1807.

NO THIRD TERM.

427

For much of this, precedent is alone responsible. Had our first President been willing to succeed himself many times, the people would willingly have permitted him, a precedent would have been created, and he would in all probability have been followed by others serving for twelve or even sixteen years. But Washington was weary of the presidency, and gladly laid it down at the end of eight years. "The acceptance and continuance hitherto in office," said he in the Farewell Address," to which your suffrages have twice called me, have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty, and to a deference to what appeared to be your wishes. . . . I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the pursuit of duty or propriety."

No scruples about a third term troubled him in the least. He went back to private life solely because he was tired of the cares of state. No great principle underlay his act, nor did the people see anything wrong in a President holding office a third term till Jefferson pointed it out. In November, 1806, more than two years before the end of his second term, the Legislature of Vermont formally invited him to become a candidate for a third term, and the great Republican strongholds made haste to follow her. Georgia joined in the request in December, and Maryland, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina in the course of 1807. For a time Jefferson made no reply; but the day was now at hand when he must speak out, for it would soon be the duty of the congressional caucus to nominate, or, as the phrase went, recommend a candidate. In December, 1807, therefore, Jefferson broke silence, declined the invitations, and in letters to Vermont, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania set forth his reason.

"That I should lay down my charge at a proper period is as much a duty," said he, "as to have borne it faithfully. If some termination to the services of the Chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied by practice, his office, nominally for years, will in fact become for life, and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance.

Believing that a representative government, responsible at short periods of election, is that which produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind, I feel it a duty to do no act which will essentially impair that principle, and I should unwillingly be the first person who, disregarding the sound precedent set by an illustrious predecessor, should furnish the first example of prolongation beyond the second term of office."

The new political idea thus clearly announced was sound, was worthy of the man to whom popular government in our country owes so many guiding principles, and was indorsed by the people the land over. The Democratic citizens of Adams County, Pennsylvania, in public meeting assembled at Gettysburg, assured him that they approved " that manly and sublime effort which dictated your determination to retire from public life at the close of the next elective period of your authority." Delegates from the wards of Philadelphia "derived consolation from the consideration that your example may operate on all future Presidents to pursue a course which has added lustre to your character." The Senate of Maryland duly appreciated the motives which induced him to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom the choice of the next President was to be made. Even the far-away Legislature of the Territory of Orleans was moved to assure him that it approved the motives which led him to give another proof of patriotism. The Tammany Society of Philadelphia, while celebrating its anniversary in May, 1808, drank to the toast, "President Jefferson-Rotation in office is the bulwark of freedom." When the fourth of July came, his conduct was very generally approved in some such toast as, "Jefferson-May his successor imitate his virtues and follow his motto-rotation in office."'"

That his virtues had any influence on his successors may well be doubted; but his bold assertion that it was not safe to give any President more than two terms made a deep impression on the people, became recognized as a sound principle of democratic government, and on more than one occasion an attempt was made to insert it in the Constitution. Massachusetts and Connecticut presented it in 1815 as one

1790-1810. DISPOSITION TO AMEND CONSTITUTION.

429

of the amendments proposed by the Hartford Convention. A senator from New Jersey repeated the proposition in 1823, and in the excitement which preceded the election of 1824 the Senate sent to the House a joint resolution declaring that no President should be elected to more than two terms. The failure of the electoral colleges to choose an Executive in 1824, and, above all, what it pleased the friends of Jackson to consider as the defeat of the will of the people by the House in 1825, brought every question relating to the presidency prominently before the people. Again the senator from New Jersey renewed his proposed amendment, and again the Senate sent an anti-third-term resolution to the House, where it perished in committee. The will of the people was all-sufficient. No change in the Constitution was needed.

This disposition to see in an amendment a panacea for any political evil, real or fancied, has always been characteristic of our countrymen. Opposition in the conventions of the ratifying States was the immediate cause of ten amendments. But they had not been declared in force in 1791 when others were demanded. Congress chartered the Bank of the United States, and laid what was claimed to be a direct tax on carriages. The Supreme Court decided the carriage tax was not direct, and that a State might be sued, and five amendments were promptly offered in the Senate. One denied to Congress power to grant a charter of incorporation or set up a commercial monopoly of any kind. Another pro

posed to debar from Congress every man concerned in the direction or management of a bank or moneyed corporation. A third declared every tax direct which was not laid on imports, excises, transfers of property, and proceedings at law. A fourth shut out from a seat in either House every man who was a director or a clerk in the Bank of the United States, or owned one share of its stock. The fifth provided that the judicial power of the United States should be vested not only in one Supreme and certain inferior courts, but in such State courts as Congress might see fit to establish. The decision that a State might be sued called forth protests from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, and the prompt submis

sion to the States and the ratification by them of the eleventh amendment.

The appointment of Chief-Justice Jay to the post of Minister to Great Britain, the ratification of his treaty by the Senate, and the impossibility of Republican Legislatures recalling Federalist senators were, in the opinion of the Republicans, glaring defects in our system of government that ought to be corrected. The elevation of Jefferson to the vicepresidency in 1796, because there was not a separate ballot for the election of that official, and the presence in Congress of foreign-born citizens, seemed quite as insufferable to the Federalists. Amendments were therefore proposed, making United States judges ineligible to any other office; requiring treaties to be submitted to the House in certain cases; cutting down the term of senators to three years; authorizing electors to designate in their ballots persons voted for as President; and excluding from Congress all foreign-born citizens who were not in the country on July fourth, 1776.

The failure of the electors to choose a President in 1800, and the bitter contest in the House in 1801, were the causes of a new batch of proposed amendments touching the Executive. Fifteen times in the course of three years propositions to alter the method then in use were laid before Congress. From 1801 to 1803 the tables of the House and Senate were never free from them for a session. Then, after years of reflection, the twelfth amendment went out to the States and was adopted, and immediately the subject was up again for discussion.

The failure of the Senate to convict Judge Chase, the decision of Marshall in the case of the "midnight judges," greatly excited the Republicans, and they cried out for amendments giving States power to recall senators, and authorizing the removal of judges on the joint address of both Houses. The long embargo and its enforcement excited the Federalists, and the Legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut demanded that a limit should be placed on the duration of embargoes. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Olmsted case aroused Pennsylvania to call for the creation of an impartial tribunal to try cases to which a State is a party. But the

1810-20.

PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS.

431

strangest of all propositions were two, of which one called for the abolition of the vice-presidency and the choice of the President by lot from the retiring senators; and the other declared any citizen of the United States who accepted, received, retained, or claimed any title of nobility or of honor, or without consent of Congress accepted any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, should cease to be a citizen of the United States, and become incapable of holding office. Strange as it may now seem, it passed both Houses, went out to the States, was ratified by twelve, and for many years was printed in school-books and histories at the end of the Constitution as the thirteenth amendment, though it was not accepted by three fourths of the States in the Union.

The third decade of our history under the Constitution covers the years 1810 to 1820, and during this time one hundred and fifteen propositions to amend were presented in Congress. Every phase of political life and thought was expressed in them. The ruling ideas were the choice of representatives and presidential electors in districts; a shorter term for senators; the appropriation of public money for the building of roads and canals; to give Congress and the States concurrent power to train the militia; to prevent an increase in the pay of congressmen till after one election intervened; to take away the veto; to give Congress power to appoint the heads of departments, fill all vacancies in the judiciary, appoint all office-holders under the Government, and forbid it to establish banks outside the District of Columbia.

Many of these were but the passing notions of the hour, or an attempt to override the strict construction doctrines of the party in power. But with them were mingled a few which came from the Hartford Convention, and expressed the political ideas of a great section of the country. It was proposed to weaken the influence of the South by apportioning representation according to free persons; to protect the interests of New England by admitting no more new States into the Union save by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress; by limiting the power of Congress to lay embargoes, impose restrictions on commerce, and declare war; to give the Execu