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IvyPanda . (2018) 'Customer Service Representative'. 31 October.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Customer Service Representative." October 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/customer-service-representative/.

1. IvyPanda . "Customer Service Representative." October 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/customer-service-representative/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Customer Service Representative." October 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/customer-service-representative/.

What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Get About Homelessness

Communities turn to police instead of fixing their housing shortage.

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Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

The Supreme Court has just ripped away one of the rare shreds of legal protections available to homeless people. In a 6–3 ruling, the Court has decided that the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, did not violate the Eighth Amendment by enforcing camping bans against its involuntarily unsheltered residents. The ruling epitomizes why housing has become a crisis in so much of the country: It does nothing to make communities confront their role in causing a housing shortage, and it upholds their ability to inflict pain upon that shortage’s victims.

This ruling overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals precedents Grants Pass v. Johnson and Martin v. Boise , which had restrained jurisdictions in much of the western United States, including the high-homelessness states of California, Oregon, and Washington, from enforcing anti-camping laws if they lacked shelter beds. Writing for the majority in the Grants Pass case, Justice Neil Gorsuch struck a Tocquevillian note, asserting that the American people, “through their voluntary associations and charities, their elected representatives and appointed officials, their police officers and mental health professionals,” know better than some judges the best way to address homelessness in their cities and towns. And if part of their answer is to jail homeless people, so be it.

Listen: A Supreme Court ruling on homelessness that’s both crucial and useless

Modern tent encampments were not a significant part of the urban landscape before the 1980s. In fact, not since the Great Depression, when unemployment hit nearly 25 percent , have so many people sought makeshift shelter in outdoor camps. Today, unemployment is at 4 percent . And yet, in prosperous American cities, homelessness abounds. It’s not because drugs were invented in the past several decades, nor is it because mental illness was invented by Millennials.

Rather, it’s because local governments have sought to rid their housing markets of low-income people by getting rid of low-income-housing options, while ensuring that the rest of the market would become prohibitively expensive. Localities simply displaced the most vulnerable residents to the outdoors, hoping that life would be so uncomfortable that these people would migrate to some other community. And now, after policy choices have created a nationwide housing crisis, cities have successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to allow them to ignore a problem of their own making. If they’re not willing to allow more housing, they certainly are willing to house the indigent in jail.

Grants Pass has about 40,000 people and a median family income of $54,000, which is 30 percent below the state average. The one homeless shelter there, run by a Christian nonprofit, can house 138 people . It requires that its residents abstain from alcohol and drugs (including nicotine), attend twice-daily chapel services, and “abstain from intimate relationships.” It also requires residents to separate from their partner or spouse to maintain gender segregation. For many people, this is a difficult way to live. Everybody agrees that there aren’t enough shelter beds for the number of homeless people. Where they disagree is what should be done about it.

Tent encampments are a symptom of a dysfunctional housing market for low-income renters. Yet over the decades, cities have not only barred housing of last resort from being built; they’ve also squeezed development of housing targeted at even middle- and high-income renters. People’s options have thus been whittled down to nothing when a medical emergency hits, or a divorce happens, or a family dispute leads to someone being kicked out—resulting in large numbers of people living outside.

As tent encampments have proliferated around the country, communities have routinely treated the problem of homelessness as a matter of maintaining order rather than of reducing the number of people without shelter. This isn’t irrational; many local residents experience these encampments as hotbeds of disorder. Not only do many encampments take up public parks and settings that are available for general use, but they also accumulate trash and other signs of chaos.

Still, fining and jailing people for being poor is fundamentally unjust; if you’re homeless, that on its own should not be treated as a criminal offense. And as a practical matter, people cannot be fined or jailed out of homelessness. When cities turn to punitive measures without offering options more suitable than camping outside, they’re at best simply moving homeless people around in an endless dystopian game. At worst, they’re imposing fines and other legal costs on people already defined by their lack of resources, and increasing the likelihood that they remain transient and unhoused.

Writing for the three dissenting liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor zeroed in on a core problem: Does criminalization even work? “For people with nowhere else to go, fines and jail time do not deter behavior, reduce homelessness, or increase public safety … Police officers in these cities recognize as much: ‘Look we’re not really solving anybody’s problem. This is a big game of whack-a-mole.’” The ruling will empower cities and states to pursue criminalization without addressing the root causes of homelessness. But to what end?

From the January/February 2023 issue: The obvious answer to homelessness

In 2023, the National Park Service cleared about 74 people out of D.C.’s McPherson Square. City officials admitted later that, as The Washington Post put it , “roughly two-thirds of those who had been displaced from the park were believed still to be sleeping on the street.” The newspaper reported that, soon after the sweep, just two people had been placed in permanent housing.

Elected officials want an easy way out of this catastrophe, and when your only tool is a police officer, everyone looks like a prisoner. Mayors and governors are searching desperately for a quick fix to this problem and are frustrated that even valiant efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing is unlikely to earn them many points from the electorate. Such attempts to address homelessness are unlikely to be politically persuasive if they don’t result in the removal of tent encampments. This frustration was perhaps best put by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass : Angelenos “want the tents to go.” She continued, “I could build half a million units of housing, and if there are still tents, people will not believe that you did anything except to steal their money.” But there is no quick fix, and mayors such as Bass have done little to seriously push back against the entrenched political interests that oppose new housing.

Yes, clearing encampments has to happen sometime. But only when cities have invested in the shelter capacity and housing space needed to serve these populations will enforcement have any meaningful effect on addressing homelessness—and the disorder it brings.

• Library of Congress
• Research Guides
• Multiple Research Centers

American Women: Topical Essays

The long road to equality: what women won from the era ratification effort.

• Introduction
• American Women: An Overview
• Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913
• Sentiments of an American Woman
• The House That Marian Built: The MacDowell Colony of Peterborough, New Hampshire
• Women On The Move: Overland Journeys to California
• “With Peace and Freedom Blest!”: Woman as Symbol in America, 1590-1800

General Inquiries : Ask a Librarian

Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

Chat with a librarian , Monday through Friday, 12-4pm Eastern Time (except Federal Holidays).

Author: Leslie W. Gladstone,  retired, Congressional Research Service

Note: This guide is adapted from the original essay in "American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States," 2001.

Created: December 2001

Last Updated: March 22, 2019

At a National Organization for Women (NOW) rally in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, on June 30, 1982, NOW president Eleanor Smeal rallied an estimated two thousand supporters, including seven hundred nurses in town for the American Nurses Association convention. 1 Although they were there that day mourning the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Smeal urged them not to forget that “We are a majority. We are determined to play majority politics . . . . We are not going to be reduced again to the ladies' auxiliary.” 2

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, outside the Civic Center, about one thousand women counted down the ERA's last six hours, a rain-soaked vigil that was reported, filmed, and recorded by many women journalists and technicians. 3

That same night, at a party in a Washington, D.C., hotel, the ERA's demise was celebrated by opponents, fourteen hundred strong, as “a great victory for women.” 4 The Washington Post account of that evening describes the entrance into the ballroom of the leader of the ERA opposition, Phyllis Schlafly, as the band played “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” During the festivities, the crowd was entertained with renditions of “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead” and “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” Triumphantly addressing the crowd, Schlafly called for “a mighty movement” that will “set America on the right path.” 5

What caused the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment? Why the intense emotions that caused ERA proponents to write the names of opponents in pigs' blood on the floors of the Illinois state capitol or opponents to pronounce apocalyptically that if the amendment was ratified husbands would no longer have to support their wives, that women would be drafted, and that toilets would be made unisex? What, if any, was the legacy of the often bitter ratification campaign that divided American women for nearly a decade beginning in 1972?

The proposed Equal Rights Amendment, only fifty-one words in length, was contentious from its inception. In a form suggested by Alice Paul, a constitutional amendment was first introduced in 1923—only three years after the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote—unleashing sixty or more years of national debate. (For a discussion of records of women's rights organizations from this era that are held by the Manuscript Division, see Women's Rights in the Manuscript Division section.)

Paul was a militant leader in the suffrage movement. She founded the National Woman's Party, and for fifty years served as a tactician for the ERA. (See Women's Suffrage: Suffrage Organizations in the Manuscript Division section.) Her original wording, drafted in 1923, has been changed several times, but the text submitted to the states for ratification in 1972 is essentially hers:

Sec. 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex. Sec. 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Sec. 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.” 6

Almost immediately in 1923, a split developed between the more militant feminists whose goal was full equality under the Constitution and the social reformers and organized labor who feared that the amendment would be used to strike down laws that they had secured to protect women in the workplace. (See "Protective Legislation" in the Law Library section and Labor and "Progressive Reform" in the Manuscript Division section.)

Opposition to the ERA began to dissipate somewhat in the 1930s. Roosevelt's New Deal enacted social welfare laws that regulated wages and hours and instituted fair labor standards for both male and female workers, rendering protective laws less necessary. Yet the split continued, because certain groups—such as agricultural workers and domestics, areas where women workers concentrated—were still exempted from these standards. 7 According to Cynthia Harrison, “between 1945 and 1960, the proponents of the ERA and the defenders of protective labor legislation would not reconcile their views, based as they were in opposite philosophies of women's needs.” 8 The liberal-labor coalition's concerns about the threat to protective legislation were not finally removed until passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when a high volume of sex discrimination complaints and suits confirmed the argument that protective labor laws acted as a limitation on women's employment opportunities (see "Civil Rights" in the Law Library American Women guide ). 9

In the 1960s, the period generally referred to as the second women's rights movement began with John F. Kennedy's appointment of the first President's Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW), chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt [picture]. The work of this and other early commissions successfully focused public attention on a broad range of initiatives designed to address the unequal position of American women, both under U.S. law and in customary practice, issues which also found expression in numerous women's rights demonstrations. 10

According to Marguerite Rawalt, the only pro-ERA appointee, the creation of the PCSW, consisting almost entirely of women who still opposed the ERA, was intended to forestall consideration of the amendment. Labor's continued opposition to the ERA made it a politically risky issue for a Democratic president. Recollections of differences in perspectives and values between such commissioners as Rawalt, who at the time was president of the National Association of Women Lawyers, and Esther Peterson [picture], the highest-ranking woman in the Kennedy administration as director of the Women's Bureau and an assistant secretary of labor, can be heard on National Public Radio's 1981 program “The ERA in America.” 11

It has been argued that many of this first presidential commission's accomplishments were long-range. One was to make discussion of women's roles and status respectable and to give women's issues a prominent place on the national political agenda for the first time since ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. 12 Possibly the most divisive issue for the commission, however, was the problem of how to achieve constitutional equality for women. After receiving divergent views from national women's organizations and labor union groups, the commission declared that equality of rights for all persons is embodied in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution and recommended that prompt judicial clarification of this principle be sought from the Supreme Court, which could confer equal rights to women by interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause to give sex the same “suspect” test as race and national origin. 13 It also found that an equal rights amendment “need not now be sought,” but protective legislation for women should be maintained and expanded. 14 (To read the full text of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, follow the links to the National Archives and Records Administration Web site under “The Long Road to Equality” on the Topical Essays External Sites page.)

“When would the government act?” was the activists' question, and “Now” became the mantra. Outraged by the refusal of the newly formed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prosecute job discrimination cases on the basis of sex through Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Marguerite Rawalt, Betty Friedan [picture], and others founded the National Organization for Women in 1966. Passage of the ERA was its first agenda item. 15 Four years later, on July 20, 1970, Representative Martha Griffiths, a Democrat from Michigan, collected enough signatures for a discharge petition, by-passing veteran House Judiciary Committee chair Emanuel Celler [picture], a liberal Democrat from New York with strong labor ties who had refused to hold hearings on the ERA for two decades. 16 Opening House hearings on the amendment on August 10, Griffiths pleaded, “Give us a chance to show you that those so-called protective laws to aid women—however well intentioned originally—have become in fact restraints, which keep wife, abandoned wife, and widow alike from supporting her family.” 17

Approved by 352-15 in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1971, the amendment moved to the Senate, where Senator Sam Ervin [picture], a Democrat from North Carolina and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was its chief opponent. A strict constitutionalist, Ervin in fact attacked the amendment on the basis of traditional views of gender. 18 Much anti-ERA literature subsequently was based on Ervin's public statements. 19 Despite continued opposition of some segments of organized labor, the ERA was passed by the Senate on March 22, 1972, and it was submitted to the states for ratification. 20

In the years between 1972 and 1977, the federal amendment proposing equal rights for women was considered by the legislatures of every state, in some cases more than once, and thirty-five of them ratified it. 21 In addition, between 1971 and 1978, fifteen states adopted equal rights amendments to their own constitutions, providing a legal basis for equal treatment to women in those jurisdictions. These served to demonstrate the protections that such an amendment could provide and as an argument for passage of a federal amendment. At the same time, other states began making changes in their laws to eliminate distinctions that unfairly precluded women from receiving equal treatment.

One problem encountered early in the ratification campaign was the portrayal of women and women's rights by the press generally, which seemed to enjoy making them subjects of heavy-handed jokes. When Gloria Steinem was invited to speak at a National Press Club luncheon in January 1972, a short time after the club had agreed to admit women journalists, she used the occasion to take up not only the serious issues of feminism and the ERA but also the crippling effect for both sexes of a male-dominated vision of the world. A tape of the session, held in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS), records her comments on the way men tended to assume that they represented the norm, so that when the press presented issues important to the lives of women, reporters seldom found it necessary to seek out women as sources. 22 As an example she cited a recent story on abortion in which the interviewees consisted of a number of men, plus one nun. Conservative women, on the other hand, particularly Schlafly, were convinced that the “liberal” press was on the side of the ERA. Other interviews illustrating the flavor of the debate over the ERA, also available in MBRS, are those with Gloria Steinem and Jill Ruckelshaus, both active in the ratification campaign, on Meet the Press, September 10, 1972 (RWC 7731 B2); and with Eleanor Smeal, president of the National Organization for Women, also on Meet the Press, November 20, 1977 (LWO 15563 1-2), and at the National Press Club, June 25, 1981 (RXA 1902 B).

Scholars have speculated about the causes of the dramatic slowing in the ratification process that followed the first three months of 1973. It has been suggested that the Supreme Court's decision on abortion in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973, coupled with nationwide admiration for Senator Sam Ervin's chairmanship of the Senate Watergate hearings [picture] that began in May, made ERA proponents' task much harder. Decriminalization of abortion angered fundamentalists and social conservatives, and Ervin, leader of the Senate opposition to the ERA since 1969 and now seen as a savior of the Constitution, became their champion in the southern states that refused to ratify the ERA. 23

Preparations for International Women's Year and its culminating event, the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977, infused the ERA ratification effort with new energy. And just in time, for not only had ratification slowed markedly but five states had voted to rescind their previous ratifications. 24 The designation of 1975 as International Women's Year (IWY), a United Nations initiative, had come in response to the rising demand for women's rights, not only in the United States, but around the world. 25

The agenda for the national conference consisted of twenty-six items nominated for action by the state groups. The preceding year was spent researching and surveying particular aspects of gender discrimination, and 115 suggestions for remedial action were submitted to the president. 26 Included were recommendations on issues such as employment, reproductive freedom, the legal status of homemakers, rape, the media, and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. All twenty-six agenda items were approved, but the only one totally unchanged by the delegates to the National Conference was the one that stated, “The Equal Rights Amendment should be ratified.”

Many more socially conservative women were politicized by the Houston conference. Shocked by the delegates' overwhelming support for the ERA, gay rights, federal funding of abortion, government-sponsored child care, and contraception for minors without parental consent, all advocated in the name of “women's rights,” they were also angered that this “feminist” convention was supported by taxpayers. 27 A privately funded opposition rally in Houston was held by Schlafly and her Stop ERA and Eagle Forum organizations. The ERA campaign was denounced as an assault on the family and on the role of women as wives and mothers. 28

An important offshoot of the IWY national conference was a new organization named ERAmerica, whose records are held by the Manuscript Division (see "Women's Rights" in the Manuscript Division section). 29 Created at the request of a number of nongovernmental groups, ERAmerica was set up as a private national campaign organization. Its role was to direct the final months of the ratification drive in the fifteen remaining unratified states. Throughout this ratification effort, ERAmerica worked with more than two hundred participating organizations. They:

• lobbied for the amendment
• mounted campaigns in unratified states where success was believed possible
• organized a national educational program
• served as a clearinghouse for information, and
• did fund-raising and public relations.

In this way, ERAmerica and allied groups became agents for the hands-on engagement of numerous activist women with the nuts and bolts of political campaigning and with the political process at the state and local level.

The records of ERAmerica are a rich source of detail on the way much of the political training of pro-ERA volunteers was accomplished. Since ERAmerica could pay only a handful of professional staff, it was necessary to recruit volunteers from organizations within the targeted states, and these people represented a broad spectrum of backgrounds and interests. 30

By the same token, the anti-ERA effort had a strong educational value for conservative women, many of whom became effective lobbyists for their points of view. As the Reverend Jerry Falwell remarked the day after the ERA died, “Phyllis has succeeded in doing something nobody has ever done . . . She's mobilized the conservative women of this country into a powerful political unit.” 31

At the national level, the case for passage of the amendment was carried to the general public by magazine articles in such publications as Women's Day and Working Women . These stories discussed issues like:

• discriminatory wages
• battered wives
• loopholes in a homemaker's right to spousal support
• publicly funded boys-only schools and
• the lack of protections for women in the areas of marital and property rights, child support payments, and credit access. 32

Also cited in the ERAmerica records was a speakers bureau organized for radio, television, and personal appearances by well-known figures like presidential daughter Maureen Reagan, White House press secretary Liz Carpenter, humor columnist Erma Bombeck, actors Alan Alda, Polly Bergen, and others who could attract an audience and articulate the rationale for improving the status of women.

Although the amendment was ratified by thirty-five states, it did not gain approval of the necessary three-fourths or thirty-eight states before the 1982 deadline.

There is no question, however, that public opinion regarding the need for change was substantially altered by the years of debate. Surveys taken by Louis Harris and by the Roper Organization from 1970 through 1985 show steadily growing support for strengthening the status of women. 33 The shift in viewpoints over time are reflected in differing answers to the question, “Do you favor most of the efforts to strengthen and change women's status in society today? ” At the beginning of the 1970s, 40 percent of women and 44 percent of men who responded approved the idea. Fifteen years later in 1985, 73 percent of women and 69 percent of men favored such changes.

Out of the gradual shift in public opinion, legislative gains followed, and a significant number of women's rights measures were passed in this period. Between the 92nd Congress, beginning in 1971, and the 95th Congress, ending in 1978, ten statutes were enacted prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex with regard to education, employment, credit, and housing, more than during any other period in the history of the Congress. 34 Other legislation focused on women's interests has been enacted in the years following.

Since the 1980s, with the major civil rights statutes in place, other legislative gains have included measures to:

• provide pension rights and survivor benefits to divorced spouses under various public pension plans
• strengthen the Fair Housing Act to ban discrimination against families with children
• ban discrimination on the basis of sex in public jobs programs
• fund training programs for men and women who are entering nontraditional occupations and for individuals who are single parents or displaced homemakers
• improve child support enforcement programs
• clarify the application of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally assisted education programs and activities (by restoring the broad coverage originally enacted)
• provide for the protection of jobs and health insurance after childbirth or family health emergencies.

The Supreme Court of the United States also revealed an awareness of the ratification arguments and, in the 1970s and 1980s, moved toward a more rigorous standard of review in sex discrimination cases, although it fell short of applying the “suspect” category test it applied to race and national origin. The papers of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in this period argued many landmark women's rights cases for the American Civil Liberties Union, are held in the Manuscript Division (see "Women Justices, Judges, and Attorneys" in the Manuscript Division section). 35 Copies of the final Supreme Court opinions (or decisions), records, and briefs can be found in the Law Library.

Between 1970 and 1990, the number of women winning elective offices increased markedly, and their influence was significant in promoting legislation supportive of women's interests. 36 The number of women mayors in cities with populations over 30,000 increased from 1.6 percent in 1973 to 18 percent in 1993.

In the same period, women in state legislatures grew from 5.6 percent to 20.4 percent, women in the U.S. House of Representatives went from 3.7 percent to 10.8 percent, and women senators from zero to 6 percent.

Other women established “firsts” as candidates. Shirley Chisholm [picture] was the first African American woman to run for president in 1972 and Patricia Schroeder ran in 1988. Geraldine Ferraro was nominated by a national party for vice president in 1984.

The importance of electing women to office at all levels is best revealed in the pattern that women officeholders established early on. Many of these women from both parties have tended to promote legislation having an impact on the lives of women, children, and families, in areas such as health, welfare, and education. Many others have supported women's rights generally. 37 Moreover, the influence of elected women has changed over time as their numbers have increased, and they have proved equally effective as men at securing passage of their legislative priorities. One notable woman legislator whose congressional career spanned two distinct periods, from 1965 to 1977, and again from 1990 to 2002, was Hawaii Representative Patsy T. Mink, whose personal papers in the Manuscript Division reflect not only her steadfast commitment to women's issues but the changing nature of women's political influence (see "Women Members" in the Manuscript Division section).

In the end, change over these years came from many quarters and for many reasons. The long public debate over the status of women and the call for a constitutional amendment heightened expectations that changes would be made, and changes did follow.

Women at the grass-roots level joined together in examining problems believed by some to have been caused by gender discrimination and women's less-than-equal status. They reached out for new solutions. Inevitably women on both sides of the ERA question became involved in the political process and began learning how the levers of power are activated at different levels of government. The cumulative effect of all these forces stimulated a chain of elective, legislative, and judicial actions that made, and arguably continue to make, a positive contribution to substantive changes in women's status in this country.

• The American Nurses Association was one of the supporters of ERAmerica, the ratification campaign organization founded in Washington, D.C., in 1975 to sway support for the amendment in unratified states. Container 112, ERAmerica Records, MSS. Back to text
• Sandra R. Gregg and Bill Peterson, “End of ERA Battle,” Washington Post, July 1, 1982, B-1 and B-2. All newspaper microfilm is found in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room (N&CPR). Back to text
• Katy Butler and Glennda Chui, “Deadline Passes: 1000 Women at S.F. Vigil for the ERA,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 1982, p. 7. Back to text
• Quoted in Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983; HQ1090.E36 1983 GenColl), 145. Back to text
• Elisabeth Bumiller, “Schlafly's Gala Goodbye to ERA,” Washington Post, July 1, 1982, C-1. In her article “Victory is Bittersweet for Architect of Amendment's Downfall,” New York Timesreporter Lynn Rosellini reported that Phyllis Schlafly was committing her 50,000-member Eagle Forum to campaigns against sex education, against a nuclear freeze, and to rid school texts of feminist influence (July 1, 1982, p. A12). Back to text
• Introduced in the 92nd Congress as H.J.Res. 208. See U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 86 (1973) 1523. KF50.U5 LAW. Back to text
• Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (Boston: Twayne, 1982; HQ1420.W33 1982 GenColl), 110. Back to text
• Cynthia Harrison, “Prelude to Feminism: Women's Organizations, the Federal Government and the Rise of the Women's Movement, 1942 to 1968.” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1982 MicRR), 131. Published as On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945-1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988; HQ1236.5.U6 H37 1988 GenColl). Back to text
• Edith Mayo and Jerry K. Frye, “The ERA: Postmortem of a Failure in Political Communication,” in Rights of Passage: The Past and Future of the ERA, Joan Hoff-Wilson, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986; KF4758.R54 1986 LAW), 82. Back to text
• The President's Commission on the Status of Women was established under Executive Order 10980, 26 Fed. Reg. 12059, on December 14, 1961. The commission's purpose was to assess the progress of women in the United States and to make recommendations for “removing barriers to the full realization of women's basic rights.” An excellent collection of the commission's reports is held by the Library in the General Collections. See United States, President's Commission on the Status of Women, American Women: The Report of the President's Commission on the Status of Women and Other Publications of the Commission, edited by Margaret Mead and Frances Balgley Kaplan (New York: Scribner, 1965; HQ1420.A52 1965 GenColl). Five other presidential commissions or committees on women were created following the Kennedy administration: one each under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford and two under President Carter. For an account of the commissions, see Irene Tinker, ed., Women in Washington: Advocates for Public Policy (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1983; HQ1236.W638 1983 GenColl), 21-44. For commentaries on sex discrimination in education and employment in this period, see U.S. Congress, House Committee on Education and Labor, Special Subcommittee on Education, Discrimination against Women, Hearings, 91st Congress, 2nd sess. (Washington: GPO, 1970; KF27.E336 1970 LAW). This committee was headed by Rep. Edith Green, whose reminiscences of her long, activist career can be found in the Association of Former Members of Congress Oral History Collection on tape (MBRS), in transcript (MSS), and on microform (MicRR). Back to text
• Sound cassette (29 min.), “The ERA in America,” National Public Radio, Washington, D.C., 1981 (RYA 7666 MBRS). Back to text
• Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present. (New York: F. Watts, 1983; HQ1410.R9 1983 GenColl), 308. During the economic and social upheavals of the 1930s, many women were appointed to influential positions in the government, leading to impressive gains for women as policy-makers, but they were divided over the Equal Rights Amendment. For discussions of feminists under the Roosevelt Administration, see Susan Ware, Holding Their Own, and Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Political Activism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003; E185.97.B34 H36 2003 GenColl). Back to text
• Once the proposed amendment was before the Congress and the states, the Court cited this factor as a reason for noninterference. Gilbert Y. Steiner, Constitutional Inequality: The Political Fortunes of the Equal Rights Amendment (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1985; KF4758.S73 1985 LAW), 37-40. Back to text
• PCSW, American Women, 45. Back to text
• Support of abortion rights was on NOW's second plank. As Betty Friedan recalled, “the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion were and are the two gut issues of the women's movement essential to real security—and equality and human dignity—for all women, whether they work outside or inside the home.” Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement (New York: Random House, 1976; HQ1413.F75 A34 1976 Gen Coll), 84. Back to text
• A discharge petition is a device used to remove a proposed measure from a legislative committee to which it has been assigned. It has rarely been successful since half the total membership of the House or Senate, plus one, must approve. However, in this instance, the requisite signatures were obtained in five weeks. The papers of Emanuel Celler [catalog record] are held by the Library's Manuscript Division. The Association of Former Members of Congress Oral History Collection includes Representative Griffiths's reminiscences of the ERA (taped interview in MBRS [RYA 1064-1073] and transcript in MSS and on microform [microfiche 82/100 MicRR]). Back to text
• U.S. Congressional Record, 91st Congress, vol. 116, part 21 (August 10-14, 1970) 27999 (LAW; MRR Alc). Replying to Martha Griffiths's opening statement, Emanuel Celler opposed the motion to discharge the Judiciary Committee on HR 264: “What we are being asked to do is to vote on a constitutional amendment, the consequences of which are unexamined, its meaning nondefined, and its risks uncalculated . . . ever since Adam gave up his rib to make a woman, throughout the ages we have learned that physical, emotional, psychological and social differences exist and dare not be disregarded . . . . The adoption of a blunderbuss amendment would erase existing protective female legislation with the most disastrous consequences” (28000-28001). Back to text
• Senator Ervin delivered his speech against the ERA on the floor of the Senate on August 21, 1970. Note in particular his section on “Functional Differences between Men and Women,” U.S. Congressional Record, 91st Congress, vol. 116, part 22 (August 17-31, 1970), 29670 (LAW; MRR Alc). Ervin subsequently offered a copy of his speech in evidence at the Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting “On Friday, August 21, 1970, I made a speech in the Senate on the House-passed equal rights amendment, which I called a potential destructive and self-defeating blunderbuss. I borrowed that description from a Law Review article by Prof. Leo Kanowitz, professor of law at the University of New Mexico.” Testimony of Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., North Carolina, Equal Rights 1970: Hearings, 91st Cong., 2d sess., on S.J. Res. 61 and S.J. Res. 231 [before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary], (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970; KF26.J8 1970d LAW; MRR Alc), 1-28. Back to text
• Mathews and De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA, 36. The heavy use of speeches and writings by Sam Ervin in anti-ERA literature can be seen in the run of the Phyllis Schlafly Newsletter (Container 124, ERAmerica Records, MSS) and in Schlafly's book The Power of the Positive Woman (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House Publishers, 1977; HQ1426.S33 GenColl), reissued with an additional opening chapter as The Power of the Christian Woman (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing, 1981; HQ1426.S33 1981 GenColl). Back to text
• The AFL-CIO's chief lobbyist continued to speak of the “potentially destructive impact” of the ERA on women's protective legislation in the Senate hearings. Steiner, Constitutional Inequality, 21. See the relevant portion of the testimony by Myra K. Wolfgang, vice president, Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International, AFL-CIO, in behalf of Michigan Women's Commission in Equal Rights 1970: Hearings ... on S.J. Res. 61 and S.J. Res. 231, 30-45. Back to text
• The first eight months in the ERA ratification process moved quickly, with twenty-two states ratifying by Thanksgiving 1972. Eight more states ratified between January and March 22, 1973, but no more that year; three in 1974; one in 1975; and one in 1977, a total of thirty-five. Steiner, Constitutional Inequality, 55. Back to text
• Tape recording of National Press Club Luncheon, January 24, 1972 (RXA 1506, MBRS). Back to text
• Steiner, Constitutional Inequality, 57-58. Mathews and De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA, 51. Sam Ervin's opinions and style, as well as the attitudes and arguments of proponents and opponents, can be seen in the video Who Will Protect the Family?, a 1982 PBS feature on the unsuccessful struggle for ERA ratification in North Carolina (VBC 7099, MBRS). Back to text
• Steiner, Constitutional Inequality, 63, 65. Back to text
• A complete collection of IWY conference reports are found in the General Collections. See, for instance, Report of the World Conference of the International Women's Year, 19 June-2 July 1975 (New York: United Nations, 1976; HQ1106 1975 .R46 GenColl; also JX1977 .A2 E/CONF.66/34) and International Women's Year World Conference Documents Index (New York: UNIFO Publishers, 1975; HQ1106 1975 .I57 GenColl; MicRR). Back to text
• See United States, National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, To Form a More Perfect Union . . . Justice for American Women (Washington: GPO, 1976; HQ1426.U55 1975 GenColl). Back to text
• Rebecca Klatch,”Women against Feminism,” in A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America. Edited by William H. Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; E742.H57 1999 GenColl), 224-25, and the Phyllis Schlafly Report, May and August 1977 (Container 124, ERAmerica Records, MSS). Back to text
• Asking the question “What's Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?”, Phyllis Schlafly first attacked the ERA and “women libbers” in the Phyllis Schlafly Newsletter of February 1972 (Container 124, ERAmerica Records, folder labeled “STOP ERA and Phyllis Schlafly Report,” MSS). Following a spirited defense of traditional family values and American women's privileged position in American society, she alleged that the ERA would make women subject to the draft and that married women would lose their rights to support for themselves and their children from their husbands, as well as alimony in the case of divorce. The following year (May 3, 1973), Martha Griffiths attempted to answer some of Schlafly's arguments in a Vital History series point-counterpoint interview (RZA 760, no. 1, side A, MBRS). Schlafly's views were also discussed on the Larry King Show the day after the defeat of the ERA, July 1, 1982, when she declared that, despite laws requiring equitable treatment of working women, “the career most women want is marriage, home, husband, and children.” (RYA 5277, MBRS). Back to text
• The records of ERAmerica were acquired by the Library of Congress in 1982. Back to text
• Container 6, ERAmerica Records, MSS. Back to text
• As quoted by Lynn Rosellini, “Victory Is Bittersweet for Architect of Amendment's Downfall,” New York Times, July 1, 1982, A12. N&CPR. Back to text
• An example included in the ERAmerica records is Jill Newman, “The ERA—What It Would Really Do,” Women's Day, November 1979. See also Mary Schnack, “ERA: What It Will (Won't) Do for Working Women,” Working Woman's Magazine, November 1979. Many other articles both for and against passage of the ERA can be identified using periodical indexes (seePeriodical Indexes in General Collections section). Back to text
• The Roper Organization, The 1985 Virginia Slims American Women's Opinion Poll: A Study (New York: Roper, [1986?]; HQ1420.A17 1986 GenColl), 16. Back to text
• These included: The Comprehensive Health Manpower Act of 1971, prohibiting use of federal funds for health programs which discriminate on the basis of sex in admissions to professional schools; Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and activities; the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, extending coverage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (banning sex discrimination) to employees of federal, state, and local governments, educational institutions, and any business or union with more than fifteen employees; the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, prohibiting sex discrimination in housing and credit and requiring lenders to consider the combined incomes of husbands and wives in extending mortgage credit; the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, prohibiting discrimination based on sex or marital status in any credit transaction; the Small Business Act Amendments of 1974, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status in programs for loans and guarantees administered by the Small Business Administration; the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, prohibiting discrimination in the federal civil service on the basis of sex; the Equal Rights Amendment (Proposed); and the Extension of the Deadline for the Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Information on many of these statutes may be found in the personal papers of Hawaii Representative Patsy T. Mink, described more fully in the Manuscript Division section on Women Members of Congress. Back to text
• Mathews and De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA, viii, describe the suspect category test's application to sex discrimination. To use the Ginsburg Papers, which are restricted, it is necessary to apply for the donor's permission through the Manuscript Division. Back to text
• Sue Thomas and Clyde Wilcox, eds.,Women and Elective Office: Past, Present and Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998; HQ1391.U5 W63 1998 GenColl), 2. Back to text
• Ibid., 130-49. Back to text
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Handout A: Background Essay: The Nature of Representation in the U.S. Congress

Background Essay: The Nature of Representation in the U.S. Congress

Directions: Read the essay and answer the critical thinking questions at the end.

The Differences between the United States System and the Parliamentary System

In Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, fifty-five men worked together to develop a framework of government that would secure the people’s inalienable rights and promote their safety and happiness. While the Framers borrowed from the tradition of ancient republics, as well as from their history as Englishmen, they developed a system that was (and remains) significantly different from other types of representative systems.

Outside the U.S. today, the main system of representation in republics is the parliamentary system. While there are many varieties of parliamentary systems, they share certain important features. The legislature is usually called a parliament, rather than a congress. Sometimes members are elected from single member districts, similar to the method of electing members to the U.S. House of Representatives, and sometimes members are elected from the nation at large.

One of the most significant features of a parliamentary system is that, unlike the United States system, it lacks separation between the executive and the legislative branch. Under a parliamentary system, the chief executive, usually called a prime minister, is a member of the parliament, and is chosen by the parliament. The prime minister is often the leader of the majority party in parliament, which allows him or her to carry out a lawmaking program without much difficulty. Those who support a parliamentary system maintain that this gives the party that wins the parliamentary elections a mandate to legislate without the compromise and delay demanded by the U.S. system. Critics of the parliamentary system might quote Montesquieu, saying it allows a government to “enact tyrannical laws [and] execute them in a tyrannical manner.” They might also contend that legislatures can be too responsive to temporary majorities, changing laws constantly and undoing the good work that a previous parliament has done.

A second major difference is the role of political parties in the legislature. Under some parliamentary systems, members of the legislature are not elected by the people of a geographic district, but are elected by the nation as a whole, in proportion to the total votes received by the party across the nation. This method of organizing a parliamentary system is generally called a proportional representation system. Under such a system, people vote for a party, not an individual candidate. In these systems candidates strongly identify with their parties, and the members of the parties agree on most major issues, unlike in the American system. Some countries that use proportional representation today are Germany, Ireland, Israel, and Spain.

The Changing Nature of Representation over Time

One of the major changes in representation in the U.S. House and Senate has been the role of political parties. When the first elections for the U.S. Congress were held in 1788, there were no political parties. Parties emerged in the 1790s as Jefferson and Madison organized the opposition to Alexander Hamilton’s program of national government action to build a strong commercial republic. Two groups emerged in Congress—one supporting the Hamilton program, and the other opposing it. By the 1820s, suffrage expanded as state after state eased prerequisites for voting, and political parties became mass movements as we know them today. While political parties are important in the U.S. Congress, they have never been as critical as they are in a parliamentary system with proportional representation. Consequently, individual representatives in Congress tend to be more responsive to their local constituents rather than national party leaders and national majorities.

A second change over the last two hundred years has been the time of service in Congress. In the early years of the republic, few members of Congress served more than a few terms. In these early decades the republican spirit inspired by George Washington’s example emphasized a rotation of service without accumulation of power. Before the Civil War, those who were elected or appointed were typically already financially secure through their law practices, or had considerable business capital, or were from the landed gentry. Therefore, lengthy government service was likely to be an inconvenience to them. This began to change after the Civil War, and between 1860 and 1960, the average time in office doubled. Moreover, as transportation improved, it became easier for politicians to make their careers far away in Washington. In addition, as more power was transferred to the national government it became more prestigious to serve in Congress than in the state legislatures.

While the salary for members of Congress has increased over the years, so too has the amount of work required of them. From the 1790s until the 1940s, sessions of Congress generally only lasted six months of the year. With the dramatic increase in size of the federal government brought about by the New Deal of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s, sessions became much longer, typically running all year.

Challenges Facing Representatives: Trustee or Delegate?

One of the challenges facing members of Congress is the distinction between members as delegates and members as trustees. Traditionally, representatives in Congress have been seen as trustees of the people. Using this view, members are elected by the people because voters trust their judgment. Members are expected to know their constituents’ opinions, but then use their judgment and vote for policies that will best serve the interests of the voters in their district and the nation as a whole. In an understanding of members of Congress as delegates of the people, a member is expected to survey the opinions of his or her constituents, and vote as they expect him or her to vote, even if the member’s judgment might be different.

In some ways, both conceptions of representation are present in the Constitution, as House members are elected directly by the people every two years, forcing them to function as delegates who are attentive to the demands of the voters. Senators, representing their entire state and elected for a six-year term, are more likely to function as trustees. This feature was even more pronounced before the Seventeenth Amendment when Senators were elected by their state legislators, distancing them from the immediate pressures of voters.

Challenges Facing Representatives: Competing Interests

A further challenge facing members of Congress is the competing interests they face. Members of Congress are simultaneously expected to be representatives of the people, lawmakers, and members of a political party. As representatives of the people, they are expected to act for the benefit of both their particular district and for the nation as a whole. The conflict between these interests can perhaps be most clearly seen in so-called pork barrel spending bills. These bills call for federal money to be spent on specific projects in various congressional districts—money for a bridge few motorists will use in Alaska, or the Lawrence Welk birthplace restoration in North Dakota, for example. This kind of spending rarely serves the national interest. However, for the individual members of Congress, it very clearly represents the will of the district. Which interest should a member of Congress represent? In a Parliamentary system with proportional representation, the conflict between representing a district and the nation as a whole is eliminated, since the whole nation elects the members and party loyalty replaces the incentive to put one’s local district ahead of the good of the country.

A second set of competing interests involves lawmaking. As representatives, members of Congress are expected to support the interests of their constituents. However, passing laws frequently requires compromise among members, which necessitates sacrificing some constituent desires in hopes of achieving others. A district may wish to see lower taxes, but also want a military base kept open. A law keeping the base open will require spending by the Department of Defense, and might well prevent the possibility of a tax cut. As a trustee, such a member, while carefully considering the competing desires of constituents, would use independent judgment. If considered a delegate, that same member will have a harder time knowing which opinion to follow.

Furthermore, members of Congress must take into account the desires of their political party. Party membership provides critical resources for re-election, so a member cannot ignore his/her party’s wishes. However, members can find themselves in a difficult position if their party asks them to support policies that their constituents oppose. For example in 1991, both political parties realized the need to raise taxes in order to slow the growth of the national debt, and urged their members to support a tax increase. However, many members’ constituents were opposed to tax increases. Members of Congress had to decide if the interest of their party or their constituents should come first. In such a case, a trustee is free to act in the best interest of the nation, while a delegate can only act on the wishes of his/her constituents. Furthermore, in a parliamentary system using proportional representation, since members are elected not as individuals, but as party members, such a conflict is dramatically reduced.

The framers of the Constitution set up a system of representation for the United States, which although informed by the experiences of other republics, was different from them. More than two hundred years later, the U.S. system remains different from those of other republics. Although the work expected of Congress and the time of service for members have both increased, the fundamental tension between being a trustee for the interests of the people and being their delegate has not disappeared. Neither has the tension between the demands of the district and the interest of the nation, or the potential tension between the member and the member’s political party.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS

• In what ways does the U.S. system of electing the legislature preserve the principle of separation of powers? What trade-offs does this require compared to parliamentary systems where separation of powers is not as strong?
• What roles do political parties play in the U.S. system of representation? How is the role of political parties different in a parliamentary system?
• What are some of the different groups that a member of the U.S. Congress is expected to represent? In being a representative for different groups, what tension is created for the member?
• What does it mean when we say members of the U.S. Congress are acting as trustees rather than as delegates? What characteristics (or civic virtues) are expected when a member is acting as a trustee?

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Essay: Representative Government--What is it Good For

Representative Government—What is it Good For? (1857)

This essay was first published in The Westminster Review for October 1857 and was reprinted in Spencer’s Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative (London and New York, 1892, in three volumes. Shakespeare’s simile for adversity—

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head,

might fitly be used also as a simile for a disagreeable truth. Repulsive as is its aspect, the hard fact which dissipates a cherished illusion, is presently found to contain the germ of a more salutary belief. The experience of every one furnishes instances in which an opinion long shrunk from as seemingly at variance with all that is good, but finally accepted as irresistible, turns out to be fraught with benefits. It is thus with self-knowledge: much as we dislike to admit our defects, we find it better to know and guard against than to ignore them. It is thus with changes of creed: alarming as looks the reasoning by which superstitions are overthrown, the convictions to which it leads prove to be healthier ones than those they superseded. And it is thus with political enlightenment: men eventually see cause to thank those who pull to pieces their political air-castles, hateful as they once seemed. Moreover, not only is it always better to believe truth than error; but the repugnant-looking facts are ever found to be parts of something far better than the ideal which they dispelled. To the many illustrations of this which might be cited, we shall presently add another.

It is a conviction almost universally entertained here in England, that our method of making and administering laws possesses every virtue. Prince Albert’s unlucky saying that “Representative Government is on its trial,” is vehemently repudiated: we consider that the trial has long since ended in our favour on all the counts. Partly from ignorance, partly from the bias of education, partly from that patriotism which leads the men of each nation to pride themselves in their own institutions, we have an unhesitating belief in the entire superiority of our form of political organization. Yet unfriendly critics can point out vices that are manifestly inherent. And if we may believe the defenders of despotism, these vices are fatal to its efficiency.Now instead of denying or blinking these allegations, it would be wiser candidly to inquire whether they are true; and if true, what they imply. If, as most of us are so confident, government by representatives is better than any other, we can afford to listen patiently to all adverse remarks: believing that they are either invalid, or that if valid they do not essentially tell against its merits. If our political system is well founded, this crucial criticism will serve but to bring out its worth more clearly than ever; and to give us higher conceptions of its nature, its meaning, its purpose. Let us, then, banishing for the nonce all prepossessions, and taking up a thoroughly antagonistic point of view, set down without mitigation its many flaws, vices, and absurdities.

Is it not manifest that a ruling body made up of many individuals, who differ in character, education, and aims, who belong to classes having antagonistic ideas and feelings, and who are severally swayed by the special opinions of the districts deputing them, must be a cumbrous apparatus for the management of public affairs? When we devise a machine we take care that its parts are as few as possible; that they are adapted to their respective ends; that they are properly joined with one another; and that they work smoothly to their common purpose. Our political machine, however, is constructed upon directly opposite principles. Its parts are extremely numerous: multiplied, indeed, beyond all reason. They are not severally chosen as specially qualified for particular functions. No care is taken that they shall fit well together: on the contrary, our arrangements are such that they are certain not to fit. And that, as a consequence, they do not and cannot act in harmony, is a fact nightly demonstrated to all the world. In truth, had the problem been to find an appliance for the slow and bungling transaction of business, it could scarcely have been better solved. Immense hindrance results from the mere multiplicity of parts; a further immense hindrance results from their incongruity; yet another immense hindrance results from the frequency with which they are changed; while the greatest hindrance of all results from the want of subordination of the parts to their functions—from the fact that the personal welfare of the legislator is not bound up with the efficient performance of his political duty.These defects are inherent in the very nature of our institutions; and they cannot fail to produce disastrous mismanagement. If proofs be needed, they may be furnished in abundance, both from the current history of our central representative government, and from that of local ones, public and private. Let us, before going on to comtemplate these evils as displayed on a great scale in our legislature, glance at some of them in their simpler and smaller manifestations.We will not dwell on the comparative inefficiency of deputed administration in mercantile affairs. The untrustworthiness of directorial management might be afresh illustrated by the recent joint-stock-bank catastrophies: the recklessness and dishonesty of rulers whose interests are not one with those of the concern they control, being in these cases conspicuously displayed. Or we could enlarge on the same truth as exhibited in the doings of railway-boards: instancing the malversations proved against their members; the carelessness which has permitted Robson and Redpath frauds; the rashness perseveringly shown in making unprofitable branches and extensions. But facts of this kind are sufficiently familiar.Let us pass, then, to less notorious examples. Mechanics’ Institutions will supply our first. The theory of these is plausible enough. Artisans wanting knowledge, and benevolent middle-class people wishing to help them to it, constitute the raw material. By uniting their means they propose to obtain literary and other advantages, which else would be beyond their reach. And it is concluded that, being all interested in securing the proposed objects, and the governing body being chosen out of their number, the results cannot fail to be such as were intended. In most cases, however, the results are quite otherwise. Indifference, stupidity, party-spirit, and religious dissension, nearly always thwart the efforts of the promoters. It is thought good policy to select as president some local notability; probably not distinguished for wisdom, but whose donation or prestige more than counterbalances his defect in this respect. Vice-presidents are chosen with the same view: a clergyman or two; some neighbouring squires, if they can be had; an ex-mayor; several aldermen; half a dozen manufacturers and wealthy tradesmen; and a miscellaneous complement. While the committee, mostly elected more because of their position or popularity than their intelligence or fitness for cooperation, exhibit similar incongruities. Causes of dissension quickly arise. A book much wished for by the mass of the members, is tabooed, because ordering it would offend the clerical party in the institution. Regard for the prejudices of certain magistrates and squires who figure among the vice-presidents, forbids the engagement of an otherwise desirable and popular lecturer, whose political and religious opinions are somewhat extreme. The selection of newspapers and magazines for the reading-room, is a fruitful source of disputes. Should some, thinking it would be a great boon to those for whom the institution was established, propose to open the reading-room on Sundays, there arises a violent fight; ending, perhaps, in the secession of some of the defeated party. The question of amusements, again, furnishes a bone of contention. Shall the institution exist solely for instruction, or shall it add gratification? The refreshment-question, also, is apt to be raised, and to add to the other causes of difference. In short, the stupidity, prejudice, party-spirit, and squabbling, are such as eventually to drive away in disgust those who should have been the administrators; and to leave the control in the hands of a clique, who pursue some humdrum middle course, satisfying nobody. Instead of that prosperity which would probably have been achieved under the direction of one good man-of-business, whose welfare was bound up with its success, the institution loses its prestige, and dwindles away; ceases almost entirely to be what was intended—a mechanics’ institution; and becomes little more than a middle-class lounge, kept up not so much by the permanent adhesion of its members, as by the continual addition of new ones in place of the old ones constantly falling off. Meanwhile, the end originally proposed is fulfilled, so far as it gets fulfilled at all, by private enterprise. Cheap newspapers and cheap periodicals, provided by publishers having in view the pockets and tastes of the working-classes; coffee-shops and penny reading-rooms, set up by men whose aim is profit; are the instruments of the chief proportion of such culture as is going on.In higher-class institutions of the same order—in Literary Societies and Philosophical Societies, etc.—the like inefficiency of representative government is generally displayed. Quickly following the vigour of early enthusiasm, come class and sectarian differences, the final supremacy of a party, bad management, apathy. Subscribers complain they cannot get what they want; and one by one desert to private book-clubs or to Mudie.Turning from non-political to political institutions, we might, had we space, draw illustrations from the doings of the old poor-law authorities, or from those of modern boards of guardians; but omitting these and other such, we will, among local governments, confine ourselves to the reformed municipal corporations.If, leaving out of sight all other evidences, and forgetting that they are newly-organized bodies into which corruption has scarcely had time to creep, we were to judge of these municipal corporations by the town-improvements they have effected, we might pronounce them successful. But, even without insisting on the fact that such improvements are more due to the removal of obstructions, and to that same progressive spirit which has established railways and telegraphs, than to the positive virtues of these civic governments; it is to be remarked that the execution of numerous public works is by no means an adequate test. With power of raising funds limited only by a rebellion of ratepayers, it is easy in prosperous, increasing towns, to make a display of efficiency. The proper questions to be asked are: Do municipal elections end in the choice of the fittest men who are to be found? Does the resulting administrative body, perform well and economically the work which devolves on it? And does it show sound judgement in refraining from needless or improper work? To these questions the answers are by no means satisfactory.Town-councils are not conspicuous for either intelligence or high character. There are competent judges who think that, on the average, their members are inferior to those of the old corporations they superseded. As all the world knows, the elections turn mainly on political opinions. The first question respecting any candidate is, not whether he has great knowledge, judgement, or business-faculty—not whether he has any special aptitude for the duty to be discharged; but whether he is Whig or Tory. Even supposing his politics to be unobjectionable, his nomination still does not depend chiefly on his proved uprightness or capacity, but much more on his friendly relations with the dominant clique. A number of the town magnates, habitually meeting probably at the chief hotel, and there held together as much by the brotherhood of conviviality as by that of opinion, discuss the merits of all whose names are before the public, and decide which are the most suitable. This gin-and-water caucus it is which practically determines the choice of candidates; and, by consequence, the elections. Those who will succumb to leadership—those who will merge their private opinions in the policy of their party, of course have the preference. Men too independent for this—too far-seeing to join in the shibboleth of the hour, or too refined to mix with the “jolly good fellows” who thus rule the town, are shelved; notwithstanding that they are, above all others, fitted for office. Partly from this underhand influence, and partly from the consequent disgust which leads them to decline standing if asked, the best men are generally not in the governing body. It is notorious that in London the most respectable merchants will have nothing to do with the local government. And in New York, “the exertions of its better citizens are still exhausted in private accumulation, while the duties of administration are left to other hands.” It cannot then be asserted that in town-government, the representative system succeeds in bringing the ablest and most honourable men to the top.The efficient and economical discharge of duties is, of course, hindered by this inferiority of the deputies chosen; and it is further hindered by the persistent action of party and personal motives. Not whether he knows well how to handle a level, but whether he voted for the popular candidate at the last parliamentary election, is the question on which may, and sometimes does, hang the choice of a town-surveyor; and if sewers are ill laid out, it is a natural consequence. When, a new public edifice having been decided on, competition designs are advertised for; and when the designs, ostensibly anonymous but really identifiable, have been sent in; T. Square, Esq., who has an influential relative in the corporation, makes sure of succeeding, and is not disappointed: albeit his plans are not those which would have been chosen by any one of the judges, had the intended edifice been his own. Brown, who has for many years been on the town-council and is one of the dominant clique, has a son who is a doctor; and when, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament, an officer of health is to be appointed, Brown privately canvasses his fellow-councillors, and succeeds in persuading them to elect his son; though his son is by no means the fittest man the place can furnish. Similarly with the choice of tradesmen to execute work for the town. A public clock which is frequently getting out of order, and Board-of-Health water-closets which disgust those who have them (we state facts), sufficiently testify that stupidity, favouritism, or some sinister influence, is ever causing mismanagement. The choice of inferior representatives, and by them of inferior employés, joined with private interest and divided responsibility, inevitably prevent the discharge of duties from being satisfactory.Moreover, the extravagance which is now becoming a notorious vice of municipal bodies, is greatly increased by the practice of undertaking things which they ought not to undertake; and the incentive to do this is, in many cases, traceable to the representative origin of the body. The system of compounding with landlords for municipal rates, leads the lower class of occupiers into the erroneous belief that town-burdens do not fall in any degree on them; and they therefore approve of an expenditure which seemingly gives them gratis advantages while it creates employment. As they form the mass of the constituency, lavishness becomes a popular policy; and popularity-hunters vie with one another in bringing forward new and expensive projects. Here is a councillor who, having fears about his next election, proposes an extensive scheme for public gardens—a scheme which many who disapprove do not oppose, because they, too, bear in mind the next election. There is another councillor, who keeps a shop, and who raises and agitates the question of baths and wash-houses; very well knowing that his trade is not likely to suffer from such course. And so in other cases: the small direct interest which each member of the corporation has in economical administration, is antagonized by so many indirect interests of other kinds, that he is not likely to be a good guardian of the public purse.Thus, neither in respect of the deputies chosen, nor the efficient performance of their work, nor the avoidance of unfit work, can the governments of our towns be held satisfactory. And if in these recently-formed bodies the defects are so conspicuous, still more conspicuous are they where they have had time to grow to their full magnitude: witness the case of New York. According to The Times correspondent in that city, the New York people pay “over a million and half sterling, for which they have badly-paved streets, a police by no means as efficient as it should be, though much better than formerly, the greatest amount of dirt north of Italy, the poorest cab-system of any metropolis in the world, and only unsheltered wooden piers for the discharge of merchandise.”And now, having glanced at the general bearings of the question in these minor cases, let us take the major case of our central government; and, in connexion with it, pursue the inquiry more closely. Here the inherent faults of the representative system are much more clearly displayed. The greater multiplicity of rulers involves greater cumbrousness, greater confusion, greater delay. Differences of class, of aims, of prejudices, are both larger in number and wider in degree; and hence arise dissensions still more multiplied. The direct effect which each legislator is likely to experience from the working of any particular measure, is usually very small and remote; while the indirect influences which sway him are, in this above all other cases, numerous and strong; whence follows a marked tendency to neglect public welfare for private advantage. But let us set out from the beginning—with the constituencies.The representative theory assumes that if a number of citizens, deeply interested as they all are in good government, are endowed with political power, they will choose the wisest and best men for governors. Seeing how greatly they suffer from bad administration of public affairs, it is considered self-evident that they must have the will to select proper representatives; and it is taken for granted that average common sense gives the ability to select proper representatives. How does experience bear out these assumptions? Does it not to a great degree negative them?Several considerable classes of electors have little or no will in the matter. Not a few of those on the register pique themselves on taking no part in politics—claim credit for having the sense not to meddle with things which they say do not concern them. Many others there are whose interest in the choice of a member of Parliament is so slight, that they do not think it worth while to vote. A notable proportion, too, shopkeepers especially, care so little about the result, that their votes are determined by their wishes to please their chief patrons or to avoid offending them. In the minds of a yet larger class, small sums of money, or even ad libitum supplies of beer, outweigh any desires they have to use their political powers independently. Those who adequately recognize the importance of honestly exercising their judgements in the selection of legislators, and who give conscientious votes, form but a minority; and the election usually hangs less upon their wills than upon the illegitimate influences which sway the rest. Here, therefore, the theory fails.Then, again, as to intelligence. Even supposing that the mass of electors have a sufficiently decided will to choose the best rulers, what evidence have we of their ability? Is picking out the wisest man among them, a task within the range of their capacities? Let any one listen to the conversation of a farmer’s market-table, and then answer how much he finds of that wisdom which is required to discern wisdom in others. Or let him read the clap-trap speeches made from the hustings with a view of pleasing constituents, and then estimate the penetration of those who are to be thus pleased. Even among the higher order of electors he will meet with gross political ignorance—with notions that Acts of Parliament can do whatever it is thought well they should do; that the value of gold can be fixed by law; that distress can be cured by poor-laws; and so forth. If he descends a step, he will find in the still-prevalent ideas that machinery is injurious to the working-classes, and that extravagance is “good for trade,” indices of a yet smaller insight. And in the lower and larger class, formed by those who think that their personal interest in good government is not worth the trouble of voting, or is outbalanced by the loss of a customer, or is of less value than a bribe, he will perceive an almost hopeless stupidity. Without going the length of Mr. Carlyle, and defining the people as “twenty-seven millions, mostly fools,” he will confess that they are but sparely gifted with wisdom.That these should succeed in choosing the fittest governors, would be strange; and that they do not so succeed is manifest. Even as judged by the most common-sense tests, their selections are absurd, as we shall shortly see.It is a self-evident truth that we may most safely trust those whose interests are identical with our own; and that it is very dangerous to trust those whose interests are antagonistic to our own. All the legal securities we take in our transactions with one another, are so many recognitions of this truth. We are not satisfied with professions. If another’s position is such that he must be liable to motives at variance with the promises he makes, we take care, by introducing an artificial motive (the dread of legal penalties), to make it his interest to fulfil these promises. Down to the asking for a receipt, our daily business-habits testify that, in consequence of the prevailing selfishness, it is extremely imprudent to expect men to regard the claims of others equally with their own: all asseverations of good faith notwithstanding. Now it might have been thought that even the modicum of sense possessed by the majority of electors, would have led them to recognize this fact in the choice of their representatives. But they show a total disregard of it. While the theory of our Constitution, in conformity with this same fact, assumes that the three divisions composing the Legislature will severally pursue each its own ends—while our history shows that Monarch, Lords, and Commons, have all along more or less conspicuously done this; our electors manifest by their votes, the belief that their interests will be as well cared for by members of the titled class as by members of their own class. Though, in their determined opposition to the Reform-Bill, the aristocracy showed how greedy they were, not only of their legitimate power but of their illegitimate power—though, by the enactment and pertinacious maintenance of the Corn-Laws, they proved how little popular welfare weighed in the scale against their own profits—though they have ever displayed a watchful jealousy even of their smallest privileges, whether equitable or inequitable (as witness the recent complaint in the House of Lords, that the Mercantile Marine Act calls on lords of manors to show their titles before they can claim the wrecks thrown on the shores of their estates, which before they had always done by prescription)—though they have habitually pursued that self-seeking policy which men so placed were sure to pursue; yet constituencies have decided that members of the aristocracy may fitly be chosen as representatives of the people. Our present House of Commons contains 98 Irish peers and sons of English peers; 66 blood-relations of peers; and 67 connexions of peers by marriage; in all, 231 members whose interests, or sympathies, or both, are with the nobility rather than the commonalty. We are quite prepared to hear the doctrine implied in this criticism condemned by rose-water politicians as narrow and prejudiced. To such we simply reply that they and their friends fully recognize this doctrine when it suits them to do so. Why do they wish to prevent the town-constituencies from predominating over the county-ones; if they do not believe that each division of the community will consult its own welfare? Or what plea can there be for Lord John Russell’s proposal to represent minorities, unless it be the plea that those who have the opportunity will sacrifice the interests of others to their own? Or how shall we explain the anxiety of the upper class, to keep a tight rein on the growing power of the lower class, save from their consciousness that bona fide representatives of the lower class would be less regardful of their privileges than they are themselves? If there be any reason in the theory of the Constitution, then, while the members of the House of Peers should belong to the peerage, the members of the House of Commons should belong to the commonalty. Either the constitutional theory is sheer nonsense, or else the choice of lords as representatives of the people proves the folly of constituencies.But this folly by no means ends here; it works out other results quite as absurd. What should we think of a man giving his servants equal authority with himself over the affairs of his household? Suppose the shareholders in a railway-company were to elect, as members of their board of directors, the secretary, engineer, superintendent, traffic-manager, and others such. Should we not be astonished at their stupidity? Should we not prophesy that the private advantage of officials would frequently override the welfare of the company? Yet our parliamentary electors commit a blunder of just the same kind. For what are military and naval officers but servants of the nation; standing to it in a relation like that in which the officers of a railway-company stand to the company? Do they not perform public work? Do they not take public pay? And do not their interests differ from those of the public, as the interests of the employed from those of the employer? The impropriety of admitting executive agents of the State into the Legislature, has over and over again thrust itself into notice; and in minor cases has been prevented by sundry Acts of Parliament. Enumerating those disqualified for the House of Commons, Blackstone says:

No persons concerned in the management of any duties or taxes created since 1692, except the commissioners of the treasury, nor any of the officers following, viz, commissioners of prizes, transports, sick and wounded, wine licences, navy, and victualling; secretaries or receivers of prizes; comptrollers of the army accounts; agents for regiments; governors of plantations, and their deputies; officers of Minorca or Gibraltar; officers of the excise and customs; clerks and deputies in the several offices of the treasury, exchequer, navy, victualling, admiralty, pay of the army and navy, secretaries of state, salt, stamps, appeals, wine licences, hackney coaches, hawkers and pedlars, nor any persons that hold any new office under the crown created since 1705, are capable of being elected, or sitting as members.

In which list naval and military officers would doubtless have been included, had they not always been too powerful a body and too closely identified with the dominant classes. Glaring, however, as is the impolicy of appointing public servants to make the laws; and clearly as this impolicy is recognized in the above-specified exclusions from time to time enacted; the people at large seem totally oblivious of it. At the last general election they returned 9 naval officers, 46 military officers, and 51 retired military officers, who, in virtue of education, friendship, and esprit de corps, take the same views with their active comrades—in all 106: not including 64 officers of militia and yeomanry, whose sympathies and ambitions are in a considerable degree the same. If any one thinks that this large infusion of officialism is of no consequence, let him look in the division-lists. Let him inquire how much it has had to do with the maintenance of the purchase-system. Let him ask whether the almost insuperable obstacles to the promotion of the private soldier, have not been strengthened by it. Let him see what share it had in keeping up those worn-out practices, and forms, and mis-arrangements, which entailed the disasters of our late war. Let him consider whether the hushing-up of the Crimean Inquiry and the whitewashing of delinquents were not aided by it. Yet, though abundant experience thus confirms what common sense would beforehand have predicted; and though, notwithstanding the late disasters, exposures, and public outcry for army-reform, the influence of the military caste is so great that the reform has been staved-off; our constituencies are stupid enough to send to Parliament as many military officers as ever!Not even now have we reached the end of these impolitic selections. The general principle on which we have been insisting, and which is recognized by expounders of the constitution when they teach that the legislative and executive divisions of the Government should be distinct—this general principle is yet further sinned against; though not in so literal a manner. For though they do not take State-pay, and are not nominally Government-officers, yet, practically, lawyers are members of the executive organization. They form an important part of the apparatus for the administration of justice. By the working of this apparatus they make their profits; and their welfare depends on its being so worked as to bring them profits, rather than on its being so worked as to administer justice. Exactly as military officers have interests distinct from, and often antagonistic to, the efficiency of the army; so, barristers and solicitors have interests distinct from, and often antagonistic to, the cheap and prompt enforcement of the law. And that they are habitually swayed by these antagonistic interest, is notorious. So strong is the bias, as sometimes even to destroy the power of seeing from any other than the professional stand-point. We have ourselves heard a lawyer declaiming on the damage which the County-Courts-Act had done to the profession; and expecting his non-professional hearers to join him in condemning it there for! And if, as all the world knows, the legal conscience is not of the tenderest, is it wise to depute lawyers to frame the laws which they will be concerned in carrying out; and the carrying out of which must affect their private incomes? Are barristers, who constantly take fees for work which they do not perform, and attorneys, whose bills are so often exorbitant that a special office has been established for taxing them—are these, of all others, to be trusted in a position which would be trying even to the most disinterested? Nevertheless, the towns and counties of England have returned to the present House of Commons 98 lawyers—some 60 of them in actual practice, and the rest retired, but doubtless retaining those class-views acquired during their professional careers.These criticisms on the conduct of constituencies do not necessarily commit us to the assertion that none belonging to the official and aristocratic classes ought to be chosen. Though it would be safer to carry out, in these important cases, the general principle which, as above shown, Parliament has itself recognized and enforced in unimportant cases; yet we are not prepared to say that occasional exceptions might not be made, on good cause being shown. All we aim to show is the gross impolicy of selecting so large a proportion of representatives from classes having interests different from those of the general public. That in addition to more than a third taken from the dominant class, who already occupy one division of the Legislature, the House of Commons should contain nearly another third taken from the naval, military, and legal classes, whose policy, like that of the dominant class, is to maintain things as they are; we consider a decisive proof of electoral misjudgement. That out of the 654 members, of which the People’s House now consists, there should be but 250 who, as considered from a class point of view, are eligible, or tolerably eligible (for we include a considerable number who are more or less objectionable), is significant of anything but popular good sense. That into an assembly established to protect their interests, the commonalty of England should have sent one-third whose interests are the same as their own, and two-thirds whose interests are at variance with their own, proves a scarcely credible lack of wisdom; and seems an awkward fact for the representative theory.If the intelligence of the mass is thus not sufficient even to choose out men who by position and occupation are fit representatives, still less is it sufficient to choose men who are the fittest in character and capacity. To see who will be liable to the bias of private advantage is a very easy thing: to see who is wisest is a very difficult thing; and those who do not succeed in the first must necessarily fail in the last. The higher the wisdom the more incomprehensible does it become by ignorance. It is a manifest fact that the popular man or writer, is always one who is but little in advance of the mass, and consequently understandable by them: never the man who is far in advance of them and out of their sight. Appreciation of another implies some community of thought. “Only the man of worth can recognize worth in men. … The worthiest, if he appealed to universal suffrage, would have but a poor chance. … Alas! Jesus Christ, asking the Jews what he deserved—was not the answer, Death on the gallows!” And though men do not now-a-days stone the prophet, they, at any rate, ignore him. As Mr. Carlyle says in his vehement way:

If of ten men nine are recognisable as fools, which is a common calculation, how, … in the name of wonder, will you ever get a ballot-box to grind you out a wisdom from the votes of these ten men? … I tell you a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and his qualities, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end of time.

So that, even were electors content to choose the man proved by general evidence to be the most far-seeing, and refrained from testing him by the coincidence of his views with their own, there would be small chance of their hitting on the best. But judging on him, as they do, by asking him whether he thinks this or that crudity which they think, it is manifest that they will fix on one far removed from the best. Their deputy will be truly representative;—representative, that is, of the average stupidity.And now let us look at the assembly of representatives thus chosen. Already we have noted the unfit composition of this assembly as respects the interests of its members; and we have just seen what the representative theory itself implies as to their intelligence. Let us now, however, consider them more nearly under this last head.And first, what is the work they undertake? Observe, we do not say the work which they ought to do, but the work which they propose to do, and try to do. This comprehends the regulation of nearly all actions going on throughout society. Besides devising measures to prevent the aggression of citizens on one another, and to secure each the quiet possession of his own; and besides assuming the further function, also needful in the present state of mankind, of defending the nation as a whole against invaders; they unhesitatingly take on themselves to provide for countless wants, to cure countless ills, to oversee countless affairs. Out of the many beliefs men have held respecting God, Creation, the Future, etc., they presume to decide which are true; and authorize an army of priests to perpetually repeat them to the people. The distress resulting from improvidence, they undertake to remove: they settle the minimum which each ratepayer shall give in charity, and how the proceeds shall be administered. Judging that emigration will not naturally go on fast enough, they provide means for carrying off some of the labouring classes to the colonies. Certain that social necessities will not cause a sufficiently rapid spread of knowledge, and confident that they know what knowledge is most required, they use public money for the building of schools and paying of teachers; they print and publish State-school-books; they employ inspectors to see that their standard of education is conformed to. Playing the part of doctor, they insist that every one shall use their specific, and escape the danger of small-pox by submitting to an attack of cow-pox. Playing the part of moralist, they decide which dramas are fit to be acted and which are not. Playing the part of artist, they prompt the setting up of drawing-schools, provide masters and models; and, at Marlborough House, enact what shall be considered good taste and what bad. Through their lieutenants, the corporations of towns, they furnish appliances for the washing of peoples’ skins and clothes; they, in some cases, manufacture gas and put down water-pipes; they lay out sewers and cover over cesspools; they establish public libraries and make public gardens. Moreover, they determine how houses shall be built, and what is a safe construction for a ship; they take measures for the security of railway-travelling; they fix the hour after which public-houses may not be open; regulate the prices chargeable by vehicles plying in the London streets; they inspect lodging-houses; they arrange for burial-grounds; they fix the hours of factory hands. If some social process does not seem to them to be going on fast enough, they stimulate it; where the growth is not in the direction which they think most desirable, they alter it; and so they seek to realize some undefined ideal community.Such being the task undertaken, what, let us ask, are the qualifications for discharging it? Supposing it possible to achieve all this, what must be the knowledge and capacities of those who shall achieve it? Successfully to prescribe for society, it is needful to know the structure of society—the principles on which it is organized—the natural laws of its progress. If there be not a true understanding of what constitutes social development, there must necessarily be grave mistakes made in checking these changes and fostering those. If there be lack of insight respecting the mutual dependence of the many functions which, taken together, make up the national life, unforeseen disasters will ensue from not perceiving how an interference with one will affect the rest. That is to say, there must be a due acquaintance with the social science—the science involving all others; the science standing above all others in complexity.And now, how far do our legislators possess this qualification? Do they in any moderate degree display it? Do they make even a distant approximation to it? That many of them are very good classical scholars is beyond doubt: not a few have written first-rate Latin verses, and can enjoy a Greek play; but there is no obvious relation between a memory well stocked with the words spoken two thousand years ago, and an understanding disciplined to deal with modern society. That in learning the languages of the past they have learnt some of its history, is true; but considering that this history is mainly a narrative of battles and plots and negotiations and treacheries, it does not throw much light on social philosophy—not even the simplest principles of political economy have ever been gathered from it. We do not question, either, that a moderate percentage of members of Parliament are fair mathematicians; and that mathematical discipline is valuable. As, however, political problems are not susceptible of mathematical analysis, their studies in this direction cannot much aid them in legislation. To the large body of military officers who sit as representatives, we would not for a moment deny a competent knowledge of fortification, of strategy, of regimental discipline; but we do not see that these throw much light on the causes and cure of national evils. Indeed, considering that war fosters anti-social sentiments, and that the government of soldiers is necessarily despotic, military education and habits are more likely to unfit than to fit men for regulating the doings of a free people. Extensive acquaintance with the laws, may doubtless be claimed by the many barristers chosen by our constituencies; and this seems a kind of information having some relation to the work to be done. Unless, however, this information is more than technical—unless it is accompanied by knowledge of the ramified consequences which laws have produced in times past and are producing now (which nobody will assert), it cannot give much insight into Social Science. A familiarity with laws is no more a preparation for rational legislation, than would a familiarity with all the nostrums men have ever used be a preparation for the rational practice of medicine. Nowhere, then, in our representative body, do we find appropriate culture. Here is a clever novelist, and there a successful maker of railways; this member has acquired a large fortune in trade, and that member is noted as an agricultural improver; but none of these achievements imply fitness for controlling and adjusting social processes. Among the many who have passed through the public school and university curriculum —including though they may a few Oxford double-firsts and one or two Cambridge wranglers—there are none who have received the discipline required by the true legislator. None have that competent knowledge of Science in general, culminating in the Science of Life, which can alone form a basis for the Science of Society. For it is one of those open secrets which seem the more secret because they are so open, that all phenomena displayed by a nation are phenomena of Life, and are dependent on the laws of Life. There is no growth, decay, evil, improvement, or change of any kind, going on the body politic, but what has its cause in the actions of human beings; and there are no actions of human beings but what conform to the laws of Life in general, and cannot be truly understood until those laws are understood.See, then, the immense incongruity between the end and the means. See on the one hand the countless difficulties of the task; and on the other hand the almost total unpreparedness of those who undertake it. Need we wonder that legislation is ever breaking down? Is it not natural that complaint, amendment, and repeal, should form the staple business of every session? Is there anything more than might be expected in the absurd Jack-Cadeisms which disgrace the debates? Even without setting up so high a standard of qualification as that above specified, the unfitness of most representatives for their duties is abundantly manifest. You need but glance over the miscellaneous list of noblemen, baronets, squires, merchants, barristers, engineers, soldiers, sailors, railway-directors, etc., and then ask what training their previous lives have given them for the intricate business of legislation, to see at once how extreme must be the incompetence. One would think that the whole system had been framed on the sayings of some political Dogberry: “The art of healing is difficult; the art of government easy. The understanding of arithmetic comes by study; while the understanding of society comes by instinct. Watchmaking requires a long apprenticeship; but there needs none for the making of institutions. To manage a shop properly requires teaching; but the management of a people may be undertaken without preparation.” Were we to be visited by some wiser Gulliver, or, as in the “Micromegas” of Voltaire, by some inhabitant of another sphere, his account of our political institutions might run somewhat as follows:”I found that the English were governed by an assembly of men, said to empbody the ‘collective wisdom.’ This assembly, joined with some other authorities which seem practically subordinate to it, has unlimited power. I was much perplexed by this. With us it is customary to define the office of any appointed body; and, above all things, to see that it does not defeat the ends for which it was appointed. But both the theory and the practice of this English Government imply that it may do whatever it pleases. Though, by their current maxims and usages, the English recognize the right of property as sacred—though the infraction of it is considered by them one of the gravest crimes—though the laws profess to be so jealous of it as to punish even the stealing of a turnip; yet their legislators suspend it at will. They take the money of citizens for any project which they choose to undertake; though such project was not in the least contemplated by those who gave them authority—nay, though the greater part of the citizens from whom the money is taken had no share in giving them such authority. Each citizen can hold property only so long as the 654 deputies do not want it. It seemed to me that an exploded doctrine once current among them of ‘the divine right of kings,’ had simply been changed into the divine right of Parliaments.”I was at first inclined to think that the constitution of things on the Earth was totally different from what it is with us; for the current political philosophy here, implies that acts are not right or wrong in themselves but are made one or the other by the votes of law-makers. In our world it is considered manifest that if a number of beings live together, there must, in virtue of their natures, be certain primary conditions on which only they can work satisfactorily in concert; and we infer that the conduct which breaks through these conditions is bad. In the English legislature, however, a proposal to regulate conduct by any such abstract standard would be held absurd. I asked one of their members of Parliament whether a majority of the House could legitimize murder. He said, No. I asked him whether it could sanctify robbery. He thought not. But I could not make him see that if murder and robbery are intrinsically wrong, and not to be made right by decisions of statesmen, that similarly all actions must be either right or wrong, apart from the authority of the law; and that if the right and wrong of the law are not in harmony with this intrinsic right and wrong, the law itself is criminal. Some, indeed, among the English think as we do. One of their remarkable men ( not included in their Assembly of Notables) writes thus:

To ascertain better and better what the will of the Eternal was and is with us, what the laws of the Eternal are, all Parliaments, Ecumenic Councils, Congresses, and other Collective Wisdoms, have had this for their object. … Nevertheless, in the inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone idly abroad; and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we “vote” this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. … Practically, men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting. … It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become such, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or changeable by voting!

“But I find that, contemptuously disregarding all such protests, the English legislators persevere in their hyperatheistic notion, that an Act of Parliament duly enforced by State-officers, will work out any object: no question being put whether Laws of Nature permit. I forgot to ask whether they considered that different kinds of food could be made wholesome or unwholesome by State-decree.”One thing that struck me was the curious way in which the members of their House of Commons judge of one another’s capacities. Many who expressed opinions of the crudest kinds, or trivial platitudes, or worn-out superstitions, were civilly treated. Follies as great as that but a few years since uttered by one of their ministers, who said that free-trade was contrary to common sense, were received in silence. But I was present when one of their number, who, as I thought, was speaking very rationally, made a mistake in his pronunciation—made what they call a wrong quantity; and immediately there arose a shout of derision. It seemed quite tolerable that a member should know little or nothing about the business he was there to transact; but quite in -tolerable that he should be ignorant of a point of no moment.”The English pique themselves on being especially practical—have a great contempt for theorizers, and profess to be guided exclusively by facts. Before making or altering a law it is the custom to appoint a committee of inquiry, who send for men able to give information concerning the matter in hand, and ask them some thousands of questions. These questions, and the answers given to them, are printed in large books, and distributed among the members of the Houses of Parliament; and I was told that they spent about £100,000 a year in thus collecting and distributing evidence. Nevertheless, it appeared to me that the ministers and representatives of the English people, pertinaciously adhere to theories long ago disproved by the most conspicuous facts. They pay great respect to petty details of evidence, but of large truths they are quite regardless. Thus, the experience of age after age has shown that their state-management is almost invariably bad. The national estates are so miserably administered as often to bring loss instead of gain. The government ship-yards are uniformly extravagant and inefficient. The judicial system works so ill that most citizens will submit to serious losses rather than run risks of being ruined by law-suits. Countless facts prove the Government to be the worst owner, the worst manufacturer, the worst trader: in fact, the worst manager, be the thing managed what it may. But though the evidence of this is abundant and conclusive—though, during a recent war, the bunglings of officials were as glaring and multitudinous as ever; yet the belief that any proposed duties will be satisfactorily discharged by a new public department appointed to them, seems not a whit the weaker. Legislators, thinking themselves practical, cling to the plausible theory of an officially-regulated society, spite of overwhelming evidence that official regulation perpetually fails.”Nay, indeed, the belief seems to gain strength among these fact-loving English statesmen, notwithstanding the facts are against it. Proposals for State-control over this and the other, have been of late more rife than ever. And, most remarkable of all, their representative assembly lately listened with grave faces to the assertion, made by one of their high authorities, that State-workshops are more economical than private workshops. Their prime minister, in defending a recently-established arms-factory, actually told them that, at one of their arsenals, certain missiles of war were manufactured not only better than by the trade, but at about one-third the price; and added, ‘ so it would be in all things. ‘ The English being a trading people, who must be tolerably familiar with the usual rates of profit among manufacturers, and the margin for possible economy, the fact that they should have got for their chief representative one so utterly in the dark on these matters, struck me as a wonderful result of the representative system.”I did not inquire much further, for it was manifest that if these were really their wisest men, the English were not a wise people.”

Representative government, then, cannot be called a success, in so far as the choice of men is concerned. Those it puts into power are the fittest neither in respect of their interests, nor their culture, nor their wisdom. And as a consequence, partly of this and partly of its complex and cumbrous nature, representative government is anything but efficient for administrative purposes. In these respects it is manifestly inferior to monarchical government. This has the advantage of simplicity, which is always conducive to efficiency. And it has the further advantage that the power is in the hands of one who is directly concerned in the good management of national affairs; seeing that the continued maintenance of his power—nay, often his very life—depends on this. For his own sake a monarch chooses the wisest councillors he can find, regardless of class-distinctions. His interest in getting the best help is too great to allow of prejudices standing between him and a far-seeing man. We see this abundantly illustrated. Did not the kings of France take Richelieu, and Mazarin, and Turgot to assist them? Had not Henry VIII his Wolsey, Elizabeth her Burleigh, James his Bacon, Cromwell his Milton? And were not these men of greater calibre than those who hold the reins under out constitutional régime? So strong is the motive of an autocrat to make use of ability wherever it exists, that he will, like Louis XI, take even his barber into council if he finds him a clever fellow. Besides choosing them for ministers and advisers, he seeks out the most competent men for other offices. Napoleon raised his marshals from the ranks; and owed his military success in great part to the readiness with which he saw and availed himself of merit wherever found. We have recently seen in Russia how prompt was the recognition and promotion of engineering talent in the case of Todleben; and know to our cost how greatly the prolonged defence of Sebastopol was due to this. In the marked contrast to these cases supplied by our own army, in which genius is ignored while muffs are honoured—in which wealth and caste make the advance of plebeian merit next to impossible—in which jealousies between Queen’s service and Company’s service render the best generalship almost unavailable; we see that the representative system fails in the officering of its executive, as much as in the officering of its legislative. A striking antithesis between the actions of the two forms of government, is presented in the evidence given before the Sebastopol Committee respecting the supply of huts to the Crimean army—evidence showing that while, in his negotiations with the English Government, the contractor for the huts met with nothing but vacillation, delay, and official rudeness, the conduct of the French Government was marked by promptitude, decision, sound judgement, and great civility. Everything goes to show that for administrative efficiency, autocratic power is the best. If your aim is a well-organized army—if you want to have sanitary departments, and educational departments, and charity-departments, managed in a business-like way—if you would have society actively regulated by staffs of State-agents; then by all means choose that system of complete centralization which we call despotism.

Probably, notwithstanding the hints dropped at the outset, most have read the foregoing pages with surprise. Very likely some have referred to the cover of the Review, to see whether they have not, in mistake, taken up some other than the ” Westiminster “; while some may, perhaps, have accompanied their perusal by a running commentary of epithets condemnatory of our seeming change of principles. Let them not be alarmed. We have not in the least swerved from the confession of faith set forth in our prospectus. On the contrary, as we shall shortly show, our adhesion to free institutions is as strong as ever—nay, has even gained strength through this apparently antagonistic criticism.The subordination of a nation to a man, is not a wholesome but a vicious state of things: needful, indeed, for a vicious humanity; but to be outgrown as fast as may be. The instinct which makes it possible is anything but a noble one. Call it “hero-worship,” and it looks respectable. Call it what it is—a blind awe and fear of power, no matter of what kind, but more especially of the brutal kind; and it is by no means to be admired. Watch it in early ages deifying the cannibal chief; singing the praises of the successful thief; commemorating the most blood-thirsty warriors; speaking with reverence of those who had shown undying revenge; and erecting altars to such as carried furthest the vices which disgrace humanity; and the illusion disappears. Read how, where it was strongest, it immolated crowds of victims at the tomb of the dead king—how, at the altars raised to its heroes, it habitually sacrificed prisoners and children to satisfy their traditional appetite for human flesh—how it produced that fealty of subjects to rulers which made possible endless aggressions, battles, massacres, and horrors innumerable—how it has mercilessly slain those who would not lick the dust before its idols;—read all this, and the feeling no longer seems so worthy an one. See it in later days idealizing the worst as well as the best monarchs; receiving assassins with acclamation; hurrahing before successful treachery; rushing to applaud the processions and shows and ceremonies wherewith effete power stengthens itself; and it looks far from laudable. Autocracy presupposes inferiority of nature on the part of both ruler and subject: on the one side a cold, unsympathetic sacrificing of other’s wills to self-will; on the other side a mean, cowardly abandonment of the claims of manhood. Our very language bears testimony to this. Do not dignity, independence, and other words of approbation, imply a nature at variance with this relation? Are not tyrannical, arbitrary, despotic, epithets of reproach? and are not truckling, fawning, cringing, epithets of contempt? Is not slavish a condemnatory term? Does not servile, that is, serf-like, imply littleness, meanness? And has not the word villain, which originally meant bondsman, come to signify everything which is hateful? That language should thus inadvertently embody dislike for those who most display the instinct of subordination, is alone sufficient proof that this instinct is associated with evil dispositions. It has been the parent of countless crimes. It is answerable for the torturing and murder of the noble-minded who would not submit—for the horrors of Bastiles and Siberias. It has ever been the represser of knowledge, of free thought, of true progress. In all times it has fostered the vices of courts, and made those vices fashionable throughout nations. With a George IV on the throne, it weekly tells ten thousand lies, in the shape of prayers for a “most religious and gracious king.” Whether you read the annals of the far past—whether you look at the various uncivilized races dispersed over the globe—or whether you contrast the existing nations of Europe; you equally find that submission to authority decreases as morality and intelligence increase. From ancient warrior-worship down to modern flunkeyism, the sentiment has ever been strongest where human nature has been vilest.This relation between barbarism and loyalty, is one of those beneficent arrangements which “the servant and interpreter of nature,” everywhere meets with. The sub-ordination of many to one, is a form of society needful for men so long as their natures are savage, or anti-social; and that it may be maintained, it is needful that they should have an extreme awe of the one. Just in proportion as their conduct to one another is such as to breed perpetual antagonism, endangering social union: just in that proportion must there be a reverence for the strong, determined, cruel ruler, who alone can repress their explosive natures and keep them from mutual destruction. Among such a people any form of free government is an impossibility. There must be a despotism as stern as the people are savage; and, that such a despotism may exist, there must be a superstitious worship of the despot. But as fast as the discipline of social life modifies character—as fast as, through lack of use, the old predatory instincts dwindle—as fast as the sympathetic feelings grow; so fast does this hard rule become less necessary; so fast does the authority of the ruler diminish; so fast does the awe of him disappear. From being originally god, or demi-god, he comes at length to be a very ordinary person; liable to be criticized, ridiculed, caricatured. Various influences conspire to this result. Accumulating knowledge gradually divests the ruler of those supernatural attributes at first ascribed to him. The conceptions which developing science gives of the grandeur of creation, as well as the constancy and irresistibleness of its Omnipresent Cause, make all feel the comparative littleness of human power; and the awe once felt for the great man is, by degrees, transferred to that Universe of which the great man is seen to form but an insignificant part. Increase of population, with its average percentage of great men, involves the comparative frequency of such; and the more numerous they are the less respect can be given to each: they dwarf one another. As society becomes settled and organized, its welfare and progress become more and more independent of any one. In a primitive society the death of a chief may alter the whole course of things; but in a society like ours, things go on much as before, no matter who dies. Thus, many influences combine to diminish autocratic power, whether political or other. It is true, not only in the sense in which Tennyson writes it, but also in a higher sense, that:

… the individual withers, and world is more and more.

Further, it is to be noted that while the unlimited authority of the greatest man ceases to be needful; and while the superstitious awe which upholds that unlimited authority decreases; it at the same time becomes impossible to get the greatest man to the top. In a rude social state, where might is right, where war is the business of life, where the qualities required in the ruler, alike for controlling his subjects and defeating his enemies, are bodily strength, courage, cunning, will, it is easy to pick out the best; or rather—he picks himself out. The qualities which make him the fittest governor for the barbarians around him, are the qualities by which he gets the mastery over them. But in an advanced, complex, and comparatively peaceful state like ours, these are not the qualities needed; and even were they needed, the firmly-organized arrangements of society do not allow the possessor of them to break through to the top. For the rule of a settled, civilized community, the characteristics required are—not a love of conquest but a desire for the general happiness; not undying hate of enemies but a calm dispassionate equity; not artful manoeuvring but philosophic insight. How is the man most endowed with these to be found? In no country is he ordinarily born heir to the throne; and that he can be chosen out of thirty millions of people none will be foolish enough to think. The incapacity for recognizing the greatest worth, we have already seen illustrated in our parliamentary elections. And if the few thousands forming a constituency cannot pick out from among themselves their wisest man, still less can the millions forming a nation do it. Just as fast as society becomes populous, complex, peaceful; so fast does the political supremacy of the best become impossible.But even were the relation of autocrat and slave a morally wholesome one; and even were it possible to find the fittest man to be autocrat; we should still contend that such a form of government is bad. We should not contend this simply on the ground that self-government is a valuable educator. But we should take the ground that no human being, however wise and good, is fit to be sole ruler over the doings of an involved society; and that, with the best intentions, a benevolent despot is very likely to produce the most terrible mischiefs which would else have been impossible. We will take the case of all others the most favourable to those who would give supreme power to the best. We will instance Mr. Carlyle’s model hero—Cromwell. Doubtless there was much in the manners of the times when Puritanism arose, to justify its disgust. Doubtless the vices and follies bequeathed by effete Catholicism still struggling for existence, were bad enough to create a reactionary asceticism. It is in the order of Nature, however, that men’s habits and pleasures are not to be changed suddenly. For any permanent effect to be produced it must be produced slowly. Better tastes, higher aspirations, must be developed; not enforced from without. Disaster is sure to result from the withdrawal of lower gratifications before higher ones have taken their places; for gratification of some kind is a condition to healthful existence. Whatever ascetic morality, or rather immorality, may say, pleasures and pains are the incentives and restraints by which Nature keeps her progeny from destruction. No contemptuous title of “pig-philosophy” will alter the eternal fact that Misery is the highway to Death; while Happiness is added Life and the giver of Life. But indignant Puritanism could not see this truth; and with the extravagance of fanaticism sought to abolish pleasure in general. Getting into power, it put down not only questionable amusements but all others along with them. And for these repressions Cromwell, either as enacting, maintaining, or allowing them, was responsible. What, now, was the result of this attempt to dragoon men into virtue? What came when the strong man who thought he was thus “helping God to mend all,” died? A dreadful reaction brought in one of the most degraded periods of our history. Into the newly-garnished house entered “seven other spirits more wicked than the first”. For generations the English character was lowered. Vice was gloried in, virtue was ridiculed; dramatists made marriage the stock-subject of laughter; profaneness and obscenity flourished; high aspirations ceased; the whole age was corrupt. Not until George III reigned was there a better standard of living. And for this century of demoralization we have, in great measure, to thank Cromwell. Is it, then, so clear that the domination of one man, righteous though he may be, is a blessing?Lastly, it is to be remarked that when the political supremacy of the greatest no longer exists in an overt form, it still continues in a disguised and more beneficent form. For is it not manifest that in these latter days the wise man eventually gets his edicts enforced by others, if not by himself. Adam Smith, from his chimney-corner, dictated greater changes than prime ministers do. A General Thompson who forges the weapons with which the Anti-Corn-Law battle is fought—a Cobden and a Bright who add to and wield them, forward civilization much more than those who hold sceptres. Repugnant as the fact may be to statesmen, it is yet one not to be gainsayed. Whoever, to the great effects already produced by Free-trade, joins the far greater effects which will be hereafter produced, must see that the revolution initiated by these men is far wider than has been initiated by any potentate of modern times. As Mr. Carlyle very well knows, those who elaborate new truths and teach them to their fellows, are now-a-days the real rulers—”the unacknowledged legislators”—the virtual kings. Thus we have the good which great men can do us, while we are saved from the evil.No; the old régime has passed away. For ourselves at least, the subordination of the many to the one has become alike needless, repugnant, and impossible. Good for its time, bad for ours, the ancient “hero-worship” is dead; and happily no declamations, be they never so eloquent, can revive it.

Here seem to be two irreconcileable positions—two mutually-destructive arguments. First, a condemnatory criticism on representative government, and then a still more condemnatory criticism on monarchical government: each apparently abolishing the other.Nevertheless, the paradox is easily explicable. It is quite possible to say all that we have said concerning the defects of representative government, and still to hold that it is the best form of government. Nay, it is quite possible to derive a more profound conviction of its superiority from the very evidence which appears so unfavourable to it.For nothing that we have urged tells against its goodness as a means of securing justice between man and man, or class and class. Abundant evidence shows that the maintenance of equitable relations among its subjects, which forms the essential business of a ruling power, is surest when the ruling power is of popular origin; notwithstanding the defects to which such a ruling power is liable. For discharging the true function of a government, representative government is shown to be the best, alike by its origin, its theory, and its results. Let us glance at the facts under these three heads.Alike in Spain, in England, and in France, popular power embodied itself as a check upon kingly tyranny, that is—kingly injustice. The earliest accounts we have of the Spanish Cortes, say that it was their office to advise the King; and to follow their advice was his duty. They petitioned, remonstrated, complained of grievances, and supplicated for redress. The King, having acceded to their requirements, swore to observe them; and it was agreed that any act of his incontravention of the statutes thus established, should be “respected as the King’s commands, but not executed, as contrary to the rights and privileges of the subject.” In all which we see very clearly that the special aim of the Cortes was to get rectified the injustices committed by the King or others; that the King was in the habit of breaking the promises of amendment he made to them; and that they had to adopt measures to enforce the fulfilment of his promises. In England we trace analogous facts. The Barons who bridled the tyranny of King John, though not formally appointed, were virtually impromptu representatives of the nation; and in their demand that justice should neither be sold, denied, nor delayed, we discern the social evils which led to this taking of the power into their own hands. In early times the knights and burgesses, summoned by the King with the view of getting supplies from them, had for their especial business to obtain from him the redress of grievances, that is—the execution of justice; and in their eventually-obtained and occasionally-exercised power of withholding supplies until justice was granted, we see both the need there was for remedying the iniquities of autocracy, and the adaptation of representative institutions to this end. And the further development of popular power latterly obtained, originated from the demand for fairer laws—for less class-privilege, class-exemption, class-injustice: a fact which the speeches of the Reform-Bill agitation abundantly prove. In France, again, representative government grew into a definite form under the stimulus of unbearable oppression. When the accumulated extortion of centuries had reduced the mass of the people to misery—when millions of haggard faces were seen throughout the land—when starving complainants were hanged on “a gallows forty feet high”—when the exactions and cruelties of good-for-nothing kings and vampire-nobles had brought the nation to the eye of dissolution; there came, as a remedy, an assembly of men elected by the people.That, considered a priori, representative government is fitted for establishing just laws, is implied by the unanimity with which Spanish, English, and French availed themselves of it to this end; as well as by the endeavours latterly made by other European nations to do the like. The rationale of the matter is simple enough. Manifestly, on the average of cases, a man will protect his own interests more solicitously than others will protect them for him. Manifestly, where regulations have to be made affecting the interests of several men, they are most likely to be equitably made when all those concerned are present, and have equal shares in the making of them. And manifestly, where those concerned are so numerous and so dispersed, that it is physically impossible for them all to take part in the framing of such regulations, the next best thing is for the citizens in each locality to appoint one of their number to speak for them, to care for their claims, to be their representative. The general principle is that the welfare of all will be most secure when each looks after his own welfare; and the principle is carried out as directly as the circumstances permit. It is inferable, alike from human nature and from history, that a single man cannot be trusted with the interests of a nation of men, where his real or imagined interests clash with theirs. It is similarly inferable from human nature and from history, that no small section of a nation, as the nobles, can be expected to consult the welfare of the people at large in preference to their own. And it is further inferable that only in a general diffusion of political power, is there a safeguard for the general welfare. This has all along been the conviction under which representative government has been advocated, maintained, and extended. From the early writs summoning the members of the House of Commons—writs which declared it to be a most equitable rule that the laws which concerned all should be approved of by all—down to the reasons now urged by the unenfranchised for a participation in political power, this is the implied theory. Observe, nothing is said about wisdom or administrative ability. From the beginning, the end in view has been justice. Whether we consider the question in the abstract, or whether we examine the opinions men have entertained upon it from old times down to the present day, we equally see the theory of representative government to be, that it is the best means of insuring equitable social relations.And do not the results justify the theory? Did not our early Parliaments, after long-continued struggles, succeed in curbing the licentious exercise of royal power, and in establishing the rights of the subject? Are not the comparative security and justice enjoyed under our form of government, indicated by the envy with which other nations regard it? Was not the election of the French Constituent Assembly followed by the sweeping away of the grievous burdens that weighed down the people—by the abolition of tithes, seignorial dues, gabelle, excessive preservation of game—by the withdrawal of numerous feudal privileges and immunities—by the manumission of the slaves in the French colonies? And has not that extension of our own electoral system embodied in the Reform-Bill, brought about more equitable arrangements?—as witness the repeal of the Corn-Laws, and the equalization of probate and legacy duties. The proofs are undeniable. It is clear, both a priori and a posteriori, that representative government is especially adapted for the establishment and maintenance of just laws.And now mark that the objections to representative government awhile since urged, scarcely tell against it at all, so long as it does not exceed this comparatively limited function. Though its mediocrity of intellect makes it incompetent to oversee and regulate the countless involved processes which make up the national life; it nevertheless has quite enough intellect to enact and enforce those simple principles of equity which underlie the right conduct of citizens to one another. These are such that the commonest minds can understand their chief applications. Stupid as may be the average elector, he can see the propriety of such regulations as shall prevent men from murdering and robbing; he can understand the fitness of laws which enforce the payment of debts; he can perceive the need of measures to prevent the strong from tyrannizing over the weak; and he can feel the rectitude of a judicial system that is the same for rich and poor. The average representative may be but of small capacity, but he is competent, under the leadership of his wiser fellows, to devise appliances for carrying out these necessary restraints; or rather—he is competent to uphold the set of appliances slowly elaborated by the many generations of his predecessors, and to do something towards improving and extending them in those directions where the need is most manifest. It is true that even these small demands upon electoral and senatorial wisdom are but imperfectly met. But though constituencies are blind to the palpable truth that if they would escape laws which favour the nobility at the expense of the commonalty, they must cease to choose representatives from among the nobility; yet when the injustice of this class-legislation is glaring—as in the case of the Corn-Laws—they have sense enough to use means for getting it abolished. And though most legislators have not sufficient penetration to perceive that the greater part of the evils which they attempt to cure by official inspection and regulation would disappear were there a certain, prompt, and cheap administration of justice; yet the County-Courts-Act and other recent law-reforms, show that they do eventually recognize the importance of more efficient judicial arrangements. While, therefore, the lower average of intelligence which necessarily characterizes representative government, unfits it for discharging the complex business of regulating the entire national life; it does not unfit it for discharging the comparatively simple duties of protector. Again, in respect of this all-essential function of a government, there is a much clearer identity of interest between representative and citizen, than in respect of the multitudinous other functions which governments undertake. Though it is generally of but little consequence to the member of Parliament whether state-teachers, state-preachers, state-officers of health, state-dispensers of charity, etc., do their work well, it is of great consequence to him that life and property should be secure; and hence he is more likely to care for the efficient administration of justice than for the efficient administration of anything else. Moreover, the complexity, incongruity of parts, and general cumbrousness which deprive a representative government of that activity and decision required for paternally-superintending the affairs of thirty millions of citizens; do not deprive it of the ability to establish and maintain the regulations by which these citizens are prevented from trespassing against one another. For the principles of equity are permanent as well as simple; and once having been legally embodied in their chief outlines, all that devolves on a government is to develop them more perfectly, and improve the appliances for enforcing them: an undertaking for which the slow and involved action of a representative government does not unfit it. So that while by its origin, theory, and results, representative government is shown to be the best for securing justice between class and class, as well as between man and man, the objections which so strongly tell against it in all its other relations to society, do not tell against it in this fundamental relation.Thus, then, we reach the solution of the paradox. Here is the reconciliation between the two seemingly-contradictory positions awhile since taken. To the question—What is representative government good for? our reply is—It is good, especially good, good above all others, for doing the thing which a government should do. It is bad, especially bad, bad above all others, for doing the things which a government should not do.

One point remains. We said, some distance back, that not only may representative government be the best, notwithstanding its many conspicuous deficiencies; but that it is even possible to discern in these very deficiencies further proofs of its superiority. The conclusion just arrived at, implying, as it does, that these deficiencies tend to hinder it from doing the things which no government should do, has already furnished a key to this strange-looking assertion. But it will be well here to make a more specific justification of it. This brings us to the pure science of the matter.The ever-increasing complexity which characterizes advancing societies, is a complexity that results from the multiplication of different parts performing different duties. The doctrine of the division of labour is now-a-days understood by most to some extent; and most know that by this division of labour each operative, each manufacturer, each town, each district, is constantly more and more restricted to one kind of work. Those who study the organization of living bodies find the uniform process of development to be, that each organ gradually acquires a definite and limited function; there arises, step by step, a more perfect “physiological division of labour.” And in an article on “Progress: its Law and Cause,” published in our April number, we pointed out that this increasing specialization of functions which goes on in all organized bodies, social as well as individual; is one of the manifestations of a still more general process pervading creation, inorganic as well as organic.Now this specialization of functions, which is the law of all organization, has a twofold implication. At the same time that each part grows adapted to the particular duty it has to discharge, it grows unadapted to all other duties. The becoming especially fit for one thing, is a becoming less fit than before for everything else. We have not space here to exemplify this truth. Any modern work on physiology, however, will furnish the reader with abundant illustrations of it, as exhibited in the evolution of living creatures; and as exhibited in the evolution of societies, it may be studied in the writings of political economists. All which we wish here to point out is, that the governmental part of the body politic exemplifies this truth equally with its other parts. In virtue of this universal law, a government cannot gain ability to perform its special work without losing such ability as it had to perform other work.This then is, as we say, the pure science of the matter. The original and essential office of a government is that of protecting its subjects against aggression external and internal. In low, undeveloped forms of society, where yet there is but little differentiation of parts, and little specialization of functions, this essential work, discharged with extreme imperfection, is joined with endless other work: the government has a controlling action over all conduct, individual and social—regulates dress, food, ablutions, prices, trade, religion—exercises unbounded power. In becoming so constituted as to discharge better its essential function, the government becomes more limited alike in the power and the habit of doing other things. Increasing ability to perform its true duty, involves decreasing ability to perform all other kinds of actions. And this conclusion, deducible from the universal law of organization, is the conclusion to which inductive reasoning has already led us. We have seen that, whether considered in theory or practice, representative government is the best for securing justice. We have also seen that, whether considered in theory or practice, it is the worst for all other purposes. And here we find that this last characteristic is a necessary accompaniment of the first. These various incapacities, which seem to tell so seriously against the goodness of representative government, are but the inevitable consequences of its more complete adaptation to its proper work; and, so understood, are themselves indications that it is the form of government natural to a more highly-organized and advanced social state.We do not expect this consideration to weigh much with those whom it most concerns. Truths of so abstract a character find no favour with senates. The metamorphosis we have described is not mentioned in Ovid. History, as at present written, makes no comments on it. There is nothing about it to be found in blue-books and committee-reports. Neither is it proved by statistics. Evidently, then, it has but small chance of recognition by the “practical” legislator. But to the select few who study the Social Science, properly so called, we commend this general fact as one of the highest significance. Those who know something of the general laws of life, and who perceive that these general laws of life underlie all social phenomena, will see that this dual change in the character of advanced governments, involves an answer to the first of all political questions. They will see that this specialization in virtue of which an advanced government gains power to perform one function, while it loses power to perform others, clearly indicates the true limitations of State-duty. They will see that, even leaving out all other evidence, this fact alone shows conclusively what is the proper sphere of legislation.

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40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

40 best essays of all time (with links and writing tips), 1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra.

A great family drama takes place against the backdrop of the Australian wilderness. And the Kookaburra laughs… This is one of the top essays of the lot. It’s a great mixture of family reminiscences, travel writing, and advice on what’s most important in life. You’ll also learn an awful lot about the curious culture of the Aussies.

Writing tips from the essay:

2. charles d’ambrosio – documents, 3. e. b. white – once more to the lake, 4. zadie smith – fail better, 5. virginia woolf – death of the moth, 6. meghan daum – my misspent youth, 7. roger ebert – go gentle into that good night, 8. george orwell – shooting an elephant, 9. george orwell – a hanging, 10. christopher hitchens – assassins of the mind, 11. christopher hitchens – the new commandments, 12. phillip lopate – against joie de vivre, 13. philip larkin – the pleasure principle, 14. sigmund freud – thoughts for the times on war and death, 15. zadie smith – some notes on attunement.

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

17. édouard levé – when i look at a strawberry, i think of a tongue, 18. gloria e. anzaldúa – how to tame a wild tongue, 19. kurt vonnegut – dispatch from a man without a country, 20. mary ruefle – on fear.

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

22. nora ephron – a few words about breasts, 23. carl sagan – does truth matter – science, pseudoscience, and civilization, 24. paul graham – how to do what you love, 25. john jeremiah sullivan – mister lytle, 26. joan didion – on self respect, 27. susan sontag – notes on camp, 28. ralph waldo emerson – self-reliance, 29. david foster wallace – consider the lobster, 30. david foster wallace – the nature of the fun.

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

32. jo ann beard – the fourth state of matter, 33. terence mckenna – tryptamine hallucinogens and consciousness, 34. eudora welty – the little store, 35. john mcphee – the search for marvin gardens.

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

37. joan didion – on keeping a notebook, 38. joan didion – goodbye to all that, 39. george orwell – reflections on gandhi, 40. george orwell – politics and the english language, other essays you may find interesting, oliver sacks – on libraries, noam chomsky – the responsibility of intellectuals, sam harris – the riddle of the gun.

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

Edward said – reflections on exile, richard feynman – it’s as simple as one, two, three…, rabindranath tagore – the religion of the forest, richard dawkins – letter to his 10-year-old daughter.

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Koty neelis – 21 incredible life lessons from anthony bourdain, lucius annaeus seneca – on the shortness of life, bertrand russell – in praise of idleness, james baldwin – stranger in the village.

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

Bonus – More writing tips from two great books

The sense of style – by steven pinker, on writing well – by william zinsser, now immerse yourself in the world of essays, rafal reyzer.

Hey there, welcome to my blog! I'm a full-time entrepreneur building two companies, a digital marketer, and a content creator with 10+ years of experience. I started RafalReyzer.com to provide you with great tools and strategies you can use to become a proficient digital marketer and achieve freedom through online creativity. My site is a one-stop shop for digital marketers, and content enthusiasts who want to be independent, earn more money, and create beautiful things. Explore my journey here , and don't miss out on my AI Marketing Mastery online course.

Together we will win the fight against coronavirus and the only way we can win is by preventing it, observe safety measures.

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We are Reddit's largest community for the discussion of replica footwear. Our subreddit is the most extensive archive of replica-related information in the world. Many of our members are highly skilled in differentiating replicas from authentic products (legit checking), for the purpose of helping others avoid scams. Additionally, we welcome the discussion of replicas as a hobby, including reviews, culture, guides, and related discourse. Enjoy your visit.

I wrote an essay on why reps are not a bad choice for my mother who is skeptical.

Just a reminder, I am not a 9-year-old Fortnite kid who will buy 90 pairs of off-whites and bape to brag at school. I genuinely feel that I want to treat myself with a couple of pairs a year, including dunks, ones, etc. I'm currently 16 and still under the strict control of my parents when making purchases of any kind. Please read here:

Over the course of five years, the sale of replica items, also known as “reps”, have risen significantly. Following the trend, I also have a couple of replica items myself, ranging from shoes to jerseys. Replicas used to be a cheap alternative, but they can be pricey and range from just $10-$15 to $170-$200 if you want the highest quality possible. Why is this business a thing, and why do I and many others practice it?

First, many love the concept of spending less. Most soccer jerseys’ retail prices are about $110-$130, and sports such as hockey can even go up in the $250 range. Now, comparing that to the replica prices, a solid soccer jersey can cost upwards of about $15-$20, and rest of the sports jerseys cost around $25-$35. Soccer jerseys are damn near perfect with no noticeable flaws even at the price of 15 dollars, though, unfortunately, NBA and NHL jerseys struggle with flaws. Even putting aside the flaws, the quality is nowhere near cheap, and it’s a good package for the price that you’re paying. You’re consistently spending $100+ less on pieces of cloth, which should not even be at the price that it is retaily sold at. If we decide to spend so much on fabric and cloth, we are encouraging the inflated bubble of profit that Nike, Adidas, or any other jersey brand is deciding to charge. It costs approximately $6.79 to make a soccer jersey, and we’re biting the bait into purchasing that for upwards of $110, which seems like we’re basically lighting the fuel of the extreme profit that major corporations get to pocket.

Now, switching the topic to sneakers and clothing, things become a bit more different and extreme. Not only are retail prices slightly higher than sports jerseys, but the resell prices are completely unacceptable. For example, Jordan 1 Pine Greens are a Jordan silhouette that retailed for $160 when it was released from Jordan. It’s a bit pricy, but it’s still just a bit of an overpay, putting into the fact that high quality leather and craftsmanship was used (or, that’s what the consumer thinks was used). The pairs sell out in seconds at 7:00 AM in the morning, and from there, it’s no man’s land. The highest amount paid on a verified sneaker-selling website called stockx.com was $867, a solid $707 in just profit. And $867 isn’t even that much compared to some extremely hyped-up pairs that easily break the barriers of $2,000-$3,000 at resale value. If we compare that price of $867 to the replicas which go for about $150 (MAX), and around $125-$130 on average before shipping, you are able to save about $737 to use for something else and even compared at retail prices, you’re saving about $40-$50. Many may question, why not pay the extra $40 or $50 to get the real version? But like I stated, you have to be extremely lucky as a casual buyer to get even a smell of those shoes at a retail price, as many resellers who have no life but to buy sneakers are using bots and softwares to purchase them in bulk and resell them for immeasurable amounts of profit. Lastly, as I mentioned about Nike pocketing the profit, I also need to mention that a pair of Jordan 1’s cost $16.25 to make after material and labor costs, therefore charging a 1000%+ premium to buy them at the retail price that is set straight out of the factory.

Even putting aside affordability, there are many reasons we should not be discouraged from buying replicas. Many brands, and especially Nike, have been exposed multiple times for underpaying workers and overworking them in harsh conditions. According to many fact-checking sources, it’s a fact that Nike pays their workers about $0.20, or 20 cents per hour, for about 70-80 hours a week. That is not even 1/100th of the minimum wage in California. The main reason that replica factories were founded was JUST so that they can earn a larger amount of money for the same, or less amount of work that they are performing. All of these “Made In Thailand” or “Made In Pakistan” can be replaced with tags that say “Made With Abuse” and will still make sense. By buying retail products, we are encouraging the abuse that goes on in many South and East Asian countries and keeps these corporations running. A couple people resorting to replicas over retails will not even remotely affect Nike or Adidas as they have such a large platform with concrete supporters, so claiming that we’re hurting these corporations and designers/workers in US like some anti-replica activists say is quite a stupid claim.

Lastly, quality control. There have been thousands of reports from all over the world complaining about the horrible quality of Jordans and Nikes that displease countless customers. The leather quality often disappoints like seen with the Air Jordan Mocha 1’s (which have clean color blocking with horrible material use), and often many pairs over several different models that have scuffs, dead suede, and glue stains even in retail pairs . Every new Jordan 1 sneaker that releases is titled “One of the Worst Jordan 1 Material Use In Recent Years”, and I have yet to hear a new pair that released recently over 2 years wear a majority of customers stepped out to say “This pair is flawless, every material incorporated in here is spot-on without factory defects”. There’s nothing wrong with maybe 1-2 factory defects over 400-500 pairs, but to have a handful of them on every release day is concerning. Many sneaker influencers, one known as Harrison Nevel has tried and featured two replica sneakers in a video and compared them to his retail pairs. There were absolutely no flaws. Absolutely none. Obviously, as a YouTuber who also uses his platform to make large profits on reselling shoes with inflated value, he didn’t encourage the purchase of replicas, but it was obvious from his comments that a majority of his viewers weren’t convinced that replicas were NOT worth it looking at the price tag and the quality. If you find the right sellers and invest enough, replicas in 2021 are near-retail and have little to no flaws when close up, and basically unnoticeable on foot. We are being fooled to pay $160-$225 retail and even more in resell price thinking that materials will be fantastic when in reality, there’s so many flaws and bad uses of them. We always tend to sail away from fakes just because they are “fake”. But, when “fakes” are able to present a similar or even better quality than the real products, it’s becoming seriously worrying for the resellers and the corporations. The authentics and the reals are being made in the same factory under two different orders, one to sell themselves and one to sell to Nike (for dirt cheap prices).

When you are given the ability to spend less, boycott the exploitation of large corporations in low-income countries, and get a similar or better quality than retail products, then why not pull the trigger? But of course, remember, you’re not saving money, you’re spending less.

ArtIII.S2.C1.6.7 Federal and State Legislators and Standing

Article III, Section 2, Clause 1:

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State, between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

The Supreme Court has also created specific standing rules for federal courts to apply when members of a legislative body seek to uphold the effectiveness of their votes or vindicate their institution’s powers and prerogatives by suing (or defending) another unit of the same government in federal court. 1 Footnote E.g. , Raines v. Byrd , 521 U.S. 811, 8 26 (1997) . The Court has held that legislators may have standing to sue in order to maintain the effectiveness of votes that they have cast in their capacity as legislators if their votes ultimately did not prevail. In Coleman v. Miller , twenty-four members of the Kansas state legislature sought a writ of mandamus compelling state officials to recognize that Kansas had not ratified an amendment to the Federal Constitution, the Child Labor Amendment , 2 Footnote The proposed Amendment provided in part that Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age. Coleman v. Miller , 307 U.S. 433, 435 n.1 (1939) (internal quotation marks omitted). challenging the way that the vote had been taken. 3 Footnote Id. at 436–37 . Twenty of the members, who were senators, had voted to reject the amendment , but the measure ratifying the amendment nevertheless passed the state senate. 4 Footnote Id. at 435–36 . The plaintiffs alleged that an illegal tie-breaking vote for ratification by the Lieutenant Governor had deprived their votes of effectiveness. 5 Footnote Id. at 435–38 . Relying on several precedents, the Court held that the petitioners had claimed a right and privilege under the Constitution . . . to have their votes given effect and the state court has denied that right and privilege. 6 Footnote Id. at 438, 446 ( We think that these senators have a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes. ). See also Raines v. Byrd , 521 U.S. 811, 822 (1997) (discussing the votes that comprised a majority of the Court for this rule). Because the state legislators alleged that their votes had been voided by the improper procedure that led to the approval of the amendment , and those votes would have been sufficient to defeat the proposal, the legislators had a sufficient stake in the outcome that supported their standing to sue. 7 Footnote Coleman , 307 U.S. at 438, 446 .

Decades later, the Supreme Court took a more narrow view of individual legislator standing in Raines v. Byrd. 8 Footnote 521 U.S. 811 (1997) . In that 1997 case, six Members of Congress challenged the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 (LIVA), a statute that authorized the President to cancel certain spending and tax benefit measures after signing them into law, as contrary to the bicameralism and presentment requirements of the Constitution. 9 Footnote Id. at 814, 816 . For more on the bicameralism and presentment requirements, see ArtI.S1.2.2 Origin of a Bicameral Congress and Amdt20.S3.1 Presidential Succession . The Members argued that they had suffered injury because LIVA altered the effect of the votes they would cast in the future and divested them of their constitutional role in the repeal of legislation. 10 Footnote Raines , 521 U.S. at 816 .

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, found that the Members lacked standing to challenge LIVA because they had not suffered an injury different from that suffered by Congress as a whole. 11 Footnote Id. at 820–21 (citing Powell v. McCormack , 395 U.S. 486, 496, 512–14 (1969) ). Citing separation of powers concerns about resolving a dispute implicating the constitutional authority of Congress and the Executive in a lawsuit brought by legislators, the Court, in refusing to proceed to the merits, noted that the Member-plaintiffs had not suffered the concrete deprivation of a private right, like the loss of their seats in Congress, but instead alleged a general diminution of their political power. 12 Footnote Raines , 521 U.S. at 820–21 ( The claimed injury thus runs (in a sense) with the Member’s seat, a seat which the Member holds . . . as trustee for his constituents, not as a prerogative of personal power. ). The Court distinguished this type of grievance from Powell v. McCormack , 395 U.S. 486, 512–17 (1969) , in which the Court allowed a Member of Congress to challenge his exclusion from the House of Representatives. In Raines , the Court wrote that the Member of Congress in Powell had standing to sue because he alleged injury to a personal, private right (i.e., his right to his congressional seat and federal salary) rather than injury to Congress as an institution. Raines , 521 U.S. at 820–21 . The Court thus distinguished Raines from its earlier decision in Coleman on the grounds that the latter case had involved legislators who alleged that their votes had been nullified, whereas the LIVA challenged in Raines did not significantly impact the power of the Members’ votes because they could vote to exempt future appropriations bills from LIVA or repeal LIVA if necessary. 13 Footnote Id. at 824 ( In the vote on the [LIVA], their votes were given full effect. They simply lost that vote. ). The Court also found a lack of historical practice involving suits maintained to redress injury to institutional power. Id. at 8 26 –28 . Although the Court determined that it lacked jurisdiction over the Members’ claims, it left open the possibility that one or both houses of Congress—or perhaps a committee—would have standing to sue for redress of alleged institutional injuries to Congress if authorized by at least one of the Houses, provided that another legislative remedy was not available to them. 14 Footnote Id. at 829 .

In two state legislator standing cases that did not raise similar separation of powers concerns, the Supreme Court rested its standing analysis on the specific features of the state governments at issue. In the first case, Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n , the Court considered a state ballot initiative that would vest the authority to draw legislative districts in an independent commission. The Arizona State Legislature, acting pursuant to an authorizing resolution, challenged that ballot initiative, claiming that it had suffered injured by a diminution in its legislative authority. 15 Footnote 576 U.S. 787, 788 (2015) . Noting that the case did not raise separation of powers concerns that might arise if Congress sued the President, the Court held that the Arizona legislature was a proper party to sue because, like the plaintiffs in Coleman , it had lost the opportunity to adopt a redistricting plan (i.e., its members’ votes were nullified). 16 Footnote Id. at 795–99 & n.12 . Moreover, such an institutional injury to the legislature could serve as the basis for a lawsuit, at least when the legislature authorized suit by enacting a resolution in each chamber. 17 Footnote 26 0"> Id. The Court did not specifically state that the legislature was required to enact an authorizing resolution in order to establish standing.

By contrast, in Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill , the Supreme Court held that a single house of the bicameral Virginia state legislature lacked standing to appeal a federal district court order requiring the redrawing of a 2011 legislative redistricting map. 18 Footnote 26 1"> No. 18-281, slip op. at 1–2 (U.S. June 17, 2019) . The district court had held that the redistricting plan unconstitutionally sorted voters based on race in several districts. Id. The Virginia House of Delegates (House) had previously intervened to defend the constitutionality of the legislative redistricting plan against a voter-led Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause challenge, but the Virginia Attorney General, who was the primary defending party, had decided not to appeal an unfavorable ruling. 19 Footnote 26 2"> Id. at 1–4 . As the Court noted, [b]ecause [the House of Delegate’s participation in prior proceedings did not entail] invoking a court’s jurisdiction, it was not previously incumbent on the House to demonstrate its standing. In Bethune-Hill , the House sought to appeal the district court’s ruling when the Virginia Attorney General had decided not to appeal on behalf of the state defendants; therefore, the House had to establish standing independently. Id. As discussed, in determining that the House lacked standing to appeal on behalf of the state, the Court noted that Virginia law assigned the Virginia Attorney General the task of representing the state in appeals like the one before the Court. 20 Footnote 26 3"> Id. Moreover, the Attorney General had not delegated such litigation authority to the House of Delegates. 21 Footnote 26 4"> Id. at 4–5 . Unlike in Arizona State Legislature , the House lacked standing to appeal in its own right because it was a single component of the bicameral state legislature responsible for redistricting and could thus not assert the interests of the legislature as a whole. 22 Footnote 26 5"> Id. at 7–8 . Moreover, the House’s alleged injury (i.e., invalidation of a state redistricting law) was not cognizable for standing purposes as it did not permanently deprive the House of its role in redistricting and the House did not suffer a cognizable injury merely because its composition (and, therefore, the content of legislation) could be altered by the electorate as a result of a redrawn redistricting map. 23 Footnote 26 6"> Id. at 8–12 . The House had pursued the appeal based solely on its role in the legislative process. In this regard, the Court noted that the invalidation of the redistricting law did not infringe upon the unique legislative powers of the Virginia House by altering the manner in which it conducted its day-to-day-operation (e.g., by altering its committee structure). 24 Footnote 26 7"> Id. at 10–11 .

•   Jump to essay-1 E.g. , Raines v. Byrd , 521 U.S. 811, 8 26 (1997) .
•   Jump to essay-2 The proposed Amendment provided in part that Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age. Coleman v. Miller , 307 U.S. 433, 435 n.1 (1939) (internal quotation marks omitted).
•   Jump to essay-3 Id. at 436–37 .
•   Jump to essay-4 Id. at 435–36 .
•   Jump to essay-5 Id. at 435–38 .
•   Jump to essay-6 Id. at 438, 446 ( We think that these senators have a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes. ). See also Raines v. Byrd , 521 U.S. 811, 822 (1997) (discussing the votes that comprised a majority of the Court for this rule).
•   Jump to essay-7 Coleman , 307 U.S. at 438, 446 .
•   Jump to essay-8 521 U.S. 811 (1997) .
•   Jump to essay-9 Id. at 814, 816 . For more on the bicameralism and presentment requirements, see ArtI.S1.2.2 Origin of a Bicameral Congress and Amdt20.S3.1 Presidential Succession .
•   Jump to essay-10 Raines , 521 U.S. at 816 .
•   Jump to essay-11 Id. at 820–21 (citing Powell v. McCormack , 395 U.S. 486, 496, 512–14 (1969) ).
•   Jump to essay-12 Raines , 521 U.S. at 820–21 ( The claimed injury thus runs (in a sense) with the Member’s seat, a seat which the Member holds . . . as trustee for his constituents, not as a prerogative of personal power. ). The Court distinguished this type of grievance from Powell v. McCormack , 395 U.S. 486, 512–17 (1969) , in which the Court allowed a Member of Congress to challenge his exclusion from the House of Representatives. In Raines , the Court wrote that the Member of Congress in Powell had standing to sue because he alleged injury to a personal, private right (i.e., his right to his congressional seat and federal salary) rather than injury to Congress as an institution. Raines , 521 U.S. at 820–21 .
•   Jump to essay-13 Id. at 824 ( In the vote on the [LIVA], their votes were given full effect. They simply lost that vote. ). The Court also found a lack of historical practice involving suits maintained to redress injury to institutional power. Id. at 8 26 –28 .
•   Jump to essay-14 Id. at 829 .
•   Jump to essay-15 576 U.S. 787, 788 (2015) .
•   Jump to essay-16 Id. at 795–99 & n.12 .
• 26 0"> 26 0">   Jump to essay-17 Id. The Court did not specifically state that the legislature was required to enact an authorizing resolution in order to establish standing.
• 26 1"> 26 1">   Jump to essay-18 No. 18-281, slip op. at 1–2 (U.S. June 17, 2019) . The district court had held that the redistricting plan unconstitutionally sorted voters based on race in several districts. Id.
• 26 2"> 26 2">   Jump to essay-19 Id. at 1–4 . As the Court noted, [b]ecause [the House of Delegate’s participation in prior proceedings did not entail] invoking a court’s jurisdiction, it was not previously incumbent on the House to demonstrate its standing. In Bethune-Hill , the House sought to appeal the district court’s ruling when the Virginia Attorney General had decided not to appeal on behalf of the state defendants; therefore, the House had to establish standing independently. Id.
• 26 3"> 26 3">   Jump to essay-20 Id.
• 26 4"> 26 4">   Jump to essay-21 Id. at 4–5 .
• 26 5"> 26 5">   Jump to essay-22 Id. at 7–8 .
• 26 6"> 26 6">   Jump to essay-23 Id. at 8–12 . The House had pursued the appeal based solely on its role in the legislative process.
• 26 7"> 26 7">   Jump to essay-24 Id. at 10–11 .

Bangor Daily News

Maine news, sports, politics, election results, and obituaries

Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine

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The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on  bangordailynews.com

Jared Golden represents Maine’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

After the first presidential debate , lots of Democrats are panicking  about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party’s nominee. Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise. It also didn’t rattle me as it has others, because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.

There are winners and losers in every election. Democrats’ post-debate hand-wringing is based on the idea that a Trump victory is not just a political loss, but a unique threat to our democracy. I reject the premise. Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system.

This Independence Day marks our nation’s 248th birthday. In that time, American democracy has withstood civil war, world wars, acts of terrorism and technological and societal changes that would make the Founders’ head spin.

Pearl-clutching about a Trump victory ignores the strength of our democracy. Jan. 6, 2021, was a dark day. But Americans stood strong. Hundreds of police officers protected the democratic process against thousands who tried to use violence to upend it. Judges and state election officials upheld our election laws. Members of Congress, including leaders from both parties, certified the election results.

They all are joined in the defense of democracy by the millions of us who, like me, made an oath of allegiance to the United States and to the Constitution when we began our military service, plus hundreds of millions of freedom-loving Americans who won’t let anyone take away our constitutional rights as citizens of the greatest democracy in history.

This election is about the economy, not democracy. And when it comes to our economy, our Congress matters far more than who occupies the White House.

READ OTHER VIEWS

The prospect of a Donald Trump win is cause for alarm, not acquiescence

Some of Congress’ best work in recent years has happened in spite of the president, not because of him. A handful of responsible Democrats, including myself and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, rejected  Biden’s bloated “Build Back Better” bill and instead passed a law that supercharged American energy production, saved Medicare billions of dollars and reduced the deficit. Years earlier, Congress stood up to the GOP establishment who tried to hijack Trump’s agenda to achieve their long-held goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act . Defeating them saved health coverage for tens of millions of Americans and protections for people with preexisting conditions.

It was Congress that wrote and passed the CHIPS Act  and the Inflation Reduction Act  to bring back manufacturing so we can once again be a nation of producers, not just consumers. We wrote laws to unleash American energy by tapping domestic natural resources — oil and gas, biomass, the sun and wind — as well as nuclear power to ensure a steady supply of affordable, reliable energy. And we passed an infrastructure law  that’s already building and improving roads, bridges and ports.

In 2025, I believe Trump is going to be in the White House. Maine’s representatives will need to work with him when it benefits Mainers, hold him accountable when it does not and work independently across the aisle no matter what.

Congress will need to stand up to economic elites and so-called experts in both parties who are already working overtime to stop Trump’s proposed trade policies that would reverse the harms of globalization and protect American businesses from unfair foreign competition. We need to protect from extremists the law I helped pass  that caps seniors’ insulin costs at $35 and forces Big Pharma to negotiate and lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Perhaps more importantly, members must stand up to the GOP old-guard who will use a Trump presidency as cover for handouts to the wealthy and powerful at the cost of America’s working families and communities.

We must stabilize Medicare and Social Security, without cuts for seniors. We must guarantee women’s reproductive rights. And Congress must be ready to once again protect the ACA and to end huge tax breaks for the wealthy and for multinational corporations.

I urge everyone — voters, elected officials, the media, and all citizens — to ignore the chattering class’s scare tactics and political pipedreams. We don’t need party insiders in smoke-filled back rooms to save us. We can defend our democracy without them.

My focus is on representing the people of Maine’s Second Congressional District and working for the common good of all Americans. This Independence Day, we should reflect on the history and strength of our great democracy, safe in the knowledge that no one man is strong enough to take it away from us.

More articles from the BDN

Reliable Raman Spectroscopic Authentication of St25 Rice Through Representative Sampling of Bulk Grains and Effective Recognition of Dissimilar Spectral Features by Two-Trace Two-Dimensional Correlation Analysis

22 Pages Posted: 5 Jul 2024

Thu Thuy Bui

Hanyang University

Hoa Quynh Nguyen

Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology

Hoeil Chung

Raman spectroscopic authentication of ST25 rice through analysis of bulk grains was demonstrated. For representative spectroscopic sampling and grain packing-insensitive measurement, a packed rice sample was moved as a snake scan during spectral acquisition under 6 mm-laser illumination, yielding a sample coverage of 70.5 cm2. When the triplicate spectra of rice sample were collected with random grain packing, the spectral features were unchanged, demonstrating the grain packing-insensitive measurement. Next, to recognize the small spectral differences between the ST25 and non-ST25 samples, a two-trace two-dimensional correlation (2T2D-COS) analysis enabling recognition of asynchronous spectral behaviors arising from dissimilar sample compositions was employed. When the 2T2D asynchronous spectra were employed for discriminant analysis using support vector machine, the accuracy was 96.6%, while it was 88.4% with no 2T2D-COS analysis. The achieved accuracy is attributed to both the acquisition of reproducible composition-representative spectra and sophisticated 2T2D-COS analysis.

Keywords: ST25 rice, Authentication, Raman spectroscopy, Large-area coverage scheme: Two-trace two-dimensional correlation analysis

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Hanyang University ( email )

Seoul Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology ( email )

Hoeil chung (contact author), do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on ssrn, paper statistics, related ejournals, food quality, safety, regulation & policy ejournal.

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Military Academy Nominations - FAQ

Frequently asked questions for those seeking a Military Academy nomination. You may also fill out a  Military Academy Nominations Form .

WHAT IS A NOMINATION?

Members of Congress may nominate applicants who meet the eligibility requirements established by law. A candidate may seek a nomination from the following:

• A member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represents the congressional district in which the candidate resides
• Both U.S. Senators from his or her state
• Apply directly to the Vice-President of the United States

WHAT ARE THE BASIC ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS?

Each applicant for a nomination must meet the following eligibility requirements as of July 1st of the year of admission to an academy:

• Age: Be at least 17 years old, but not have passed the 23rd birthday
• Citizenship: Must be a U.S. citizen
• Marital Status: Must be unmarried, not pregnant, and without legal obligation to support children or other dependents
• Residence: Must reside within the boundaries of the 2nd Congressional District of New York.
• Skill / Fitness: Must meet the medical, physical, and academic requirements of the Academy

WHO DO I CONTACT TO REQUEST AN APPLICATION?

Contact the office  to request a nomination packet.

WHEN DO I APPLY FOR A NOMINATION?

The nomination application period opens mid-May of each year for those candidates who are high school juniors and will be seniors the following school year, or who have already graduated.

WHAT IS THE DEADLINE FOR COMPLETING A NOMINATION FILE?

The deadline for submitting a nomination packet to the District Office is normally in the beginning of October. Please  contact the office  for more specifics.

WHAT MUST BE INCLUDED IN MY NOMINATION FILE?

A complete nomination file consists of the following items:

• Current photo
• High school transcript
• American College Testing Program (ACT) results and/or College Board Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) results
• Resume of extracurricular activities including all contact information
• An essay/personal statement stating why you want to attend a service academy (250 words or less)
• Three letters of recommendation

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I HAVE COMPLETED MY NOMINATION FILE?

Applicants who submit a completed nomination file will be scheduled for an interview in late October or early November.

WHAT CRITERIA IS USED IN SELECTING CANDIDATES?

Nominations are based on a "whole person" evaluation. Factors such as academic achievements, extra-curricular activities, leadership skills, physical aptitude, character and motivation are taken into consideration and compared with other applicants.

HOW MANY ACADEMIES ARE THERE?

There are five service academies.

• U.S. Military Academy  at West Point, New York
• U.S. Naval Academy  at Annapolis, Maryland
• U.S. Air Force Academy  at Colorado Springs
• U.S. Merchant Marine Academy  at Kings Point, New York
• U.S. Coast Guard Academy  at New London, Connecticut

ARE THE REQUIREMENTS THE SAME FOR ALL OF THE SERVICE ACADEMIES?

No. Although many of the qualifications are similar, each academy operates under its own admissions guidelines. Visit the academy of your choice via the websites noted for each academy's particular admissions qualifications. It is not necessary to seek a nomination to the Coast Guard Academy, as the U.S.C.G.A. accepts candidates based on their own testing criteria.

WHO SHOULD I ASK TO WRITE A LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION ON MY BEHALF?

Some of the people applicants typically seek recommendations from include:

• Scout Leaders

A specific recommendation form is not required. A letter of recommendation is sufficient.

WILL I AUTOMATICALLY BE SELECTED BY THE ACADEMY AFTER I RECEIVE A NOMINATION?

No. You will be placed among a select group of nominees, and the academy of your choice will make the final decision. If selected, you may then receive an offer of admission (an appointment) directly from the academy.

WHAT IF I CHOOSE MORE THAN ONE ACADEMY? WILL I BE LIMITED TO A SINGLE NOMINATION?

No – but you are encouraged to decide on an Academy prior to a nomination. You may be nominated to multiple academies depending on how well you have competed among this year's pool of candidates. It is also possible to win multiple appointments.

WHEN WILL I KNOW IF I HAVE BEEN OFFERED AN APPOINTMENT BY AN ACADEMY?

Academies will begin to notify candidates of their admission status in February. All offers of appointment are generally sent out by May.

Effective Essay Tips

Welcome to EssayReply, an all-in-one place for those who search for effective essay writing tips and detailed guides. The project aims to cover as many aspects as possible. For convenience and better navigation, we divided all questions into logical sections described below. We wrote each article in such a way that, after reading it, you should be able to come up with a good result.

There are many different ways you can approach the essay writing process. We want to cover them all. Here, you will find useful tips on how to compose your thesis statement, adjust your word count, format your works cited page, write body paragraphs, and what transition words to use . Before you start writing, let’s look at three main sections of EssayReply.com.

Note:  Now, the website’s status is “Work in progress,” which means we’re still adding new writing guides and tweaking the design. Hence, some sections described here might be missing or lacking questions and answers. So, make sure to visit us from time to time to check out new articles.

Standard Essay Guidelines

This section is called “General” and contains various writing tips on the basic structure of an essay , title page formatting, thesis statement development, outline building, and introducing supporting ideas. You will find out how to write an introductory paragraph, arrange main points, support your topic sentence , prepare before writing, go about the topic, and wrap everything up in a conclusion paragraph.

This group of questions will help you improve your essay writing skills and make sure you develop a solid understanding of every fundamental element involved in the process of essay writing:

• Definition – What are essays? Why do I have to write them?
• Essay topics – How to choose one? Does it matter a lot?
• Format – Are there any standards? Why do I have to follow them?
• Outline – Is there any particular order of elements?
• Writing techniques – What styles are there? Which one should I use?
• Title – Do I have to have a title or subheadings?
• Cover page – Do all essays require one?
• Introduction – How to start an essay?
• Hook – How to catch the reader’s attention? Do I have to?
• Thesis statement – What’s that? Is it important?
• Body paragraphs – How many should I have?
• Word choice – How to create a “flow” of an essay? Any special words to use?
• Conclusion – How do I include it? Any rules to follow?
• Proofreading – What to look for when checking my paper?

See how many questions arise when you start wondering, “ How to write an essay ?” But we will do our utmost to make sure that each and every aspect of this immense part of academia is covered.

Quotation Guidelines

Almost every essay requires you to support your argument with evidence . This is where quotation and paraphrasing guides are helpful. You’d usually have to follow a particular citation style when using someone else’s work in yours to make sure the original authors of the used materials are known to the reader and to avoid plagiarism.

Citation styles have different rules for indicating the source information. And very often, those rules might not be very clear without an example or more elaborate explanations. So, our “Citation” section will help you with all possible questions regarding this aspect of academic essay writing.

This group of questions will shed light on citing in such styles as:

There are many more styles out there, and we will cover those as well. But, these four are the most commonly used only, so they are the first in the queue.

You will know how to cite various types of sources, such as:

• Youtube Videos

You’ll also get a better idea about quote types and how a “works cited page” must look.

Tips and Guides on Essay Types

There are more than 50 essay types out there. Luckily, you won’t have to write all of them because assignments generally vary based on your major. Nevertheless, we decided to aim at covering each and every one of them to make sure every visitor finds the answer they are looking for.

You’ll learn about common essay types like:

• Argumentative
• Compare and contrast
• Cause and effect
• Descriptive

But, we also offer tips on more “exotic” papers, such as:

Besides those three main “Categories” of questions in the top bar of our menu, you’ll also find other, related to essay length, purpose, and topics, as well as high school and college essay guidelines. The latter will also cover various application papers and their features.

We are also planning on adding a section dedicated to advanced English grammar rules and exceptions, which are plenty. But that will have to come later on, as our main focus is everything related to writing essays.

The sources we use

When creating all these guidelines for writing an essay, we use only credible sources. These include articles written by verified specialists with relevant experience in education and official essay writing guides created by education institutions such as:

• California State University
• The University of New South Wales
• Harvard University
• Santiago Canyon College
• Bow Valley College
• Purdue University
• Utah Valley University
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Lane Community College
• The University of Maryland
• Columbia College
• and many others

This list is far from being exhaustive, but we strive to become a centralized hub for students of all academic levels.

By the way, each article has a “Was it helpful?” question at the end. By giving your feedback, you can help us improve our website and deliver better content. You can also contact us directly if you notice a mistake, a typo, or something else that should be corrected. The ways to do so are indicated on our Contact page, accessible from the top menu bar.

And last but not least, if you think that our tips helped you with your essay, you can share that article via Twitter or Facebook — we’d be very grateful.

Revieweal – Top Writing Services

Writers, Prices, Support, Services, Contacts

essayrep.com Review

EssayRep is an option to consider for students in the US. They have been operating since 2010, they are 100% scam-free and offer money back guarantees, safe order processing, and larger than average discounts. However, a 1-page order is only 275 words, so it works out a little more costly than other websites. They specialise in online classwork and courses, and are quite popular amongst students, according to their feedback reviews. If you’re an online student is may be worth your time checking them out. The Essayrep.com website is straightforward, with all information clearly set out and easy to read.

Prepared by our American expert - Emily Johnson

Top Writing Services

Essay Rep – Details

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Sg Bakap Polls: Cops open five investigation papers, arrest two

Friday, 05 Jul 2024

Related News

Sg Bakap Polls: PAS warns Pakatan not to bribe voters

Sg bakap polls: scorching heat, low voter turnout in the afternoon, sg bakap polls: determined voter arrives in ambulance.

NIBONG TEBAL: The police have opened five investigation papers and arrested two men during the Sungai Bakap by-election campaign period, which enters its final day on Friday.

Penang police chief Comm Datuk Hamzah Ahmad ( pic ) said from June 22 until Friday (July 5), the police received five police reports and further investigations into all of these cases are underway.

"Five police reports and five investigation papers opened, involving damaging and stealing campaign materials, i.e. party flags and banners, which are being investigated under Section 427 and Section 379 of the Penal Code, while one case of campaigning without a permit is being investigated under Section 24(B)(3)(a) of the Election Offences Act 1954.

"Two more cases involve distributing pamphlets and disseminating illegal information, which are offences under Section 4A(1) of the Election Offences Act 1954. For these two cases we arrested two men, aged 23 and 27,” he said at a press conference in conjunction with the Sungai Bakap by-election, in Seberang Perai Selatan (SPS) district police headquarters, here, on Friday.

He said as of Friday, the police have issued 181 permits, involving 97 permits for Pakatan Harapan, with the remainder for Perikatan Nasional.

Hamzah said that no permit application was rejected, and the campaign went smoothly with a peaceful, calm and well-planned atmosphere, without any commotion from the contesting parties.

He also advised contesting parties to ensure that all campaign activities are stopped at 11.59 on Friday night and that police will monitor and take strict action if campaign activities continue beyond the stipulated time.

"We would like to thank all political parties, supporters and the general public for complying and giving good cooperation throughout the campaign period in the Sungai Bakap by-election.

"However, once again I remind all parties involved not to raise the 3R issues (race, religion and royal institutions), or create provocation during voting tomorrow (Friday," he said.

The Sungai Bakap state by-election is a straight clash between Pakatan Harapan candidate, Dr Joohari Ariffin, and Perikatan Nasional candidate, Abidin Ismail, which is being held following the death of the incumbent, Nor Zamri Latiff, on May 24, due to stomach inflammation. - Bernama

Tags / Keywords: By-Election , Sungai Bakap , Police , Report , Investigation , Paper , Open , Hamzah Ahmad

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