any matter of internal policy? What became of
that large class of rights, of legislative rights,
which belonged to every State in the Union, to
pass such laws as they pleased in the exercise
of their police powers, not in conflict with the
Constitution of the United States. There reser-
vations of power to the Legislatures of the
States for wise municipal purposes it may be-
come necessary to exert, with a view to pre-
vent the conflict and clashing of one interest
against another, or with a view to prevent one
class of our citizens from having an all-absorbing
controlling power in the State, or, if you please,
for the purpose of dividing policital power
among the various sections of the State. If, in
the exercise of such clear inherent rights, the
States do nothing to infringe constitutional
grants or constitutional prohibitions, where was
the objection?
Was he told by districting the State,
they would superadd a qualification which was
not contained in the Constitution of the United
States? It was not so: very far from it The
Constitution of the United States said, that a
Senator should be an inhabitant of the State
from which he was chosen. This was the
length and breadth of the constitutional provis-
ion. Was it superadding a qualification to the
Constitution, to say, that for wise purposes, a
Senator should come from a particular portion
of the State? Would he not be still an inhabit-
ant of the State? Clearly. There would be no
violation of the Constitution in all this, because
nothing in conflict with its general purpose or
design. It might become a matter of great in-
terest and importance to the States so to ar-
range and classify their different sections as to
promote an equal and just distribution of polit-
ical power and political honors among the dif-
ferent portions of their citizens.
He would ask his friend from Kent, who had
said that we lived in a Christian country, that
we were a Christian people, a Christian com-
munity, and who desired to see laws passed by
the Legislature to recognize that fact, and to
stamp upon every man who was an infidel, and
did not believe in the existence of God or a fu-
ture State of rewards and punishments, an in-
capacity to hold office, whether it would not be
competent for this Convention to declare that
such a man should not hold an office either under
the State of Federal Government? This, in his
(Mr. B's) opinion, would not conflict with the
Constitution of the United States. The Consti-
tution of the United States not having declared
such persons to be eligible, the States might de-
clare them to be ineligible without coming in
conflict with the Federal Government. He
would say that it was in the power of every
sovereignty, and inherent power, necessarily be-
longing to them, in the enactment of wise and
wholesome laws, to exclude from office men
whom they supposed to be dangerous to the
body politic, and justly offensive to the moral
and religious sense of the community. The
office of Senator of the United States was not
exclusively an office of the United States Gov-
ernment. It was an office created, to be sure,
30 |
by the Constitution of the United States, but
created for the States, because the States were
represented in the Senate by men of their own
selection and apointment, as the represent-
atives of sovereign States. They were not
merely federal officers; they were officers of
the United States, acting in federal harmony
and federal concert, under the provisions of the
Constitution of the United States. They were
not less State officers, because their mode of
appointment was prescribed by the Constitution
of the United States. They were, in fact, State
officers, whose election was provided for by
federal compact, but who were elected under
and by virtue of the sovereighty of the States.
In that view, he held that it was competent for
a State to declare that an infidel, or person who
did not believe in the existence of a God, should
be disqualified from holding a seat in the Sen-
ate of the United States, and by so doing, not
infringe the constitutional provision.
In the fourth section, the power was express-
ly reserved to the States to prescribe law
the times, places and manner of holding elec-
tions for Senators, as well as for Representa-
tives. What did the word "manner" mean?
The gentleman from Kent said that it meant
the mode in which the election itself should be
conducted-that is to say, whether it should be
by ballot, or viva voce, or by the joint or sepa-
rate action of the two Houses of the Legislature.
He agreed with him that this was a part of its
meaning; but did it necessarily mean this, and
nothing else? In Johnson's dictionary the word
"manner" is said to be synonymous with mode,
and mode with method, and method meant the
"placing of things in performing operations in
such order as was most convenient to attain some
end." in this sense he supposed the word to
be used in the Constitution of the United States,
because it is proper to assume that it was used
in a sense of which it was legitimately suscep-
tible by the rules of the English language,
The Legislature of this State, in 1809. when
they passed the law dividing the State into Senatorial
districts of the Eastern and Western
Shores, seems to have used the word in the
same sense) for the very title of the law was
"an act to define and fix the mode of electing U.
S Senators"—the word "mode" being consider-
ed as synonymous with the term "manner," as
used in the Constitution of the United States.
Now, mode was synonymous with method, they
meant one and the same thing. Dr. Johnson,
in his definition of the word "method," had
thrown more light upon the subject, than he had.
in his definition of either the word "manner"
or "mode. ' Method, lie tells us, is "the plac-
ing of several things or performing operations in
such order as was most convenient to attain
some end." Now he asked his friend, the gentle-
man from Kent, to give this meaning to the term
-'manner" as used in the Constitution of the U.
States, and then to say whether the Legislature
of a State, in prescribing the manner of elect-
ing Senators, might not perform the operation
in such order as might be most convenient to
attain some useful end—some end connected |
