large enough legislature, you want the people to be there being able to observe, you want a big building. You want a big building for democratic reasons. So that's the federalist argument. One other important feature of the structure of Congress that we need to talk about, the apportionment structure. Larger states, more populus states are going to have more seats in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, it's going to follow the model of the Articles of Confederation. Each state whether it is populace or not will get an equal representation. This, now in order to redeem the idea of a House of Representatives that really looks like the people, you're gonna need a device to keep that in sync with the people, cuz the people are on the move. And no where are they on the move more than America. You're gonna have immigrants coming in, you're gonna have people being born. Other people will be dying. You're gonna have people moving from one state to another. And the Constitution reflects all of that with this ingenious idea of a census. Every ten years we're gonna count everyone up. And we're gonna reallocate seats in the House of Representatives based on that census. That's a remarkably democratic idea. England hasn't had a census for the entire 18th century, and there have been massive changes of population with the Industrial Revolution, the rise of great cities. And they're not many of the great industrial Cities in England properly represented in the House of Commons, which is massively malapportioned, filled with what were called rotten boroughs. So places where almost no one lives are sending seats to Parliament, and places where lots of people live aren't sending members to Parliament. So that's a kind of not a genuinely representative system in the so-called House of Commons. Only a couple of states promise in their state constitutions to have reapportionment, to have a census. Pennsylvania does, it's a democratic state. Very ahead of the game. It hasn't done it yet, but it's promised that. So has New York. And here, too, the constitution copies some of the most democratic features. The best features of the state constitutions. They pick Pennsylvania as the model. Here, just as they picked Pennsylvania as the model for low property qualification and no property qualifications. For payment of law maker,s just as they picked Massachusetts as a model for putting the Constitution to a vote. So on many of these issues The Congress, the Constitution is copying best state practices. Now, you might not like the senate, you might say, well, the senate is malapportioned, big states and small states, count equally. Even so, I want you to remember two or three things about the senate. First, even if it's malapportioned, it's no worse than the Articles of Confederation, which also had the one state, one vote, idea. So it's not any sort of step back. And second, there's not a systematic skew either at the founding or today, a big systematic skew in the Senate. You have small states from the North and small states from the South. You have small states in the East, and the West. It's not perfectly apportioned, but there's not a systematic few. In England, the industrial centers were systematically underrepresented. In America, the big states are just kinda north, and south, and east, and west, and so are the small states. And maybe it doesn't perfectly balance out, but it's not terrible. It's no worse than the Articles of the Confederation, and it's not based on property. In many of the states, the upper house was kind of connected to the propertied folks. In Parliament, the upper house, the House of Lords, is about the rich people. And the Senate, at least formally, isn't about that at all. It's not trying to protect rich people as such. But there is one feature of Article 1, that is about protecting in effect property as such. It's the most vicious feature of Article 1. It will lead to ultimately a civil war. It's the representation of slavery in the House of Representatives. More populist states get more seats in the House of Representatives, but how do we count population? Thus, we have the census, but in that census, slaves count. Yes, they count for three-fifths, so they count for less than a free person, but still, the more slaves a state has, the more slaves it steals from Africa, kidnaps people born in freedom in Africa and kidnaps and brings over the Atlantic. The more slaves it breeds, the more slaves it has, the more seats it has in the House of Representatives. That, and this is one form of property that is given special protection in the Constitution, cuz you don't get extra votes because you have more valuable land, or more valuable buildings, or more stocks and bonds, and other kind of wealth, more cattle in your estate. You don't get any extra credit for any of those forms of property, but you do get extra credit in the House of Representatives for extra slaves, and that feature of the Constitution is the one that will over time, create a house divided. A house divided against itself, because that's a feature that's gonna recur every decade. There's gonna be a new census. And in that new census, they're gonna count the slaves. And slaves are gonna actually increase in America. And that increase is gonna be reflected in extra seats for the slave states in the House of Representatives, and eventually as I said, that will lead to a crisis of a house divided. We'll talk a lot more about that in later sessions, so stay tuned. [MUSIC]
