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I was tempted to not closely read Federalist No. 58 because I already knew that the assumptions it contained, however accurate they may have been in the 18th century had been rendered obsolete int he 20th century. For the first 120 years of our history the size of the House was expanded as the population grew. In fact, it was expanded 10 times in those 120 years with each expansion averaging over 30 new seats.
Had that trend continued we would have a house of over 700 members today. Instead 98 years ago, in 1911, the size of the house was expanded for the last time to 435. Aside from a temporary expansion when Hawaii and Alaska became states and the potential of adding two new seats in order to give a voting seat to Washington D.C. our population has more than tripled in the last century while our House size has stagnated. It’s time for use to force Congress to do what the founders intended by augmenting the size of the House as our population increases. We should require that Congress not ignore this action in the future by adding a Constitutional amendment stipulating a maximum number of people to be represented in a congressional district. (The Founders were wise enough to stipulate a minimum in the Constitution.)
Thankfully I did choose to read the whole of Federalist 58 and I found this one caution to the idea of unchecked expansion of the size of the house:
Experience will forever admonish them that, on the contrary, AFTER SECURING A SUFFICIENT NUMBER FOR THE PURPOSES OF SAFETY, OF LOCAL INFORMATION, AND OF DIFFUSIVE SYMPATHY WITH THE WHOLE SOCIETY, they will counteract their own views by every addition to their representatives. The countenance of the government may become more democratic, but the soul that animates it will be more oligarchic. The machine will be enlarged, but the fewer, and often the more secret, will be the springs by which its motions are directed.
This should not stop us from returning to the practice of expanding the size of the House in proportion to the growth of the population, but we only need look to the way that public opinion is so fickle in raging against a $165 Million bonus while standing silent in response to bailouts one thousand times as large and spending proposals (which are each another 5 times larger than the bailouts) to recognize that the caution remains true. While we are expanding the House we should not get so carried away that we dilute the power of individual representatives within the House. At least we have the Senate in place with it’s smaller size to help mitigate the potential weaknesses of a House too large. It’s time to once again have one legislative body where the representatives are connected to their constituents rather than being concceted to their chamber.
2 replies on “Federalist No. 58”
Perhaps 6,000 representatives is too many, but we should at least be having a strong public discussion about this instead of a few mentions of the matter on the fringes. We could easily double our current 435 and still have the House quite manageable.
You say that we should be careful not to “dilute the power of individual representatives within the House.” Hmmm. I think each member is too powerful today, so that it would be wise to dilute individual power, at least somewhat.
While this could certainly increase the power of committee chairs, I believe the overall effect would be healthy.
Perhaps I should have been more careful to say that we should not “dilute the power of individual representatives too much.”
I agree that we need a massive expansion. Personally I would like to see districts capped at 250,000 (if not lower) which would give us a House of at least 1200 representatives.