Birthday Party

Rarely, except at Presidential inaugurals, does the entire democratic hierarchy of the United States gather under one roof. But so they did last week, in the grey-&-gilt chamber of the House of Representatives, with remarkably few absentees--the President and his executive Cabinet, both bodies of the legislative branch, all eight members of the Supreme Court--to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first session of Congress.

Enthroned above all were the heads of the two Houses, President John Nance Garner of the Senate (looking more than usually owlish) and Speaker William Bankhead. Below them were ranged President Roosevelt, Senate Majority Leader Barkley, House Majority Leader Rayburn, and a tireless Representative from Manhattan for whom the sesquicentennial of the U. S. has been a three-year field day, Director Sol Bloom of the Joint Committee on Arrangements.

The celebration provided for and by this august gathering consisted of songs (Mezzo-Soprano Gladys Swarthout, Baritone John Charles Thomas) and speeches. Three of the speeches were thumping successes:

Charles Evans Hughes (Excerpts): "Here the ground swells of autocracy have not yet upset or even disturbed the authority and responsibility of the essential legislative branch of democratic institutions. . . . What the people really want they generally get. ... In the great enterprise of making democracy workable, we are all partners. One member of our body politic cannot say to another--'I have no need of thee.' "

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Excerpts) : "Today, with many other democracies, the United States will give no encouragement to the belief that our processes are outworn or that we will approvingly watch the return of forms of government which for 2,000 years have proved their tyranny and their instability alike. . . .

"Where democracy is snuffed out, where it is curtailed, there, too, the right to worship God in one's own way is circumscribed or abrogated. Shall we by our passiveness, by our silence, by assuming the attitude of the Levite who pulled his skirts together and passed by on the other side, shall we thus lend encouragement to those who today persecute religion or deny it? The answer to that is 'No.' "

John Nance Garner* (leaning over the dais toward Franklin Roosevelt and speaking in tones which the microphones picked up) : "Don't you want to get out of here?"

Full worthy of this memorial were the events which the 76th Congress thus celebrated. The ist Congress met on March 4, 1789. Because of the conditions of the roads, and the casualness of Congressmen, a quorum of both Houses could not be mustered until April 6. Their meeting place was Federal Hall at Wall and Nassau Streets, Manhattan (pop. 30,000). President-elect George Washington did not arrive until April 23, was inaugurated April 30. Before the inaugural, Vice President John Adams, having a great regard for ceremony but no precedent to go on, was completely flummoxed. Said he to the Senate:

"Gentlemen, I feel great difficulty how to act. I am possessed of two separate powers--the one in esse and the other in posse. I am Vice President. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything. But am president also of the Senate. When the President comes into the Senate, what shall he be? I cannot be [president] then. No, gentlemen, I cannot, I cannot. I wish, gentlemen, to think what I shall be."

Compared to the work before the first Congress, the work of later Congresses, even under the New Deal, was duck soup. The first Congress had to make its rules, set up the Departments of State, Treasury and War, fill the Treasury (by tariffs which remained models of log-rolling for a century), set up the Federal judiciary (its designer, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, became fourth Chief Justice), assume the national and State ,debts (by trading to Virginia the capital site on the Potomac). All this it did, and more.

A large majority of its members were from the privileged classes--wealthy planters, landowners, merchants, bankers, lawyers. Yet they heeded the demands of Virginia, New York and Massachusetts and passed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, guaranteeing individual liberties to all men.

Last week the sesquicentennial was marked by two more events: 1) rich Bibliophile A. S. W. Rosenbach of Philadelphia revealed that he had obtained, for an undisclosed sum from an undisclosed source, the original draft of the Bill of Rights; 2) Massachusetts got around at last to ratifying it.* Explained Governor Saltonstall as he signed in the presence of uniformed cadets: his State's delay was due to the liberty-loving fathers of Massachusetts having sought to protect the people's rights by "even more inclusive definitions."

* Who had previously refused to break his six-year rule of silence even to speak at this birthday party.

* Connecticut and Georgia have not yet ratified.

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