The Constitution ordains that members of both the Houses shall be paid for their time, but it does not decree the amount. "The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States." In the remarks which I have made as to the present Congress I have spoken of the amount now allowed. The understanding, I believe, is that the pay shall be enough for the modest support of a man who is supposed to have raised himself above the heads of the crowd. Much may be said in favor of this payment of legislators, but very much may also be said against it. There was a time when our members of the House of Commons were entitled to payment for their services, and when, at any rate, some of them took the money. It may be that with a new nation such an arrangement was absolutely necessary. Men whom the people could trust, and who would have been able to give up their time without payment, would not have probably been found in a new community. The choice of Senators and of Representatives would have been so limited that the legislative power would have fallen into the hands of a few rich men. Indeed, it may be said that such payment was absolutely necessary in the early days of the life of the Union. But no one, Ithink, will deny that the tone of both Houses would be raised by the gratuitous service of the legislators. It is well known that politicians find their way into the Senate and into the chamber of Representatives solely with a view to the loaves and fishes. The very word "politician" is foul and unsavory throughout the States, and means rather a political blackleg than a political patriot. It is useless to blink this matter in speaking of the politics and policy of the United States. The corruption of the venal politicians of the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men.
It behoves the country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The people of the nation are educated and clever.
The women are bright and beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager and true; her national ambition is noble and honest--honest in the cause of civilization. But she has soiled herself with political corruption, and has disgraced the cause of republican government by the dirt of those whom she has placed in her high places. Let her look to it now. She is nobly ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as beneficent. She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which her political democracy has debased itself. Apolitician should be a man worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy of all contempt, in that he robs his country.
I must not be understood as saying that every Senator and Representative who takes his pay is wrong in taking it. Indeed, Ihave already expressed an opinion that such payments were at first necessary, and I by no means now say that the necessity has as yet disappeared. In the minds of thorough democrats it will be considered much that the poorest man of the people should be enabled to go into the legislature, if such poorest man be worthy of that honor. I am not a thorough democrat, and consider that more would be gained by obtaining in the legislature that education, demeanor, and freedom from political temptation which easy circumstances produce. I am not, however, on this account inclined to quarrel with the democrats--not on that account if they can so manage their affairs that their poor and popular politicians shall be fairly honest men. But I am a thorough republican, regarding our own English form of government as the most purely republican that Iknow, and as such I have a close and warm sympathy with those Transatlantic anti-monarchical republicans who are endeavoring to prove to the world that they have at length founded a political Utopia. I for one do not grudge them all the good they can do, all the honor they can win. But I grieve over the evil name which now taints them, and which has accompanied that wider spread of democracy which the last twenty years has produced. This longing for universal suffrage in all things--in voting for the President, in voting for judges, in voting for the Representatives, in dictating to Senators--has come up since the days of President Jackson, and with it has come corruption and unclean hands.
Democracy must look to it, or the world at large will declare her to have failed.
One would say that at any rate the Senate might be filled with unpaid servants of the public. Each State might surely find two men who could afford to attend to the public weal of their country without claiming a compensation for their time. In England we find no difficulty in being so served. Those cities among us in which the democratic element most strongly abounds, can procure representatives to their minds, even though the honor of filling the position is not only not remunerative, but is very costly. I cannot but think that the Senate of the United States would stand higher in the public estimation of its own country if it were an unpaid body of men.
