for life, subject to removal by impeachment. The proposal was defeated, though it received the support of persons so democratically-minded as Madison and Edmund Randolph; but nearly all sensible men admitted that the risk of foreign wars required the concentration of executive powers into a single hand. And the fact that in every one of their commonwealths there existed an officer in whom the State Constitution vested executive authority, balancing him against the State legislature, made the establishment of a Federal chief magistrate seem the obvious course.

The statesmen of the Convention made an enlarged copy of the State governor, or a reduced and improved copy of the English king, shorn of a part of his prerogative by the intervention of the Senate in treaties and appointments, of another part by the restriction of his action to Federal affairs, while his dignity as well as his influence are diminished by his holding office for four years instead of for life. Subject to these and other precautions, he was meant by the Constitution-framers to resemble the State governor and the British king, not only in being the head of the executive, but in standing apart from and above political parties. He was to represent the nation as a whole, as the governor represented the State commonwealth, and to think only of the welfare of the people.

This idea appears in the method provided for the election of a President. To have left the choice of the chief magistrate to a direct popular vote over the whole country would have raised a dangerous excitement, and would have given too much encouragement to candidates of merely popular gifts. To have entrusted it to Congress would have not only subjected the executive to the legislature in violation of the principle which requires these departments to be kept distinct, but have tended to make him the creature of one particular faction instead of the choice of the nation. Hence the device of a double election was adopted. The Constitution directs each State to choose a number of presidential electors equal to the number of its representatives in both Houses of Congress. Some weeks later, these electors meet in each State on a day fixed by law, and give their votes in writing for the President and Vice

President. The votes are transmitted, sealed up, to the capital, and there opened by the President of the Senate, in the presence of both Houses, and counted. To preserve the electors from the influence of faction, it is provided that they shall not be members of Congress, nor holders of any Federal office. Being themselves chosen electors on account of their personal merits, they would be better qualified than the masses to select an able and honorable man for President. Moreover, as the votes are counted promiscuously, and not by States, each elector's voice would have its weight. He might be in a minority in his own State, but his vote would nevertheless tell because it would be added to those given by electors in other States for the same candidate.

But the presidential electors have become a mere cog-wheel in the machine; a mere contrivance for giving effect to the decision of the people. Their personal qualifications are a matter of indifference. They have no discretion, but are chosen under a pledge-a pledge of honor merely, but a pledge which has never (since 1796) been violated-to vote for a particular candidate. In choosing them the people virtually choose the President, and thus the very thing which the men of 1787 sought to prevent has happened—the President is chosen by a popular vote.

In the first two presidential elections (in 1789 and 1792) the independence of the electors did not come into question, because everybody was for Washington, and parties had not yet been fully developed. Yet in the election of 1792 it was generally understood that electors of one way of thinking were to vote for Clinton as their second candidate (i.e., for VicePresident) and those of the other side for John Adams. In the third election (1796) no pledges were exacted from electors, but the election contest in which they were chosen was conducted on party lines, and although, when the voting by the electors arrived, some few votes were scattered among other persons, there were practically only two presidential candidates before the country, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, for the former of whom the electors of the Federalist party, for the latter those of the Republican (Democratic) party were ex

pected to vote. The fourth election was a regular party struggle, carried on in obedience to party arrangements. Both Federalists and Republicans put the names of their candidates for President and Vice-President before the country, and around these names the battle raged. The notion of leaving any freedom or discretion to the electors had vanished, for it was felt that an issue so great must and could be decided by the nation alone. From that day till now there has never been any question of reviving the true and original intent of the plan of double election, and consequently nothing has ever turned on the personality of the electors. They are now so little significant that to enable the voter to know for which set of electors his party desires him to vote, it is found necessary to put the name of the presidential candidate whose interest they represent at the top of the voting ticket on which their own names are printed.

The completeness and permanence of this change has been assured by the method which now prevails of choosing the electors. The Constitution leaves the method to each State, and in the earlier days many States entrusted the choice to their legislatures. But as democratic principles became developed, the practice of choosing the electors by direct popular vote spread by degrees, and popular election now rules everywhere. Thus the issue comes directly before the people. The parties nominate their respective candidates, a "campaign" begins, the polling for electors takes place early in November, on the same day over the whole Union, and when the result is known the contest is over, because the subsequent meeting and voting of the electors in their several States is mere matter of form.

So far, the method of choice by electors may seem to be merely a roundabout way of getting the judgment of the people. It is more than this. It has several singular consequences, unforeseen by the framers of the Constitution. It has made the election virtually an election by States, for the present system of choosing electors by "general ticket" over the whole State causes the whole weight of a State to be thrown into the scale of one candidate, that candidate whose list of electors is

carried in the given State. Hence in a presidential election, the struggle concentrates itself mainly in the doubtful States where the great parties are pretty equally divided, and hence also a man may be, and has been, elected President by a minority of popular votes.

When such has been the fate of the plan of 1787, it need hardly be said that the ideal president, the great and good man above and outside party, whom the judicious and impartial electors were to choose, has not usually been secured. Nearly every president has been elected as a party leader by a party vote, and has felt bound to carry out the policy of the men who put him in power. Thus America has reproduced the English system of executive government by a party majority. In practice, the disadvantages of the American plan are less serious than might be expected, for the responsibility of a great office and the feeling that he represents the whole nation have tended to sober and control the President. Except as regards patronage, he has seldom acted as a mere tool of faction, or sought to base his administrative powers to the injury of his political adversaries.

The Constitution prescribes no limit for the reëligibility of the President. He may go on being chosen for one four-year period after another for the term of his natural life. But tradition has supplied the place of law. Elected in 1789, Washington submitted to be reelected in 1792.

he had served this second term he absolutely refused to serve a third, urging the risk to republican institutions of suffering the same man to continue constantly in office. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson obeyed the precedent, and did not seek, nor their friends for them, reëlection after two terms, and no man has ever been so reelected.

The Constitution requires for the choice of a President "a majority of the whole number of electors appointed." If no such majority is obtained by any candidate, i.e., if the votes of the electors are so scattered among different candidates, that out of the total number no one receives an absolute majority, the choice goes over to the House of Representatives, who are empowered to choose a President from among the three candi

dates who have received the largest number of electoral votesIn the House the vote is taken by States, a majority of all the States being necessary for a choice. As all the members of the House from a State have but one collective vote, it follows that if they are equally divided among themselves, e.g., if half the members from a given State are Democratic and half Republican, the vote of that State is lost. Supposing this to be the case in half the total number of States, or supposing the States so to scatter their votes that no candidate receives an absolute majority, then no President is chosen, and the VicePresident becomes President.

In this mode of choice, the popular will may be still less recognized than it is by the method of voting through presidential electors, for if the twenty smaller States were, through their representatives in the House, to vote for candidate A, and the eighteen larger States for candidate B, A would be seated, though the population of the twenty smaller States is, of course, very much below that of the eighteen larger.

The Constitution seems, though its language is not explicit, to have intended to leave the counting of the votes to the President of the Senate (the Vice-President of the United States); and in early days this officer superintended the count, and decided questions as to the admissibility of doubtful votes. However, Congress has, in virtue of its right to be present at the counting, assumed the further right of determining all questions which arise regarding the validity of electoral votes. This would be all very well were a decision by Congress always certain of attainment. But it often happens that one party has a majority in the Senate, another party in the House, and then, as the two Houses vote separately and each differently from the other, a deadlock results.

These things point to a grave danger in the presidential system. The stake played for is so high that the temptation to fraud is immense; and as the ballots given for the electors by the people are received and counted by State authorities under State laws, an unscrupulous State faction has opportunities for fraud at its command. Congress not many years ago enacted a statute which to some extent meets the problem by