under the name of the Constitutional Union Party, it met at Baltimore in 1860 and nominated Bell and Everett. It then adopted resolutions setting forth that "experience has demonstrated that platforms adopted by the partisan conventions of the country have had the effect to mislead and deceive the people, and at the same time widen the political divisions of the country by the creation and encouragement of geographical and sectional partisan parties."

That party never held another convention, and never since then has any party failed to submit to the people some statement of its purpose.

But while the adoption of a platform is now an accepted party obligation, the duty is not discharged with complete sincerity. Platform utterances have become so vague and ambiguous that the tendency of public sentiment is to attach much less importance to them than to the declarations of the presidential candidates. Mr. Blaine, in a review article, thus described the change which has taken place :

tance.

"The resolutions of a convention have come to signify little in determining the position of President or party. Formerly the platform was of first imporDiligent attention was given, not only to every position advanced, but to the phrase in which it was expressed. The presidential candidate was held closely to the text, and he made no excursions beyond it. Now, the position of the candi

date, as defined by himself, is of far more weight with the voters, and the letter of acceptance has come to be the legitimate creed of the party."

The establishment of national control over party organization, against the obstructions raised by popular prejudice and state pride, could not have been effected without the influence of the federal patronage. The resistance to the system in the Democratic party was strong and stubborn, and some marks of it still appear in convention procedure. The rule requiring a two-thirds majority to nominate, which is peculiar to the Democratic party, was a precaution taken by state party organizations against submergence of their interests. The subsequent adoption of the unit rule, by which a majority of each delegation was allowed to cast its full vote, recognized a practice begun in the Van Buren interest, the inequitable character of which was mitigated by making it uniform.1 It required the full pressure of Jackson's authority to make the party organizations in a number of states submit to the convention system at all. The great edifice of national party organization has the presidential patronage for its corner-stone.

1 These famous rules are usually ascribed to the influence of state sovereignty ideas, but the facts of the case do not sustain this theory. Calhoun, who was the great champion of state sovereignty, always contended that the people should elect convention delegates by districts. He also contended that if delegations voted as states, they should have an equal vote, as in an election of the President by the House of Representatives.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION

AN effect of the convention system, which was at once noted, was the complete effacement of the constitutional design for the election of President. Senator Benton, a leader of the Jackson movement which was the great agent of change, was startled by the consequences of the new system. He said, "The election of the President and the Vice-President of the United States has passed, not only from the college of electors to which the constitution confided it, and from the people to which the practice under the constitution gave it, and from the House of Representatives which the constitution provided as ultimate arbiter,- but has gone to an anomalous, irresponsible body, unknown to law or constitution, unknown to the early ages of our government. . . ."1 Benton's remedy was "the application of the democratic principle — the people to vote direct for President and Vice-President." This was the original demand of the Jackson party. Benton drew a fancy picture of American citizens going to the polls, each declaring who, in his individual opinion, was the fittest man for President. 1 Thirty Years' View, Vol. I., p. 49.

He likened it to "the sublime spectacle" that was seen in the city states of antiquity, "when the Roman citizen advanced to the polls and proclaimed: 'I vote for Cato to be Consul'; the Athenian, I vote for Aristides to be Archon'; the Theban, 'I vote for Pelopidas to be Boeotrach'; the Lacedæmonian, 'I vote for Leonidas to be first of the Ephori. That there would be any difficulty in exercising a real choice does not seem to have occurred to Benton, but the point was clearly discerned by Calhoun's penetrating intellect. He argued that the natural incompetency of the people to judge in such a case would inevitably transfer the real selection to a few managers. Like Benton, he held that "the complex and refined machinery provided by the constitution for the election of the President and Vice-President is virtually superseded"; and that "the nomination of the successful party, by irresponsible individuals, makes, in reality, the choice." But so far from holding popular election to be the cure, he found it to be the cause of the evil, so that the extension of the principle would only aggravate the malady. In his own state of South Carolina he successfully opposed the choice of presidential electors by popular election, on the ground that "so far from giving power to the people it would be the most effectual way that could be devised of divesting them of it and transferring it to party managers

P

1 Calhoun's Works, Vol. I., p. 224.

and cliques." In his "Disquisition of Government " he sets forth with impregnable logic the sequence of cause and effect. He points out that parties will rule because associated effort is more powerful than individual action.

"The conflict between the two parties in the government of the numerical majority, tends necessarily to settle down into a struggle for the honors and emoluments of the government; and each, in order to obtain an object so ardently desired, will, in the process of the struggle, resort to whatever measure may seem best calculated to effect this purpose. The adoption by the one, of any measure, however objectionable, which might give it an advantage, would compel the other to follow its example. In such a case, it would be indispensable to success, to avoid division and keep united; -and hence, from a necessity inherent in the nature of such governments, each party must be alternately forced, in order to insure victory, to resort to measures to concentrate the control over its movements in fewer and fewer hands, as the struggle became more and more violent. This in process of time must lead to party organization and party caucuses and discipline; and these to the conversion of the honors and emoluments of the government into means of rewarding partisan services, in order to secure the fidelity and increase the zeal of the members of the party."

1 Calhoun's Works, Vol. I., pp. 40, 41