A Senate of the States: July 2nd, 1787

Article V Blog ^ | November 16th 2017 | Rodney Dodsworth

[Jacquerie]

Subtitle: Gouverneur Morris Warns of a Uniparty. The convention slogged on as the large/small state standoff continued over the question of representation in the senate. I will follow a different course today and let a little-known Framer, Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris take center stage.

We can thank Morris for the precise text and prose of our Constitution. As chairman of the Committee of Style, he not only smoothed and connected resolutions, he occasionally inserted clauses on his own initiative, which the convention typically accepted as written. Where history tagged James Madison as the father of the Constitution, Morris was its acknowledged penman. Like Alexander Hamilton, he believed the US needed an aristocratic senate distinct in interest from the house. Without independence, if the rich do not have their own house, they will mix with the less-well-off in the House of Representatives and form an oligarchy, what we recognize today as the despotic Uniparty.

Morris asked, “What is the object of the senate?” It is to check the precipitation, changeableness, and excesses of the first branch. Every man of observation had seen in the democratic branches of the state legislatures, in every department of congress, the excesses against personal liberty, private property, and personal safety. What qualities are necessary to constitute a check in this case? Abilities and virtue are equally necessary in both branches, yet the second branch needs something more.

1. The checking branch must have a personal interest in checking the other branch, one interest must be opposed to another interest. Vices as they exist, must be turned against each other.
2. It must have great personal property, it must have the aristocratic spirit; it must love to lord it through pride; pride is the great principle that actuates both the poor