United States Congress

The United States Congress is the proposed Constitution’s central legislative institution: a national legislature authorized to enact laws for federal purposes, regulate its own elections in the last resort, participate in treaty approval, and operate within a system of delegated powers and institutional checks. The essays defend its capacity to govern while insisting that its authority remains bounded by the Constitution, answerable to the people, and entangled with the state governments that help constitute it.

Constitutional Authority and Limits

The proposed Congress receives its legislative authority from the Constitution, including power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying its assigned powers into execution. The argument treats that clause not as a free-standing grant to legislate on any subject, but as an express statement of what follows from creating a government with specified powers. The relevant limits therefore lie in the powers on which a law is founded: an enactment must be necessary and proper to execute a constitutional authority, not merely useful to the national legislature in the abstract.

The same distinction governs the Constitution’s supremacy rule. Federal laws are supreme because a law must bind those within the political society that enacts it; otherwise, the federal arrangement would amount only to a treaty dependent on the parties’ good faith. But supremacy belongs only to laws made pursuant to the Constitution. An enactment that invades powers left to the states is not a higher law merely because Congress passed it: it is an act of usurpation. The argument thus presents national authority and state authority not as interchangeable sovereignties, but as different jurisdictions whose boundaries are set by the constitutional grant.

That boundary is illustrated through two hypothetical intrusions. If Congress tried to alter a state’s law of descent, it would have exceeded its authority; if it used its revenue powers as a pretext to repeal a state land tax, it would have invaded a sphere of taxation the Constitution assumes the states retain. These examples make the limits concrete: federal supremacy cannot turn an unauthorized measure into a valid one, and the people remain the ultimate constitutional principals, able to redress a tyrannical use of delegated power.

Relations with the States and the People

The state governments are described as constituent and essential parts of the federal system, whereas the federal government is not essential to the states’ own organization. State legislatures have a decisive role in choosing the President through the process of selecting electors and elect the Senate outright. Even the House, though chosen directly by the people, is expected to be influenced by the same local political figures whose standing helps secure election to state legislatures. On this account, each principal branch of the federal government owes at least part of its existence to state-government favor, a dependence more likely to make federal officials deferential toward the states than able to dominate them.

The asymmetry extends beyond formal selection. The states employ far more officials, dispersed among legislative, executive, and judicial offices, the militia, local justice, counties, corporations, and towns. Those officers have personal acquaintance with many social circles and can exert a kind of local influence the smaller federal establishment cannot match. The proposed Congress therefore belongs to a national government that is institutionally distinct but not socially detached from the state systems surrounding it; its relative lack of local personnel is part of the argument against fears that it will simply overwhelm them.

The people supply a separate and more fundamental source of accountability. Federal representatives are to be elected by the same broad body of citizens that chooses the corresponding branch of each state legislature. The essay rejects wealth, birth, religious belief, and civil profession as qualifications for popular choice, leaving the people free to select any citizen whose merit earns their confidence. Election is not treated as an infallible guarantee of fidelity, but as a source of obligation: the honor and trust bestowed by constituents should produce at least a temporary attachment to their interests and a motive for faithful service.

Representation, Elections, and Legislative Experience

The defense of biennial elections rests partly on the comparative limits of federal power. The federal legislature possesses only a portion of the supreme legislative authority exercised by the British Parliament, while state legislatures retain substantial powers and can watch and check federal action. Because a less powerful legislature has less opportunity to abuse its authority, the essay argues, its members can safely serve longer terms than a body with more comprehensive power. The experience of the former colonies supplies a further comparison: election periods varied from one to seven years, and Virginia, despite its septennial elections under the former government, was the first to resist parliamentary usurpations and publicly embrace independence. That example is offered not as praise of seven-year terms, which the argument rejects in comparison with more frequent elections, but as evidence that biennial elections need not endanger liberty.

Two-year terms are also defended as a practical condition for informed service. Representatives must learn public business, and some members with superior talents will return often enough to become long-standing legislators who understand it thoroughly. That accumulated knowledge can strengthen the House, but it also creates an imbalance between experienced members and newcomers, who may be more readily caught in snares laid for them. The same vulnerability can arise between the House and the Senate: differences in experience and information can give the more seasoned body an advantage. The argument thus treats continuity as both a resource and a risk, one that makes the representative institution more capable while requiring attention to how knowledge is distributed within it.

The length of a term also affects who can afford to serve. Representatives may have to travel substantial distances, and the arrangements this requires could deter otherwise capable candidates if the term lasted only a year. The existing Congress’s annual elections do not settle the question, because its delegates are generally re-elected as a matter of course by legislative assemblies; popular elections for federal representatives would not necessarily follow that pattern. Nor does frequent election automatically secure fair representation. In states with large populations and only one legislative session each year, unlawful returns could place an irregular member in a seat long enough to serve the purposes of those who secured it. Under annual federal elections, the time needed to investigate a disputed return could make this abuse especially serious in distant states. The House and Senate must judge their members’ elections, qualifications, and returns, but adjudication can be slow enough that the prospect of later removal provides little immediate deterrent.

Legislative Procedure and Institutional Self-Preservation

The Constitution assigns state legislatures the first responsibility for prescribing the times, places, and manner of elections for senators and representatives, while reserving to Congress power to make or alter those regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators. The arrangement is defended as a balance between local administration in ordinary circumstances and federal authority when the national government’s own preservation is at stake. No permanent election code could anticipate every likely change in the country, so discretionary authority had to be lodged somewhere. Giving it first to the states and ultimately to Congress preserves local control without making the federal legislature helpless if state authorities fail to provide workable elections or act against federal interests.

The principle behind this reserve is institutional self-preservation: every government should possess the means of continuing to function. The essays nevertheless recognize a cost in any departure from that rule, treating an exception as a possible source of future weakness or disorder. The Constitution’s design is defended not as a perfect elimination of risk, but as a choice among imperfect arrangements, in which state legislatures normally administer elections while Congress retains a safeguard against being disabled by them.

The proposed Congress also differs from the existing Confederation Congress in how members act and how many participate in federal decisions. Under the Confederation, two members may represent a state, and Congress rarely has more persons than the proposed Senate. Yet Confederation members vote by states, so when only one member from a state is present, that state’s vote is lost. In the proposed Senate, members vote individually; the number of active voices would therefore rarely fall below the active voices in the existing Congress. The additional cooperation of the President, and the prospect that new states would enlarge the Senate, are offered as reasons to expect adequate participation and institutional capacity.

Accountability, Checks, and the Work of Congress

The arguments about legislative power belong to a wider account of divided government. The security against gradual concentration lies not in trusting officeholders to act from good motives alone, but in giving each department constitutional means and personal incentives to resist encroachment by the others. Popular dependence is the primary check; institutional checks are auxiliary precautions. The resulting structure links personal interest to constitutional rights: each officeholder can act as a sentinel over public rights by defending the authority of the department entrusted to them. Congress is therefore both a governing body and one participant in a contest that is meant to prevent any single department from absorbing the rest.

That logic makes responsibility as important as formal power. In discussing executive plurality, the essays warn that multiple decision-makers can shift blame among themselves until the public cannot identify the author of a harmful measure. The contrast clarifies the standard applied to public institutions: citizens need to know who proposed, approved, or obstructed consequential action if elections and public censure are to have force. The appointment process offers a model of visible responsibility. The President nominates, the Senate judges the nomination, and public scrutiny can assign blame for a bad choice to the President, the Senate, or both according to their respective parts. The proposed system is preferred to New York’s small, private Council of Appointment, where uncertain authorship leaves censure without a clear object and a field open to cabal and intrigue.

Congress also participates in treaty-making, but the essays resist requiring two-thirds of the entire Senate rather than two-thirds of those present. When members fail to attend, a fixed fraction of the whole body could make unanimity necessary in practice, producing delay and impotence. A requirement based on members present instead gives each senator a reason to attend, since a single absence can change whether the necessary proportion is reached. The comparison with the Confederation reinforces the case: its Congress rarely had more active voices than the proposed Senate, and its members voted by state, sometimes losing a state’s vote when only one delegate was present. With senators voting individually and the President cooperating in treaties, the proposed arrangement is presented as offering greater security against misuse than the existing system, without making treaty decisions needlessly difficult.

The larger institutional claim is that effective government depends on a balance: Congress must possess real means to carry delegated powers into execution, yet remain answerable to the people, constrained by constitutional limits, checked by other federal departments, and connected to state institutions. The essays do not defend national legislative authority as unlimited supremacy. They defend a legislature able to act as a government rather than a mere compact among states, while treating lawful authority, public accountability, and the continuing role of the states as conditions of its legitimacy.