ture. If the Legislature could add new qualifications,
they could say that the Senator should have
attained the age of fifty years, or been twenty years
a citizen of the United States. These provisions
would be merely adding to the constitution, and
not in terms in conflict with it. His opinion was
that any qualification added by the constitution
of the State or by the Legislature, would be null
and void. If otherwise, then the Legislature
could say that the Senator must be of this or of
that religion, or of this or that political party, or
some particular profession or trade. They might
go into the most minute details upon the subject,
if they could go a single step beyond the requisitions
of the constitution of the United States
Thus if giving the power to superadd any quali-
fication whatever, was a violation of the spirit
and design of the constitution of the U. States, as
well might the Legislature add as many addi-
tional qualifications as it thought proper to the
members of the Legislature or other state officers
whose qualifications were prescribed by the con-
stitution of the state.
Mr. SOLLERS said that had he entertained a
single doubt of the obligatory force of the law of
1810, he would have considered himself bound
under the oath he had taken as representative, to
have introduced a bill for its repeal. Whatever
might be the opinion of the gentleman from Kent
(Mr. Chambers) it was the general opinion of the
people of Maryland, upon both shores, that each
shore was entitled under that law to a senator.
That was certainly his own construction of the law.
Mr. JENIFER said that the question was not so
much whether it would be contrary to the federal
constitution to district the State, as whether if
such a provision should be passed, and if the le-
gislature should afterwards disregard that provis-
ion in the state constitution, the congress of the
United States would have a right to annul the
action of the legislature in electing a senator in
contravention of that provision. Although the
provision might not be unconstitutional, it might
still be beyond the jurisdiction of the Senate of
the United States to see that it should be enforced.
if the constitution of the State should contain a
provision that the Eastern Shore should always
have one senator and the Western Shore the
other, and if the Legislature should then elect
both from the Eastern or both from the Western
Shore, would not the senators thus elected be
admitted into the Senate as having been elected
conformably with the provisions of the federal
. constitution?
Mr. RANDALL wished again, as he had yesterday,
to call attention to another clause of the
same section of the constitution of the U. States,
which bad been repeatedly quoted, ill order to
show that the same power vested in the legisla-
ture as to the time, places and manner of electing
senators and representatives, were also vested in
congress:
"The times, places and manner of holding
elections for senators and representatives, shall
be prescribed in each state by the legislature
thereof, but the congress may at any time by
law make or alter such regulations, except as to
the place of choosing senators. |
Admit that the Legislature have the power to
district the State, and the necessary consequence
would follow that Congress have the power to
alter that mode. If Maryland could divide the
State into three senatorial districts, and require
residence in their districts respectively as a qual-
ification of senators of the U. States, Congress
could add three other or twenty other districts
from which in turn the senator should be taken.
What a fearful power would thus be placed ill
Congress!
Mr. BRENT. Has not Congress undertaken to
say that representatives shall be elected from dis-
tricts?
Mr. RANDALL. Not from districts but by districts?
But in this law Congress does not im-
pose any new qualification upon representatives,
as residence in a district, as is here proposed to
be done upon senators.
If the Legislature or the framers of this Con-
stitution have the power to add lo the other qual-
ifications of senators of the United States to be
elected by this state as prescribed by the consti-
tution of the United States—then have Congress
the same power to make and alter such regula-
tions.
If you prescribe that the senator to be elected
at any particular time should reside in one part
of the state, they may repeal that regulation and
require him to reside in another part of the state.
Suppose Congress to desire to prevent the elec-
tion or re-election by the legislatures of the states
of any particular senators—all they would have to
do lo effect this object would be to pass a law
requiring senators to be elected from particular
districts of the state, and so to arrange them that
the senators whose elections they desire to defeat,
shall not reside in the districts whence these next
senators are to he selected. Thus the states may
be virtually deprived of the constitutional exer-
cise of this important selection of their represen-
tatives in the Senate of the United States; and
this too may be changed as often as Congress
may change its own personal preferences or pre-
judices for or against parties or individuals.—
Apart then from the alleged violation of the
constitution of the United States in this proposition
to add to the qualifications of senators, ano-
ther qualification not presented by that constitution,
I submit that this proposition would bedan-
gerous in the extreme, because it would so far as
this Convention's action could do so, confer on
Congress a power they do not and ought not to
possess.
This question was no new one. It was sur-
prising with what foresight the framers of this
Constitution anticipated all these difficulties which
had been re-opened and discussed in our day. it
was one of the objections to the formation of the
Constitution of the United States that it vested in
Congress this very power, and the States at the
time, alive to their interests on this point, appre-
hended that it might vest too much power in Con-
gress. As is said in a number of the Federalist,
which discusses the objection made to this very
article, that a very learned and influential states-
man of that day declared that this very article was
the only one in the Constitution of the United |
