In case you are not familiar with it, please go and check out the web site www.delanceyplace.com. You can sign up to receive daily excerpts from significant works of history, culture, and science. You can also make suggestions for publication, if you've read something that you think deserves wider dissemination. It's a great way to fulfill your need to "learn something new" every day.
Toward the end of last week, www.delanceyplace.com sent out excerpts from notes describing the debate at the convention of delegates who created our Constitution. My OMG moment while reading this was as follows: if you put the language into contemporary syntax and usage, you will find you are describing the tea-baggers, conspiracy theorists, and other assorted nut cases who are encouraged to spew their ignorance by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Fox "News." I now see the Founders' point--and agree with it.
What really distresses me about my change of mind is that I used to be totally against those of the Founders who spoke in favor of limiting direct democracy, seeing as how I'd probably be one of the ones disenfranchised due to my social standing as based on my birth. I now find that I am not opposed to a "meritocracy" when that merit is judged by one's education and capacity for rational thought. I am opposed to it only when its criteria are things like (1) being a white male of a certain age who (2) owns a certain amount of real estate. By those criteria, the tea-baggers and the other crazies might still qualify to vote, thus leading the country straight into the toilet of stupidity down which they today are still trying to flush us.
Anyway, with no further ado, here is the text of the excerpt emailed out to www.delanceyplace.com subscribers:
In today's excerpt - because of the inherent distrust of pure democracy that existed in the 1780s, only the members of the House of Representatives were to be elected directly by the people in the original U.S. Constitution; Senators were chosen by their state's legislature, and the President was to be chosen by electors. The comments below come from the notes of the debate of the Constitutional Convention itself, and show there was considerable opposition even to allowing the people vote directly for representatives:
"ROGER SHERMAN [of Connecticut]: Election [of the members of the House of Representatives] should be by the state legislatures. The people immediately should have as little to do as may be about the government. They lack information and are constantly liable to be misled. If the state governments are to be continued, it is necessary in order to preserve harmony between the national and state governments, that the elections to the former should be made by the latter. The right of participation in the national government will be sufficiently secured to the people by their election of the state legislatures.
ELBRIDGE GERRY [of Massachusetts]: The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not lack virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massachusetts it has been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men. One principal evil arises from the want of due provision for those employed in the administration of government. It would seem to be a maxim of democracy to starve the public servants.
CHARLES PINCKNEY [of South Carolina]: The people are less fit judges in such a case than the legislatures, and the legislatures will be less likely to promote the adoption of the new government if they are to be excluded from all share in it.
WILLIAM PATERSON [of New Jersey]: If the sovereignty of the states is to be maintained, the representatives must be drawn immediately from the states, not from the people.
JOHN RUTLEDGE [of South Carolina]: Election by the legislatures would be more refined than an election immediately by the people, and more likely to correspond with the sense of the whole community. If this Convention had been chosen by the people in districts, it is not to be supposed that such proper characters would have been preferred. The delegates to [the Continental] Congress have also been fitter men than would have been appointed by the people at large.
JOHN MERCER [of Virginia]: The people cannot know and judge of the characters of candidates. The people in towns can unite their votes in favor of one favorite, and by that means always prevail over the people of the country, who, being dispersed, will scatter their votes among a variety of candidates. ...
PINCKNEY: The first branch should be elected by the people, in such mode as the state legislatures shall direct.
GERRY: The people should nominate a certain number, out of which the state legislatures should be bound to choose. Experience has shown that state legislatures drawn immediately from the people do not always possess their confidence. An election by the people should be so qualified that men of honor and character might not be unwilling to be joined in the appointments. The people could choose double the requisite number, the legislature to appoint out of them the authorized number of each state.
MERCER: Candidates should be nominated by the state legislatures and elected by the people, who should not be left to make their choice without any guidance."
Jane Butzner (Jacobs), Constitutional Chaff, Copyright 1941 by Columbia University Press, pp. 8-9.
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