Elliot’s Debates –Friday, June 22, 1787.
Still plowing through notes on the Convention, I came across an interesting commentary by Pennsylvania’s James Wilson. Wilson, by profession, was a lawyer who liked to engage in real estate speculation. Educated at Saint Andrews, Scotland, he was also a Latin tutor at the College of Philadelphia.
On June 22, the Convention continued to debate the two houses of the legislature, in this instance the House. At issue was whether men might seek elected office only to use their office as a stepping stone to more permanent employment for themselves and friends. Should a period be fixed, following their service, during which they would be ineligible for other offices?
Not unlike present-day advocates of term limitation, Pierce Butler of South Carolina, who was a planter and slave holder, saw every reason to place as many limits on former legislators as possible, specially if those legislators were likely to interfere with his private enterprise. Better to make sure that legislators had the financial means to weather two or three years without a post than to open the flood gates to individuals who might use the office to enrich themselves. Such individuals, Butler not incorrectly judged, would probably not support southern planters’ interests. “A man takes a seat in Parliament to get an office for himself or friends, or both,” Butler surmised, “and this is the great source from which flows its great venality and corruption.”
Wilson saw another possibility.
Strong reasons must induce me to disqualify a good man from office. If you do, you give an opportunity to the dependent or avaricious man to fill it up, for to him offices are objects of desire. If we admit there may be cabal and intrigue between the executive and legislative bodies, the exclusion of one year will not prevent the effects of it. But we ought to hold forth every honorable inducement for men of abilities to enter the service of the public. This is truly a republican principle. Shall talents, which entitle a man to public reward, operate as a punishment? While a member of the legislature, he ought to be excluded from any other office, but no longer.
Evidently Wilson feared that, if it harmed their private interests, men of means (the kind of men both Butler and Wilson wanted to stand for election) might be deterred from seeking office. But, then, in an odd turn, Wilson suggested that by disqualifying “a good man,” they might invite “the dependent or avaricious man to fill it up.” In other words, Wilson admits what he assumes everyone already knows: that the lawyer and real estate developer are no different from the planter and slave holder. All are equally drawn to “cabal and intrigue.” Again, the avenue for achieving the “republican principle” is not to let all who want to serve do so.
Wilson and Butler want men with “talents.”
Most of us solve this riddle of republican rhetoric by concluding that the rhetoric was no more than a ruse, a thin veneer concealing the real aim, which is supposed then to have been the protection of wealth and privilege. Butler, the southern planter, would protect it by keeping the political authorities at bay. Wilson, the real estate developer, would protect it by making sure that all of Congress is, like him, made up of men of talent. If the legislature were made up of individuals “dependent” on others for their means, what would prevent them from viewing their office as simply a means to other ends?
Not surprisingly, this same dual rationale guides present-day lawmakers. But, now we can see that the two are simply the flip side of the same coin. Wealth and privilege disable public institutions to implement their own plutocracy. What has been added is that there is no veneer at all between the “dependent and avaricious man” and the office seeker. They are all the same, res publica be damned.