When delegates gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, they faced a problem that threatened to divide the Constitutional Convention: large and small states wanted very different systems of representation. The survival of the proposed government depended on finding a structure that could contain those competing interests.
Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope, explains how the Great Compromise produced a House based on population and a Senate in which every state received equal representation. The Constitution was not designed to eliminate political conflict, but to channel it through durable institutions.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories. Up next another installment of our series about Us, the Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book Land of Hope, Bill McLay. Is also a wonderful young reader’s edition of Land of Hope. If you know or have kids in your life, by all means, pick up this book at Amazon or the usual suspects. You won’t regret it. When the Framers drafted the Constitution, they did so with many goals in mind, but one we might not think about is the goal of managing conflict. In fact, it could be said that the Constitution was designed for conflict. Let’s get into the story. Here’s Bill McClay.00:00:55
Speaker 2: One of the biggest issues that needed to be resolved was the question of representation. How were the different entities that made up the United States to be represented? How were the people to be represented in the Congress. There was a conflict right off the bat. Madison introduced a plan for representation by population. The more populated estate was, the more representatives it would have in the Congress. And this was rightly and or understandably objected to by the small states which had less population, but they were states also, and they felt representation should be by state, not by population. So you have these two very different views, both of which have some legitimacy to them. Neither one is outlandish. So this was a clash of principle and not just of competing interests. It was certainly competing interests. But you should never be content when people tell you this is a clash over interest, because interests generally have principles lurking behind them, and this definitely did. What did it mean to be represented? So what they came up with, with the help of Roger Sherman of Connecticut, was the Great Compromise. And the Great Compromise consisted of having a Congress that had two houses. Two houses one, the lower House, so called the House of Representatives, would apportion representation according to population, so the big states like Virginia would get proportionally more representatives than smaller states like Rhode Island. But there would be a second house, the Senate, which would be representative of the states. Every state, irrespective of size or population, would have two representatives called Senators, and the Senate would be much smaller as a result. You know, we now have fifty states only one hundred members of the Senate many many more members four times over four times as many members of the House of Representatives today, so this was the solution. Each house had certain powers that were exclusive to it. The House of Representatives got to initiate spending bills appropriations. They had the power of the purse to initiate bills, but bills had to pass both houses, so it did have to run the gauntlet of the Senate. Eventually, appropriations bills did. But the Senate had many many privileges or responsibilities that were exclusively its. The Senate ratified treaties. The Senate had an advise and consent function in which it nominees to the Cabinet and other executive appointments had to be consented to by the Senates, and would have the power to examine and validate those nominations. Senators had six year terms of office, so they didn’t have to run for election as often. That meant they could be more detached, less worried about doing something on principle that the population might object to. That’s one reason why the ratification of treaties, for example, would be the province of the Senate. They could be more deliberative. That people often refer to the Senate as the world’s greatest deliberative body. That’s the idea they could think along and longer track house of representatives. However, it was a different matter. They representatives ran every two years, so they were as soon as they got elected, they were thinking about being re elected, and they had to be very, very in tune with what their constituencies were thinking at any particular time. So it’s the more popular house. It’s the one more in touch with the people. By design, the Senate, by design, is less so more you could say aristocratic in its bearer. And this is all by design. One other thing that we should mention is that this new government, this new constitution, the Constitution of seventeen eighty seven, had much greater powers, especially in the executive branch. But it was very important that the powers given to the government were enumerated. That is their number. They’re finite, they’re defined. If something wasn’t enumerated, you can do this, you can’t do this, then the assumption was you couldn’t do it. The powers that were given. The charter that was given to the national government enumerated those powers. It was to be a limited government. That’s what we’re getting at here. It’s a limited government. They would also be controlled by the separation of powers and the clashes that the separation of powers would inevitably result in to the public good not always the most efficient way of doing business. If you want to just have somebody with a stroke of a pen and bring something into being, then the Constitution is not for you. But if you want to make sure that all political entities are represented and have a voice, and have an ability to speak against things that they think, or against their interests, or against their principles, then the Constitution does the job. And it is very good, not perfect, but very good at inhibiting governments from doing rash and foolish things. We’ve done plenty of ra fullish things, as we’ll talk about in the course of this discussion. But the Constitution has a tendency to inhibit that it was designed for conflict. And let me repeat that the Constitution was designed for conflict. It presumed human beings being human beings would always differ in their goals and intentions, their conceptions, their interests, the interests of their region, of their section, of their line of work. All of these things you could try to eliminate conflict all together by giving everybody the same ideas, and well, you don’t have a free society if you have that pure and simple. Or you can allow for the free play of opinions, of perspectives and create a mechanism where those different points of view can come into conflict with one another and fight it out, not literally fight it out, but fight it out within the legislative process to decide who prevails. And by that manner you arrive at a greater degree of unanimity than you’re going to get if you try to make everybody believe the same thing. So that’s what the Constitution’s about. It’s a charter for conflict. That’s not the way we tend to teach it in civics class, but it’s true. A good constitution is one that is structured in a way that’s in accordance with human nature. It goes along with our quarrelsome contentious, disparate, pluralistic nature. It’s structured so that conflicts can be negotiated and channeled for the greater good of the largest part of the public. I like to compare it to an internal combustion engine, which has a series of explosions. When you drive a car, a machine that’s being powered by explosions, constant explosions for the explosions take place in chambers and cylinders. They drive pistons, they drive a crankshaft that drives the wheels of your car and moves it down the road with great power. So the energy released by these explosions is channeled for the public good. The Constitution is designed in just such a way. But it’s designed to work with human nature, not against it, with the grain, not against the grain. And in some sense, the Constitution provides us with the rules of engagement by which we conduct politics.
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories. Up next another installment of our series about Us, the Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book Land of Hope, Bill McLay. Is also a wonderful young reader’s edition of Land of Hope. If you know or have kids in your life, by all means, pick up this book at Amazon or the usual suspects. You won’t regret it. When the Framers drafted the Constitution, they did so with many goals in mind, but one we might not think about is the goal of managing conflict. In fact, it could be said that the Constitution was designed for conflict. Let’s get into the story. Here’s Bill McClay.00:00:55
Speaker 2: One of the biggest issues that needed to be resolved was the question of representation. How were the different entities that made up the United States to be represented? How were the people to be represented in the Congress. There was a conflict right off the bat. Madison introduced a plan for representation by population. The more populated estate was, the more representatives it would have in the Congress. And this was rightly and or understandably objected to by the small states which had less population, but they were states also, and they felt representation should be by state, not by population. So you have these two very different views, both of which have some legitimacy to them. Neither one is outlandish. So this was a clash of principle and not just of competing interests. It was certainly competing interests. But you should never be content when people tell you this is a clash over interest, because interests generally have principles lurking behind them, and this definitely did. What did it mean to be represented? So what they came up with, with the help of Roger Sherman of Connecticut, was the Great Compromise. And the Great Compromise consisted of having a Congress that had two houses. Two houses one, the lower House, so called the House of Representatives, would apportion representation according to population, so the big states like Virginia would get proportionally more representatives than smaller states like Rhode Island. But there would be a second house, the Senate, which would be representative of the states. Every state, irrespective of size or population, would have two representatives called Senators, and the Senate would be much smaller as a result. You know, we now have fifty states only one hundred members of the Senate many many more members four times over four times as many members of the House of Representatives today, so this was the solution. Each house had certain powers that were exclusive to it. The House of Representatives got to initiate spending bills appropriations. They had the power of the purse to initiate bills, but bills had to pass both houses, so it did have to run the gauntlet of the Senate. Eventually, appropriations bills did. But the Senate had many many privileges or responsibilities that were exclusively its. The Senate ratified treaties. The Senate had an advise and consent function in which it nominees to the Cabinet and other executive appointments had to be consented to by the Senates, and would have the power to examine and validate those nominations. Senators had six year terms of office, so they didn’t have to run for election as often. That meant they could be more detached, less worried about doing something on principle that the population might object to. That’s one reason why the ratification of treaties, for example, would be the province of the Senate. They could be more deliberative. That people often refer to the Senate as the world’s greatest deliberative body. That’s the idea they could think along and longer track house of representatives. However, it was a different matter. They representatives ran every two years, so they were as soon as they got elected, they were thinking about being re elected, and they had to be very, very in tune with what their constituencies were thinking at any particular time. So it’s the more popular house. It’s the one more in touch with the people. By design, the Senate, by design, is less so more you could say aristocratic in its bearer. And this is all by design. One other thing that we should mention is that this new government, this new constitution, the Constitution of seventeen eighty seven, had much greater powers, especially in the executive branch. But it was very important that the powers given to the government were enumerated. That is their number. They’re finite, they’re defined. If something wasn’t enumerated, you can do this, you can’t do this, then the assumption was you couldn’t do it. The powers that were given. The charter that was given to the national government enumerated those powers. It was to be a limited government. That’s what we’re getting at here. It’s a limited government. They would also be controlled by the separation of powers and the clashes that the separation of powers would inevitably result in to the public good not always the most efficient way of doing business. If you want to just have somebody with a stroke of a pen and bring something into being, then the Constitution is not for you. But if you want to make sure that all political entities are represented and have a voice, and have an ability to speak against things that they think, or against their interests, or against their principles, then the Constitution does the job. And it is very good, not perfect, but very good at inhibiting governments from doing rash and foolish things. We’ve done plenty of ra fullish things, as we’ll talk about in the course of this discussion. But the Constitution has a tendency to inhibit that it was designed for conflict. And let me repeat that the Constitution was designed for conflict. It presumed human beings being human beings would always differ in their goals and intentions, their conceptions, their interests, the interests of their region, of their section, of their line of work. All of these things you could try to eliminate conflict all together by giving everybody the same ideas, and well, you don’t have a free society if you have that pure and simple. Or you can allow for the free play of opinions, of perspectives and create a mechanism where those different points of view can come into conflict with one another and fight it out, not literally fight it out, but fight it out within the legislative process to decide who prevails. And by that manner you arrive at a greater degree of unanimity than you’re going to get if you try to make everybody believe the same thing. So that’s what the Constitution’s about. It’s a charter for conflict. That’s not the way we tend to teach it in civics class, but it’s true. A good constitution is one that is structured in a way that’s in accordance with human nature. It goes along with our quarrelsome contentious, disparate, pluralistic nature. It’s structured so that conflicts can be negotiated and channeled for the greater good of the largest part of the public. I like to compare it to an internal combustion engine, which has a series of explosions. When you drive a car, a machine that’s being powered by explosions, constant explosions for the explosions take place in chambers and cylinders. They drive pistons, they drive a crankshaft that drives the wheels of your car and moves it down the road with great power. So the energy released by these explosions is channeled for the public good. The Constitution is designed in just such a way. But it’s designed to work with human nature, not against it, with the grain, not against the grain. And in some sense, the Constitution provides us with the rules of engagement by which we conduct politics.
00:09:47
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling by our own Monte Montgomery himself a Hillsdale College grad and a special thanks to Hillsdale College professor Bill McLay. He’s the author of Land of Hope and there’s also a wonderful young reader’s edition of Land of Hope. If you know or have kids in your life, by all means, pick up this book, go to Amazon dot com or the usual suspects. And by the way, it’s just so true. Gridlock is a feature of the Constitution, not a bug. It was designed to manage conflict. The story of us, the story of America and our constitution. Here on our American stories
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