The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-01-17
Representatives Instructed
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BY PHINEAs FLETCHER.

The rights of constituents to instruct their representatives in congress. an in stance of which was recently afforded by the legislature of Louisiana, directing, or requesting, the senators from that state to vote for the ratification of the Panama treaty is very old question on both sides of which a good deal has been saii and written. The point is, what Is the obligation resting on the represen- tative under such circumstances? Is it a constitutional or moral one? Or, again, is there any obligation at all? Once elected Is not a representative the sole judge of the line of action he shall pur- sue on all matters requiring his decis- ion? In England, also, the question has been a perpexing one, and has been de- cided as often one way as another If the instructions suited the parliamentary representative he followed them. If they did not. he followed his own will conscious, interest or whatever else he called it. and took the consequences.
 Previous to the adoption of the pres ent constitution, instructions were fre- ouently sent to members of the con- gress of the Confederation by their con stituents, and the general disposition was to obey them. Jefferson In let ter to Washington, in 17s4, on the sub iect of the formation of the Society of the Cincinnati, to which there was good deal of opposition because of it's supposed aarstocratic tendencies, said: Congress as & body, if left to them selves. will in my opinion say nothing on the subject. They may, however be forced into a declaration by instructions from some of the states" During the session of the first congress under the present constitution, instructions" from their constituents disturbed the legis- lative equanimity of several gentlemen, and a wide diversity of opinion prevail ed on the subject. In 1916 John Taylor printed an Enquiry Into the Principles of Our Government" in which the right of instruction was affirmed. The argu- ments used convinced Jefferson, who wrote to Mir Taylor as follows: Your book settles unanswerably the right of instructing representatives and of their duty to obey"
 Madison did not entirely coincide with Jefferson on the subject In a letter to Henry Lee, of Virginia, written In 1925, he said: "The nature and extent of the obligation on a representative to be guided by the known will of his con-
 
 yet to be in a controvertible state. That the obligation is not, in strictness, con sttutional or legal, is manifest, since the vote of the representative is equally valid and operative whether obeying or violating the instruction of his constit- uents It can only be a moral obligation to be weighed by the conscience of the representative, or prudential one, to be enforced by the penal displeasure of his constitution" In the stormy period of the Jackson era when Lie bank, the tar fir, and nullification were agitating the whole country to a degree of almost fe- rocious intensity the question of '1n- structions' again came up for considera- tion. To a correspondent who appealed to him for light thereon, the venerable
 father of the constitution then in the last days of his great career, wrote: ''The precise obligation imposed on a rep resentative by the instructions of his constituents still divides the opinions of