The facts that I have cited must be obvious to every thoughtful citizen, and the conclusions are obvious. Danger to the welfare of our country may well come through failure to set a limit to the period a President may serve. Yet the danger we fear cannot come if such periods of service are wisely limited. The need is plain, and has been stated by many of the leading figures in our political history. Yet that President who occupied the White House for a shorter time than any other offered an argument in his inaugural address only 30 days before his death, which, strong as it is, is often overlooked. Let me quote a paragraph or two from William Henry Harrison: The following is from President Harrison's inaugural address delivered on March 4, 1841: When the Constitution of the United States first came from the hands of the Convention that formed it, many of the sternest Republicans of the day were alarmed at the extent of the power which had been granted to the Federal Government, and more particularly of that portion which had been assigned to the executive branch. There were in it features which appeared not to be in harmony with their ideas of a simple, representative democracy or republic. And knowing the tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual, predictions were made that, at no very remote period, the Government would terminate in virtual monarchy. Later in the same address he comes more specifically to the point we are considering. He says: It is the part of wisdom for a republic to limit the service of that officer, at least, to whom she has entrusted the management of her foreign relations, the execution of her laws, and the command of her armies and navies, to a period so short as to prevent his forgetting that he is the accountable agent, and not the principal-the servant, not the master. Until an amendment of the Constitution can be effected, public opinion may secure the desired object. I give my aid to it, by renewing the pledge heretofore given, that, under no circumstances, will I consent to serve another term. Almost 100 years have passed since that address was delivered. It is to be hoped that no such another period will have been wasted before the necessary steps are taken to correct a danger that has been seen so clearly for so long. Senator BURKE. Thank you very much, Mr. Daniel. An old friend of mine has consented to come here to testify, and I now present with great pleasure Mr. Edward Lee. Mr. Lee, will you state for the record your name, residence, and occupation? Mr. LEE. Edward T. Lee, Chicago, Ill., dean of the John Marshall Law School, of Chicago. STATEMENT OF EDWARD T. LEE, DEAN OF THE JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL, CHICAGO, ILL. Mr. LEE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee, I thank you for the privilege of appearing before you as one of your fellow citizens and discussing the two resolutions now pending in the Senate proposing amendments to the Constitution. One, Senate Joint Resolution 15, proposes in substance that the term of office of each President elected after the adoption of the amendment shall be 6 years, and that no person elected President, or who shall exercise the duties of that office by succession, shall be eligible for reelection. The other, Senate Joint Resolution 289, proposes in substance that any person elected President, or who shall exercise the duties of that office by succession, shall not be eligible to serve in such office if such person has held office during the whole or any part of each of two separate terms. No stronger argument can be made for the adoption of one of these two proposed constitutional amendments than events in our recent political history. At a time when the very foundations of the world seem unsettled and when our own country may be drawn into the whirlpool of the cataclysm that has engulfed Europe, a time when there should be nothing to distract our people from consideration of dangers threatening us from within and without, it is deplorable that the incumbent of the Presidential office should have seen fit to inject into the present situation the issue of his own personality and the measures advocated by him in his administration, both of which have seriously disturbed the country. On the nominating night of the recent Democratic convention in Chicago the President announced, in what was probably a closed conference with his conscience lasting several years, that he had become persuaded it was his duty to run for a third term. To some this recalled the struggle of Launcelot Gobbo with his conscience whether he should run away from his master or not. He ran. The President having decided apparently that he was indispensable to the country's welfare and safety, the delegates assembled had nothing left to do but to nominate him and then to nominate the Vice Presidential candidate he had selected for them. "Their's not to reason why." To many citizens of both parties the thought must have come, "Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed that he has grown so great?". True, much social legislation has been enacted during the last 7 years, whether for the ultimate benefit of the country is not now discernible, but it has at least conferred upon the President a new title-"The Great Humanitarian." Caesar, too, it will be remembered, was a great humanitarian, for according to Mark Antony's address to the Romans over Caesar's dead body, as reported by Shakespeare, "When that the poor have cried Caesar hath wept." Perhaps because, as the parody runs, "It didn't cost him anything and made him popular with the masses." Had one or the other of the amendments now proposed been already adopted the present crisis would be impossible. Hence, to avoid a future complication like the present, there is imperative need for the adoption of one or the other of the proposed amendments. Personally, I prefer Senate Joint Resolution 15 making the President's tenure of office 6 years with ineligibility thereafter. I approach this subject as a nonpartisan. The late Col. Robert G. Ingersoll used to tell a story of a gang of outlaw Americans who had congregated across the border in Mexico. One night as they sat around their campfire homesick one of them broke the silence and said, "Boys, let's all tell our right names." So I am going to confess that I was a rank partisan at an early age, for I recall as a boy in the 1872 Presidential campaign singing on the way to school with other boys a popular song of the day Grant is the dumpy cart, Wilson is the horse, The campaigns of those days were fought largely on Civil War issues. The Republicans "waved the bloody shirt," warning the North that if the South once got into the saddle all the gains of the Civil War would be lost, payment would be made for the slaves set free, and even the Confederate war debt would be paid out of the Treasury of the United States. Well, we have lived to see the day when the South is in the saddle, though not sitting as prettily as it might if there were fewer chestnut burrs on the saddle. Yet none of these evils has come to pass. I voted twice for William Jennings Bryan on the anti-imperialist issue and still later twice for Woodrow Wilson, whose League of Nations treaty I favored and which, if ratified by the United States Senate, would have, in my opinion, averted the European war of today. Politics defeated favorable action then, as politics has frequently bedeviled the wholesome progress of the country. However, my political classification can have no relation to my attitude toward the two proposed amendments under consideration. These amendments are nonpartisan. They are based on the sound premise that "a long continuance in power makes men arrogant," and, it might be added, likely to make them corrupt also. Rotation in executive offices alone can secure a sound body politic, particularly when executives are the dispensers of vast and rich patronage, are inordinately ambitious, and feared by party associates and subordinates. Had the framers of our Federal Constitution foreseen the growth and variety of the powers granted to and assumed by the Executive Office of the National Government during past years, it is reasonable to believe that they would have hedged in that great office, curtailed its powers, and made its occupant, what Mr. Bryan declared was the intention of the founders "the people's hired man," and not their boss. But neither the framers of the Constitution nor even George Washington could be expected to be all-wise or to have anticipated 150 years of history-some of it downhill. During this long period we have realized many imperfections in the Constitution and some of them have been removed by amendments, the only lawful method of changing the Constitution. As we know, the Constitution was the result of a number of compromises compromises that arose out of the fact that delegates to the convention represented 13 sovereign States as States-some of them large, some small. The small feared the dominion of the large. The whirligig of time has brought in its vengeance, and today the large States have the small States to fear. In the Senate the votes of New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois may be offset by the votes of Delaware, Idaho, and Nevada, and the population of at least one of these States is no larger than a Chicago city ward. The annals of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 reveal that the creation of the office of President and the powers and duties of that office received great attention. Differences of opinion arose as to how the Chief Executive should be chosen, whether by Congress or by the State legislatures, the length of his term of office, whether he should be eligible or not for reelection. The question of a third term never seems to have come up for consideration at all. A plural executive after the manner of the Roman consuls, was proposed. At one session a plan offered by Mason, of Virginia, that an executive should be appointed for 7 years and then be ineligible carried, but the vote did not stick. Many members were afraid the Executive might become a puppet if appointed by Congress and hence were in favor of making the Executive ineligible for reelection. What is evident in 262601-40-13 the debates is that the members were determined that the President should not dominate the Congress. The early Articles of Confederation had forbidden a member to hold office for more than 3 years out of 6. Years later the Constitution of the Confederate States echoed this idea and provided that the President should hold office for 6 years and be ineligible for reelection. Franklin, in the Convention, favored a 6-year term without reelection, declaring that "in free governments the rulers are the servants of the people," not putting it as bluntly as did Mr. Bryan at a later time. The State of Virginia, when the Constitution was under consideration, recommended that there should be an amendment proposed to the new Constitution that a President could not hold office for more than 8 years in 16. The notion seemed to prevail that Washington, whom all wanted for the first President, might be embarrassed by limiting the length of the term too much or making the President ineligible to succeed himself. As all know, he was the unanimous choice of the first body of Presidential electors under the Constitution, was reelected for a second term, and could undoubtedly have been elected for a third term. Instead, however, of inviting such a nomination, he issued his immortal Farewell Address, adding to his fame more than all he might have done in a third term; and although serious trouble was brewing with France, he retired from office at the end of his second term. Washington was succeeded by John Adams, who was not reelected. He was succeeded by Jefferson, who had two terms and then retired, an outspoken opponent against a third term in that high office. Jefferson's writings are replete with his condemnation of a third term and in favor of rotation in office. He was reluctant to run even for a second term. Having made up his mind not to run for a third term, no solicitations, flattery, or temptations could influence him to be a candidate for a third term. The Napoleonic wars, between England and France, which threatened to involve this country, were then raging in Europe. Yet he did not deem himself indispensable. Jefferson was a classical scholar, and doubtless knew the story how in the brave days of old in Rome a convulsion of nature cleft a great chasm in the Roman Forum, which the soothsayers declared would not close until Rome had thrown therein its most valuable possession. Thereupon, a Roman citizen, conceiving that Rome's most valuable possession was its citizens, jumped into the chasm, which at once closed over him, and the city was saved. But Jefferson would doubtless have remembered also that at another time Rome was saved from capture by the Gauls by the cackling of geese on Capitoline Hill. He was a modest man. Among other things he wrote the following: That there are in our country a great number of characters entirely equal to the management of its affairs cannot be doubted. Many of them indeed have had no opportunities of making themselves known to their fellow citizens; but many have had, and the only difficulty will be to choose among them. These changes are necessary for the security of republican government. Other times, other manners. Appeals of legislatures could not move him. To Connecticut Republicans he wrote: Having myself approved the example of my illustrious predecessor in voluntary retiring from a trust, which, if too long continued, in some hands might become the subject of reasonable apprehension, I could not mistake my own duty when placed in a similar situation. In January 1805 he wrote to his friend John Taylor: Washington set the example of voluntary retirement after 8 years. I shall follow it. A few precedents will oppose the obstacle of habit to anyone after awhile who shall endeavor to extend his term. Long after he had retired from office, in 1821, he wrote in his autobiography: The reeligibility of a President for life I quite disapprove. My fears of that feature are founded on the importance of the office, on the fierce contentions it might excite among ourselves, if continued for life, and the dangers of interference either with money or arms by foreign nations to whom the choice of an American President might become interesting. * My wish, there * fore, was that the President should be elected for 7 years and be ineligible afterward. But the practice adopted, I think, is better, allowing his continuance for S years, with a liability to be dropped halfway of the term, making that a period of probation. ** The example of four Presidents voluntarily retiring at the end of their eighth year and the progress of public opinion that the principle is salutary have given it in practice the force of precedent and usage, inasmuch that should a President consent to be a candidate for a third election, I trust he would be rejected on this demonstration of his ambitious views. How much more strongly might he write against a President who should seek to be a candidate for a third term? After Jefferson came two more Virginians, Madison and Monroe. Then the country tried another Massachusetts man, John Quincy Adams, the son of the second President. During Monroe's second term a joint resolution passed the Senate, only to die later in the House, which provided that no person having been elected President of the United States a second time should again be eligible for that office. There was no problem of a second term, let alone a third term, with either of the Adamses, though both were highly qualified men. In 1829 John Quincy Adams was succeeded by the darling of the Democratic Party of his day, Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee. Jackson favored an amendment to the Constitution for the election of President and Vice President by popular vote and limitation of the office to a single term. He said: Could this be obtained ** tional safeguard. * I think our liberties would possess an addi He was disposed to retire at the end of his first term but declared that he would not be driven into retirement by his enemies, thus making the contest a vindictive matter. He was anxious to have the national debt paid and the bank question settled, and then he would be ready to retire, first making sure, however, that his friend, Martin Van Buren, whom he had forced upon his party for Vice President, should succeed him as Chief Executive. From Jackson to Lincoln no President was reelected to a second term. In the light of what we know about Lincoln, it is fair to assume that he would have followed the tradition of his predecessors and declined a third term. General Grant, whom a grateful country elevated to the Presidency, succeeded Andrew Johnson. A genius as a soldier, he was hardly fitted for that great office, but he was elected a second time. Then the gangs of officeholders around him, many connected with the star-route and whisky-ring scandals, caused him to give ear to the temptation to try for a third term. Strong opposition in his own party developed, and |