Zero to IPO: Over $1 Trillion of

Actionable Advice from the World's

Most Successful Entrepreneurs
Frederic Kerrest
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 Praise for Frederic Kerrest and
Zero To IPO

This book will inspire a whole generation of CEOs and founders.

—MARC ANDREESSEN, Cofounder and General Partner at
Andreessen Horowitz

A gold mine of valuable, practical, and actionable advice, Zero to IPO

is a must-read for anyone with an entrepreneurial spark.
—BRIAN HALLIGAN, Cofounder and Executive Chairman of
HubSpot

If you’re an aspiring founder, start with this book and keep it within
easy reach as you’re building and growing your business.
Refreshingly candid and straightforward, it’s an indispensable
resource you and your team will constantly draw from.
—SHELLYE ARCHAMBEAU, Fortune 500 board member, former
CEO of MetricStream, and author of Unapologetically Ambitious

In Zero to IPO, Frederic Kerrest reveals the guts and glory of

entrepreneurship. He transports you through its highs, lows, and
anxiety-ridden in-betweens for an enlightening and wildly
entertaining read.
—EMILY CHANG, Host and Executive Producer of Bloomberg
Technology and author of Brotopia

The world needs more entrepreneurs. If you’re dreaming of starting

a business, Zero to IPO will not only inspire you but empower you
with the necessary knowledge and confidence to make your dream a
reality.
—HARRY HURST, Founder and Co-CEO of Pipe

We’ve been fortunate enough to learn from many great founders

over time, many of whom are captured in Zero to IPO.
—MELANIE PERKINS, Cofounder and CEO of Canva

A huge success hack, Zero to IPO will save entrepreneurs precious

years of trial and error because they’ll be able to learn from dozens
of business leaders before they even get started.
—JEREMY BLOOM, Cofounder and CEO of Integrate, National Ski
Hall of Famer, and two-time US Olympian
Copyright © 2022 by Jacques Frederic Kerrest. All rights reserved.
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To every entrepreneur battling the odds, trying to turn their
vision into reality.
The world needs you.

One hundred percent of any financial profits I receive from this book
will go to BUILD.org, an organization that uses entrepreneurship to
ignite the potential of youth from under-resourced communities, and
to The Hidden Genius Project, which trains and mentors Black
male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship, and leadership
skills to transform their lives and their communities.
 CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 Should You Be an Entrepreneur?

CHAPTER 2 Ideas
CHAPTER 3 Teams
CHAPTER 4 Fundraising
CHAPTER 5 Sales
CHAPTER 6 Culture
CHAPTER 7 Leadership
CHAPTER 8 Growth
CHAPTER 9 Crashing and Burning
CHAPTER 10 Managing Yourself
CHAPTER 11 Boards
CHAPTER 12 IPOs
CHAPTER 13 What Comes Next
Acknowledgments

Index
 INTRODUCTION

It was July 2011 when I realized I had failed.

I was driving my ailing, 17-year-old Honda Accord down Harrison
Street in San Francisco, and the heavy, gray blanket of summer fog
seemed to press down on the city, and on me particularly. I
considered just heading back to my apartment and not showing up
for the meeting. After all, what was there to say? Our business was
doomed.
I had started Okta with my friend Todd McKinnon in 2009. It was a
pretty simple idea. We both believed business software was going to
move online. The days of getting CD-ROM install discs would end
soon. Eventually, somebody had to make sure that we could all sign
in to software as it moved online. That had to be useful, right?
Todd and I walked into the small conference room at our cramped
office where our board of directors was waiting. They had no idea
that the news we were going to share would mean they were about
to lose all the money they had bet on us. I tried to remember the
moment, to lodge those smiles in my mind. Nobody was going to be
smiling when we were done.
“OK, well, I’ll dive into the quarterly report,” I said.
I had stayed up all night pointlessly adding slides to the
presentation, hoping to soften up the directors with minutiae before
coming to the bad news. As I clicked through the data, I could see
their attention wandering. There was a slide about hiring. Another
about client prospects. Finally, we got to the slide I’d been dreading:
sales and revenue.
“Yeah, and so, next, I’m gonna highlight that we hit a speed bump
with sales,” I said. “We missed our projections by 70 percent.”
Everybody looked up. That got their attention. They seemed to be
wondering if they had misheard me. Perhaps I’d said 17 percent?
I clicked forward, and it was there for all to see. A 70 percent sales
miss. Our revenues weren’t going up and to the right like all of our
planned projections. They had flatlined like someone whose heart
had stopped. Nobody was buying what we were selling.
“You show us a bunch of random sh*t before you show us this?” one
board member asked, astounded.
“Let me tell you one thing,” another board member snapped. “This is
the kind of presentation that should only be a single slide long.”
Then they told me to get out of the room. They were going to talk
to us individually, so they could figure out what was going on. Since
Todd was the CEO, they’d speak to him first.
I stepped outside and looked around the office. I was the president
and COO. I’d spent two years pouring everything into this company.
Now, it was worthless. To make things worse, my wife had just
finished her medical residency, and we’d taken on a lot of debt. My
stress levels were at an all-time high. I needed some air.
An hour later, I was back in my car, driving aimlessly around the city,
when I got a call from Ben Horowitz, one of our board members.
Ben and his partner Marc Andreessen had given us half of the $1
million seed money we’d used to start the company. Less than 12
months later, they’d put in another $8.85 million.
“You know that forecasting doesn’t translate into sales, right?” he
said.
I mumbled something lame, and he cut me off. I figured he was
going to fire me and shut the company down.
Instead, he gave me two pieces of advice. I’ll get into the specifics
of what he said in the following chapters, but here’s the upshot: He
didn’t tell me to work harder or berate me for being an idiot (though
that’s what I felt like). He drew on his own experience as a founder
who’d faced near-bankruptcy himself and gave me specific, tactical
suggestions for how we could pull ourselves out of our death spiral.
It was wisdom he’d learned the hard way.
Too often in business, this kind of knowledge is only shared among a
select few. It’s the kind of thing that gets passed person-to-person.
And yet, for a founder, it often makes the difference between
success and failure. In my case, the advice turned everything
around. We immediately implemented Ben’s ideas, and things
started to look up. Sales increased, and the business began to grow
rapidly. Six years after that fateful board meeting, Okta went public.
Today, in the fall of 2021, as this book is preparing to go to press,
the company is worth over $40 billion dollars.*
If it weren’t for that advice, at that moment, I don’t think Okta
would have survived. It changed the course of the company—and
the course of my life.

Too often in business, this kind of knowledge

is only shared among a select few. . . . And yet,
for a founder, it often makes the difference
between success and failure.

We tend to think of successful startups as

businesses that were bound to succeed while
failed companies were doomed from the start.
That’s not how it works.
Several times a week, I get calls or emails from aspiring
entrepreneurs looking for exactly the kind of advice that Ben gave
me on that gloomy day. They’re looking for real-world, actionable
insights, and they’re not getting them from the “Big Idea” business
books out there. I read those books—and appreciate them—but
when you’re in the trenches, you don’t want generalities. You need
to know what to do right now.
That’s what this book provides. Over the past 20 years, I’ve taken
notes on the advice I’ve been given. I’ve been lucky enough to meet
hundreds of business leaders and investors across the country, and I
always pepper them with questions. The nitty-gritty tips in this book
represent the distilled wisdom of two decades in the business
trenches. It comes from people who have built over a trillion dollars’
worth of wealth for themselves and their investors.
I’ve battle-tested these ideas myself, so I know their power. And I’m
convinced it’s long past time to share this wisdom. Entrepreneurs,
CEOs, and corporate board members are overwhelmingly people of
privilege—mostly men, largely white, frequently graduates of a few
select universities, and usually members of difficult-to-penetrate
networks. That has to change. Most economic growth—in the United
States and abroad—comes from entrepreneurs and the new
companies they create. To help more people earn a larger slice of
the pie, we need to demystify the world of startups and disseminate
the hard-won, closely held secrets of how to grow a business. These
lessons should be available to everyone. That’s why I created the
Zero to IPO podcast that preceded this book and why I decided to
capture all those insights in a single place, here.
Many people go to business school thinking that an MBA will teach
them to navigate the world of finance and management. That may
be true if you want to work for an established company. But if you
want to start your own—if you have a fresh idea for how to solve a
problem—then business school doesn’t usually provide a roadmap. I
was fortunate to attend MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where I
received an MBA in entrepreneurship and innovation. I made many
lifelong friendships with classmates and faculty. I took amazing
classes, including several on entrepreneurship and tech startups. I
also ran MIT’s celebrated $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. But
even with all those experiences, I still emerged from business school
with a weak grip on what was involved in building a company from
scratch. I had to learn that from talking to entrepreneurs who had
struggled before me—people I met through social circles in the Bay
Area as well as other founders I met through Okta’s investors. In
this book, I will present their wisdom and advice.
The chapters ahead will guide you through the key steps in
launching and growing a company. While I and many of the people
featured in these pages have built public companies, a lot of the
advice in here applies to founders who intend to get acquired or just
stay private. Only a small subset of companies make it to the stock
market, after all. Many founders build businesses that eventually get
snapped up by larger corporations. And many more remain private
(known as “cash-flow businesses”), throwing off enough money for
you and your colleagues to do the work you want and live well.
You’ll see that some of the information in here—like how to raise
money from venture capitalists—does only apply to the world of
high-growth startups. But most of the advice, from how to choose
an idea to how to set your company’s culture, is applicable to
entrepreneurs starting any kind of business.

This book is organized by topics in roughly the order you’ll run

into them as you build your business. In the beginning, I’ll talk about
who should become an entrepreneur and how to tell if you’ve got a
good idea. From there, I’ll focus on putting teams together and
raising money. After that, I’ll discuss sales and building a company
culture, and then how to grow your company and how to lead it. I’ll
talk about what happens when everything goes south and how to
take care of your mental and emotional health along the way. Lastly,
I’ll talk about working with boards of directors and going public.
The material is divided into individual sections, each with its own set
of takeaways. Some of the stories in here are my own. Most,
however, come from the many founders, investors, and executives
I’ve met throughout my career in Silicon Valley. Some of them told
their stories on my podcast. Others shared their experiences
specifically for this book. Unless otherwise noted, all the stories and
quotes in the book, including those from various experts, come from
these interviews.
If you’re an entrepreneur who doesn’t happen to live in Silicon
Valley, New York, London, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, or any of the other major
startup hubs around the world, I want you to know that you too can
do this. This book will help you, but I need to level with you:
Regardless of where you live, your life will be painful and hard if you
follow this path. We tend to think of successful startups as
businesses that were bound to succeed while failed companies were
doomed from the start. That’s not how it works. In this book, you
are going to hear what really makes the difference. This may
dissuade some of you from pursuing your idea. Better now than
later.
But if you are not dissuaded—if you’re ready to withstand years of
doubt, instability, and stress—then welcome to the real world of
entrepreneurship.
Source: “10 Best U.S. Cities for Startup Costs,” Embroker, October
2021.

Three Rules to Live By

This book is full of great tactical advice, but if you
stop reading here, there are three principles I’d
want you to leave with, even if you learned nothing
else.

1
Time is your most valuable asset.
If you take money from investors (particularly venture
capital firms), that money has a fuse on it. The VCs
themselves need to produce returns for the institutions that
gave them the money to invest in you (pension funds and
university endowments, for example). So as soon as you
take a VC check, there’s pressure on you to become wildly
successful within a relatively short period of time. How
long? It depends, but for the purpose of making this point,
think at least five to seven years. That means you’re going
to have to look at everything you do—from the smallest
tactical choice to the biggest strategic decision—through
the lens of whether it’s helping you move quickly or
whether it’s slowing you down.

2
Keep the main thing the main thing.
Bill Aulet, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of
Management, used to remind me of this when I was in
business school. It’s so important that I printed it up
poster-size and hung it on my office wall. What it means is:
prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Don’t get wrapped up in
details that don’t matter. Always stay clear on what the
most important thing is—for the next hour, the next month,
or the next year. I take this precept so seriously that, more
than a decade into Okta, people around the office still hear
me asking myself several times a day (out loud), “OK,
what’s the main thing I should be working on?” It’s my way
of helping myself stay laser-focused.
 3
Nothing happens until someone sells something.
This is the second poster on my wall. It paraphrases a
remark originally attributed to one of IBM’s first CEOs,
Thomas Watson Sr. Sure, rag on motivational posters all
you want, but Old Man Watson had it right. When you first
start out, you’re going to find yourself dithering over
everything from organizational charts to early hiring
decisions. But none of that ultimately matters if you never
make a sale. The point of your business is to sell your
product to customers. Everything else is secondary.

* The valuations of public companies fluctuate with the

stock market. All valuations in this book are pegged to
each company’s market capitalization on Nov 15, 2021,
which was shortly before this book went to press. The
valuations of private companies were taken from funding
and acquisition announcements.
one

SHOULD YOU BE AN
ENTREPRENEUR?
My black dress shoes were soaked through. I couldn’t feel my
toes. But I needed to keep moving. The few vehicles on this stretch
of Oklahoma highway blasted through the rapidly accumulating
snow. They were trying to outrun the blizzard, but there was no
escaping it for me. I was on foot. As the cars passed, they splattered
ugly gray-black sludge across my suit and tie.
“I’m going to die,” I muttered through a shiver. “What the hell am I
doing?”
The answer was simple: I was desperately trying to make a sale.
It was February 2011, a few months before the terrible board
meeting I recounted in the Introduction, and we weren’t getting a
lot of takers for our product. A guy at an oil and gas company in
Tulsa had agreed to meet, so I flew out to pitch him.
Unfortunately, the blizzard hit that morning, and when I called a taxi
from the hotel, the operator laughed.
“No one’s going out in this weather,” he said and hung up.
I’d flown halfway across the country. I looked at my watch. It was 9
a.m. I had one hour to get there. I hurried to the front desk and
showed the receptionist the address. She said it was maybe a mile
or two down the highway, but it was impossible to drive there.
Anybody out in this weather was taking their life into their hands.
“Do you think I could walk?”
She laughed but then stopped. “Wait, are you serious?”
“Just point me in the right direction.”
Forty-five minutes later, I started to realize a few things. The first
was how much wind a semitruck creates as it blasts past you. The
second was that this is what being an entrepreneur really looks like.
Shivering cold, covered in grime, hoping for nothing more than the
chance to convince a stranger to buy your product.
When I miraculously stumbled into our prospect’s lobby, the security
guard stood up with concern.
“Are you OK?”
I looked at my watch. It was a minute past ten.
“I’m fine,” I said, smiling through a chattering jaw.

If you follow the media coverage of startups, you could be

forgiven for thinking they’re a quick way to riches. When a company
goes public or is acquired, there’s an explosion of triumphant articles
that rarely reveal the journey it took to get there. The truth is that
starting a company is a lot more like hiking through an Oklahoma
blizzard. You’re constantly blasted with bits of gravel, dirt, and
garbage, and that’s before you even pitch your product.
The data is clear: The vast majority of new companies fail. Others do
well and get acquired by larger companies, landing tidy sums for
their founders but not the gargantuan paydays of top IPOs. The
number of startups that make it to a public stock exchange—and
turn their founders into instant millionaires—is microscopically small.
Obviously, luck plays a role, but the personal makeup of the
founders is also critical—so much so that it’s one of the top factors
investors look at when assessing a company. You can have an
amazing idea, but if a venture capitalist can’t picture you having the
skills—or the psychology—to carry it out, he or she will pass.
In this chapter, I’ll review what it takes to be an entrepreneur: the
skills, the mindsets, and the dispositions. Hopefully you’ll read this
and think, “This is me!” But if it doesn’t feel like you or if you start to
feel queasy, listen to that inner voice. Odysseus’s journey had
nothing on the entrepreneur’s path, so be certain this is the right fit
for you.

“I’m going to die,” I muttered through a

shiver. “What the hell am I doing?”

Do You Have What It Takes?

A checklist of qualities that founders need to
have.

Founders are all unique. Steve Jobs was different from Mark
Zuckerberg. Katrina Lake is different from Elon Musk. Bill Gates is
different from Arianna Huffington. Despite these differences, though,
they all share certain qualities. Does this look like you?

The ability to thrive in ambiguity. Running a startup means

never having near as much information as you’d like when it comes
to making important decisions. Forget about taking 30 data points
and running a regression analysis. You’ll be lucky to have three.
You’ll effectively be guessing most of the time. Are you comfortable
with never knowing anything for certain?

A knack for salesmanship. You’re going to be selling every

moment of every day. Not just to customers. Also to investors: Why
should they back you? To talent: Why should they abandon their
secure jobs to come work for you? To vendors: Why should they give
you favorable terms? And don’t forget your spouse or partner (if you
have one): Why should they agree to let you imperil your family’s
future with this crazy dream of yours?

Equal parts EQ and IQ. Most great founders aren’t the

stereotypical socially awkward geeks. They’re actually great with
people. They know how to inspire and motivate. They can put their
egos aside and listen to their teams, advisors, and investors. So be
sure your EQ (emotional intelligence) rivals your IQ.

Organization and discipline. When you’re the boss, no one is

going to get on your case if you’re disorganized or slack off. You
have to be your own backstop. Do you naturally create plans and
knock things out on your own? Can you keep track of the big picture
while also figuring out what needs to move forward in any given
week or month?
 Energy and drive. You’ve probably heard the expression, “It’s
not a sprint; it’s a marathon.” That’s true, except that founding a
company is a marathon made up of seven-minute miles.* You need
to keep moving, at all times.

Inspirational leadership. Can you set a vision—and a mission

—and get people excited to follow you? This doesn’t necessarily
mean pulling off a Henry V on St. Crispin’s Day† (though kudos if
you can). Inspiring people come in all kinds of packages. It’s not
about how you do it. It’s just that you do it.

Self-confidence. When I started Okta, I always said I was

“betting on myself”—that I had what it would take to grow Okta into
a successful company. Sure, that confidence wobbled in our darkest
times. But I always believed that if I just kept chipping away at our
problems, I would find a way.

Resilience. Napster founder and early Facebook president Sean

Parker famously said running a startup is like chewing broken glass—
to succeed, you need to fall in love with the taste of your own blood.
And it’s true. You’re going to get punched in the mouth every day.
Are you the kind of person who’ll just keep getting up? Or will it
eventually flatten you?

More Skills You Need to Master

A lot of people think being an entrepreneur is just about
coming up with a great idea. (In the tech industry, they often think
it’s about having a great idea and being a great programmer.) But
taking your idea from zero to IPO involves so many more tasks than
simply building out the concept you’ve thought up. Take a look at
this checklist, and ask yourself: Can I do that? Am I going to enjoy
doing that? Because these things are what your job is actually going
to consist of, especially the bigger you get.

Can you recruit a team, especially people willing to leave safe

jobs at established companies, when you can’t pay them as much
and you can’t guarantee they’ll have a job a year from now?

Can you attract investment capital, or at least convince a

bank to give you a loan?

If you’ll be selling to corporations, can you figure out the right

executives to approach and convince them to give you time to
pitch them?

Once you have a prototype, can you persuade customers to

test-drive it? Or better, to pay you to participate in a pilot program?

Can you build a financial model, learn to forecast, and manage

a budget, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and income
statement?

Are you comfortable with conflict? Can you resolve conflicts

between people, such as differences of opinion among senior leaders
in your organization who have competing goals?

Can you tell a compelling story about your company, so that

the media will want to cover you?
What do you think? If you were set loose today, could you do all
these things? More importantly, would you enjoy doing all these
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
climate, upon an equal soil, freely pasture his herds and flocks where
he pleases, and love his neighbor better than himself.

OUR FARMERS.

The test of profitable farming is the state of the account at the end
of the year. Under free trade the evidence multiplies that the English
farmer comes to the end of the year with no surplus, often in debt,
bare and discontented. Their laborers rarely know the luxury of
meat, not over sixteen ounces per week,[87] and never expect to own a
rood of the soil.
But under the protective policy the American farmer holds and
cultivates his own land, has a surplus at the end of the year for
permanent investments or improvements, and educates and brings
up his sons and daughters with the advantages and comforts of good
society. There are more American houses with carpets than in any
other country of the world. I believe it will not be disputed that the
down-trodden tillers of the soil in Great Britain are not well fed; that
they are coarsely underclad, and that for lack of common-school
culture they would hardly be regarded as fit associates here for
Americans who drive their teams afield, or for the young men who
start in life as laborers upon farms. The claim that free trade is the
true policy of the American farmer would seem to be, therefore, a
very courageous falsehood.
It is an unfortunate tendency of the age that nearly one-half of the
population of the globe is concentrated in cities, often badly
governed, and sharply exposed to extravagance, pauperism,
immorality, and all the crimes and vices which overtake mankind
reared in hot-beds. I would neither undervalue the men of brilliant
parts, nor blot out the material splendor of cities, but regret to see
the rural districts depopulated for their unhealthy aggrandizement.
Free trade builds up a few of these custom-house cities, where gain
from foreign trade is the chief object sought, where mechanics,
greater in numbers than any other class, often hang their heads,
though Crœsus rolls in Pactolian wealth, and Shylock wins his pound
of flesh; but protection assembles artisans and skilled workmen in
tidy villages and towns, details many squadrons of industry to other
and distant localities, puts idle and playful waterfalls at work, opens,
builds up, and illumines, as with an electric light, the whole interior
of the country; and the farmer of Texas or of New England, of Iowa
or of Wisconsin, is benefited by such reinforcements of consumers,
whether they are by his side or across the river, at Atlanta or South
Bend, at Paterson or at Providence. The farmers own and occupy
more than nineteen-twentieths of our whole territory, and their
interest is in harmony with the even-handed growth and prosperity
of the whole country.
There is not a State whose interests would not be jeopardized by
free trade, and I should like to dwell upon the salient facts as to
Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Alabama, Illinois, and many other States,
but I shall only refer to one. The State of Texas, surpassing empires
in its vast domains, doubling its population within a decade, and
expending over twenty million dollars within a year in the
construction of additional railroads, with a promised expenditure
within the next fifteen months of over twenty-seven millions more,
has sent to market as raw material the past year 12,262,052 pounds
of hides, 20,671,639 pounds of wool, and 1,260,247 bales of cotton.
Her mineral resources, though known to be immense, are as yet
untouched. Her bullocks, in countless herds on their way to market,
annually crowd and crop the prairies from Denver to Chicago. But
now possessed of a liberal system of railroads, how long will the
dashing spirit of the Lone Star State—where precious memories still
survive of Austin, of Houston, of Rusk, and of Schleicher—be content
to send off unmanufactured her immense bulk of precious raw
materials, which should be doubled in value at home, and by the
same process largely multiply her population? With half as many in
number now as had the original thirteen, and soon to pass our
largest States, wanting indefinite quantities of future manufactures
at home, Texas should also prepare to supply the opening trade with
Mexico, in all of its magnitude and variety, and far more worthy of
ambition than in the golden days of Montezuma.
No State can run and maintain railroads unless the way-stations,
active and growing settlements and towns, are numerous enough to
offer a large, constant, and increasing support. The through business
of long lines of railroads is of great importance to the termini, and
gives the roads some prestige, but the prosperity and dividends
mainly accrue from the local business of thrifty towns on the line of
the roads. It is these, especially manufacturing towns, which make
freight both ways, to and from, that free trade must ever fail to do,
and while through freights, owing to inevitable competition, pay little
or no profit, the local freights sustain the roads, and are and must be
the basis of their chief future value. Without this efficient local
support, cheap and rapid long transportation would be wholly
impracticable.
The Southern States, in the production of cotton, have possibly
already reached the maximum quantity that can be cultivated with
greatest profit, unless the demand of the world expands. A short crop
now often brings producers a larger sum than a full crop. The
amount of the surplus sent abroad determines the price of the whole
crop. Production appears likely soon to outrun the demand. Texas
alone has latent power to overstock the world. Is it not time,
therefore, to curtail the crop, or to stop any large increase of it, while
sure to obtain as much or more for it, and to turn unfruitful capital
and labor into other and more profitable channels of industry? The
untrodden fields, where capital and labor wait to be organized for the
development of Southern manufactures and mining, offer unrivaled
temptations to leaders among men in search of legitimate wealth.
The same facts are almost equally applicable to general
agriculture, but more particularly to the great grain-growing regions
of the West. A great harvest frequently tends to render the labor of
the whole year almost profitless, whenever foreign countries are
blessed with comparatively an equal abundance. The export of corn
last year in October was 8,535,067 bushels, valued at $4,604,840,
but the export of only 4,974,661 bushels this year brings $3,605,813.
An equal difference appears in the increased value of exports of flour.
A much larger share of crops must be consumed nearer home, if any
sure and regular market is to be permanently secured. The foreign
demand, fitful and uncertain as it is, rarely exceeds one-twentieth of
even the present home requirements, and the losses from long
transportation, incident to products of great bulk, can never be
successfully avoided except by an adequate home demand.
Farmers do not look for a market for grain among farmers, but
solely among non-producing consumers, and these it is greatly to
their interest to multiply rather than to diminish by forcing them to
join in producing or doubling crops for which there may be an
insufficient demand. Every ship-load of wheat sent abroad tends to
bring down foreign prices; and such far-off markets should be sought
only when the surplus at home is excessive or when foreign prices
are extraordinarily remunerative.
The wheat regions of the West, superb as they undoubtedly are, it
is to be feared, have too little staying character to be prodigally
squandered, and their natural fertility noticeably vanishes in the rear
unless retained by costly fertilizers almost as rapidly as new fields
open in front. Some of the Middle States as well as the New England,
though seeking fertilizers far and near, already look to the West for
much of their corn and bread; and there is written all over Eastern
fields, as Western visitors may read, the old epitaph, “As we are now
so you may be.” It will take time for this threatened decadence, but
not long in the life of nations. The wheat crop runs away from the
Atlantic coast to the Pacific, and sinks in other localities as it looms
up in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Dakota. Six years of cropping in
California, it is said, reduces the yield per acre nearly one-half.
There was in 1880 devoted to wheat culture over thirty-five million
acres, or nearly double the acreage of 1875. In twenty-five years a
hundred million people will more than overtake any present or
prospective surplus, and we may yet need all of our present
magnificent wheat fields to give bread to our own people. Certainly
we need not be in haste to slaughter and utterly exhaust the native
fertility of our fields on the cheap terms now presented.
England, with all her faults, is great, but unfortunately has not
room to support her greatness, and must have cheap food and be
able to offer better wages or part with great numbers of her people. I
most sincerely hope her statesmen—and she is never without those
of eminence—will prove equal to their great trust and to any crisis;
but we cannot surrender the welfare of our Republic to any foreign
empire. Free trade may or may not be England’s necessity. Certainly
it is not our necessity; and it has not reached, and never will reach,
the altitude of a science. An impost on corn there, it is clear, would
now produce an exodus of her laboring population that would soon
leave the banner of Victoria waving over a second-rate power.
Among the nations of the world the high position of the United
States was never more universally and cordially admitted. Our rights
are everywhere promptly conceded, and we ask nothing more. It is
an age of industry, and we can only succeed by doing our best. Our
citizens under a protective tariff are exceptionally prosperous and
happy, and not strangers to noble deeds nor to private virtues. A
popular government based on universal suffrage will be best and
most certainly perpetuated by the elevation of laboring men through
the more liberal rewards of diversified employments, which give
scope to all grades of genius and intelligence and tend to secure to
posterity the blessings of universal education and the better hope of
personal independence.
 Speech of Hon. J. D. Cameron, of Penna.

On the Reduction of Revenue as Affecting the Tariff. Delivered in the

United States Senate January 16, 1882.
Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania. I move to take up the resolution
submitted by me in relation to internal-revenue taxes.
The motion was agreed to; and the Senate proceeded to consider
the following resolution submitted by Mr. Cameron, of
Pennsylvania, December 6, 1881:
Resolved, That in the opinion of the Senate it is expedient to
reduce the revenue of the Government by abolishing all existing
internal revenue taxes except those imposed upon high wines and
distilled spirits.
Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania. Mr. President, the surplus revenue
of this Government applicable to the payment of the public debt for
the year ending June 30, 1881, was $100,069,404.98.
The inference from these figures must be that if such surplus
receipts are applied to the reduction of the debt it will be paid within
ten or twelve years. The question then is: Should the people continue
to be taxed as heavily as they now are to pay it off within so short a
period? Is it wise or prudent?
No one will deny the wisdom of the legislators who inaugurated
the system of reducing the debt, or the patriotism of the people who
have endured a heavy load of taxation to pay the interest and reduce
the principal of such indebtedness. Both have been causes of wonder
to the world, and have shown the strength, honesty, and prudence
attainable under a republican form of government in matters where
it was thought to be weak. It is acknowledged that the course thus
pursued by Congress, and supported by the people, has had several
good results. The exercise of the power of the Government and the
cheerful submission to the enacting nature of the laws by the people
has had an undoubted tendency to elevate and strengthen the moral
tone of the nation, giving the people more confidence in each other,
and compelling the approval of the world. It has reduced the
principal sum of our national indebtedness until it is entirely within
the ready control of the financial ability of the people either to pay off
or to pay the interest thereon. It has established the credit of the
country, and brought it up from a position where the 6 per cent. gold
bonds of the United States before the war would not command par to
a present premium of 17 per cent, on a 4 per cent. bond, and to the
ready exchange of called 6 per cent. bonds into new ones bearing 3½
per cent. interest. It has demonstrated the ability of the country not
only to carry on a most expensive internal war, but to pay off its cost
in a time unknown to any other people; and further, that the ability
of the country to furnish men and material of war and to meet
increased financial demands is cumulative. The burden carried by
this country from 1861 to the present day has been much greater
than it would be if laid upon this nation and people from 1881 to
1900.
The burden, therefore, of the present debt would fall but lightly on
the country if the payment thereof should be for a time delayed, or
the rate at which it has been paid be decreased. It thus becomes a
question of prudence with the Government whether they will
continue the burden upon the people, or relieve them of part of it.
The burdens of general taxation borne by the people are very
onerous. They have not only the General Government to sustain, on
which devolves the expenses of legislation, of the Federal judiciary,
of the representatives of our country in all the principal governments
and cities of the world, of the management of such of our internal
affairs and conveniences as belong to Congress, the keeping up of our
Army and Navy, the erection of public buildings, the improvement of
the rivers and harbors, and many other items that require large
annual expenditures. With the increase of population and the filling
up of our unoccupied lands almost all these annual outlays and
expenses will tend to increase in place of decreasing, and all such
expenditures must be in some way met by the people of the country.
They have also to sustain their State governments with the expenses
and outlays incident to them, their legislatures, judiciaries,
penitentiaries, places of reform, hospitals, and all means of aiding
the afflicted, to sustain the common schools, to pay the cost of such
improvements of rivers, of canals, of railways, or of roads as the
States may undertake. They have also the heavy cost to meet of city
governments, of county, town and borough governments; they must
pay the inferior Legislatures, erect buildings, provide water, police,
jails, poor-houses, and build roads and take care of them.
On the liberality of the people the country depends for the building
of charitable institutions, universities, colleges, private schools of
high grade, and every variety of relief to the poor and the afflicted. In
addition to these burdens almost all the States, most of the large
cities, and many of the counties and towns in the States still labor
under the burdens of indebtedness incurred during the war to
sustain the General Government, which indebtedness, incurred on
the then value of paper currency, has now to be paid in gold. They
have not had the means at command to pay off much of such
indebtedness like the General Government, nor to refund it at a
lower rate of interest. The superior credit of the General Government
has been made partially at the expense of the local governments. I
have stated these facts that Senators might keep in mind that the
question should not be considered as merely one of our ability to
reduce our indebtedness by paying off annually one hundred
millions of dollars and by continuing our present laws for raising
revenues, as if it were but a small matter for the people to do, but it
should be considered in connection with the total burden of taxation
imposed by the revenue laws of the General Government, as well as
by those of the State and the subordinate governments within their
bounds.
There is, therefore, a strong argument to be found in these facts of
the other burdens of taxation borne by the people in favor of
reducing the amount of revenue applicable to the payment of the
public debt when it can be done without injury to the credit of the
Government and without risking in the least the ability of the
Government either to pay such indebtedness as it matures or to
interfere with the ability of the Government to fully provide for the
wants of the country as they may be developed. A complete
statement of the percentage of taxation borne by each male citizen of
the United States over twenty-one years of age in the various ways
stated would astound the Senate and the country. There is probably
no country in the world where the taxation direct and indirect is so
heavy, and only a people situated and circumstanced as the
American people are could prosper under such a burden. If no other
reason could be advanced in favor of a reduction of the amount of
moneys derived from our internal-revenue laws than this one of
reducing the burdens of the people, it would be amply sufficient, in
my judgment, to warrant the proposed reduction. Yet I will say
frankly that I have another object in wishing to have the internal
revenue reduced, and I hope before long that every vestige of that
system will cease to exist. That object is to prevent any material
change being made in the tariff upon imports as it now exists, for
upon its existence depends the prosperity, the happiness, the
improvement, the education of the laboring people of the country,
although I do not object to a careful revision of it by a competent
commission.
I want to say a word here about the arrears of pension act. This act
never should be repealed, and in my judgment it never will or can be.
It has lately been held up to contempt by that class of people who
twenty years ago were engaged in exhorting these same pensioners to
go to the front, and who now object to rewarding them; but their
opinion is not shared by the people at large; in fact, no more
essentially just law was ever placed upon the statute book. Its effect
is simply and solely to prevent the Government from pleading the
statute of limitation against its former defenders. It did not increase
the rate of pensions in any way whatever, but merely said that a man
entitled to a pension for physical injury received in Government
service should not be debarred from receiving it because he was late
in making his application. To the payment of these pensions every
sentiment of honesty and gratitude should hold us firmly committed.
My friend the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] is very honest, is
generally very astute, and has great capacity as a leader. My personal
friendship makes me desire his success, and as an individual I want
him to be the recipient of all the honors his party can bestow upon
him, but I am very sure that he is now opposing a measure that is
intended to promote the welfare of and is in accord with the wishes
of the people of the country. He is leading his party astray, he is
holding it back, he is tying it to the carcass of free trade.
 Politically I am glad that he is; on his own account I regret it. He is
opposing the principle of protection, and, in my judgment, no man
can do that and retain the support of the people. No party can to-day
proclaim the doctrine of “a tariff for revenue only” and survive.
Opposition to an earnest prosecution of the war for the suppression
of the rebellion failed to destroy the Democratic party because of the
recruits it received from the South, but opposition to the doctrine of
protection to American productions, hostility to the elevation of
American labor, no party in this enlightened day can advocate and
live. I am astonished that the Democratic party does not learn by
experience. The “tariff-for-a-revenue-only” plank in the Cincinnati
platform lost it Indiana, lost it New York, and in 1884 it will lose it
one-half of the Southern States.
The President pro tempore. The morning hour has expired. Is it
the pleasure of the Senate that unanimous consent be given to the
Senator from Pennsylvania to proceed with his remarks?
Mr. Beck. I move that unanimous consent be granted.
The President pro tempore. The Chair hears no objection, and
the morning hour will be continued until the Senator from
Pennsylvania closes his remarks.
Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania. The great question of protection to
American labor will be the question which will obliterate old
dissensions and unite the States in one common brotherhood. The
Democratic party has made its last great fight. It will struggle hard,
and in its death throes will, with the aid of a few unsuccessful and
disappointed Republicans, possibly have temporary local successes,
but death has marked it for its victim, die it will, and on its tomb will
be inscribed, “Died because of opposition to the education, the
elevation, the advancement of the people.”
The historic policy of this country has been to raise its revenues
mainly from duties on imports and from the sale of the public lands.
There are many reasons in favor of this policy. It is more just and
equal in its burdens on the States and on the people; it is less
inquisitorial, less expensive, less liable to corruption; it is free from
many vexed questions which our experience of twenty years in
collecting internal revenue has developed. The internal revenue
brings the General Government in contact with the people in almost
every thing they eat, wear, or use. The collection of revenue by duties
on imports is so indirect as to remove much of the harshness felt
when the citizen comes in direct contact with the iron grip of the law
compelling him to affix a stamp to what he makes or uses. No one
will question the fact that the collection of internal duties
unfavorably affected the general morals of the nation.
The internal revenue laws were adopted by the Government as a
war measure, as an extraordinary and unusual means of raising
money for an emergency, and it is proper and in accordance with
public opinion that with the end of the emergency such policy should
cease. I cannot but think that every Senator will agree with me that
the end of the emergency has been reached. The emergency
embraced not only the time of the expenditures, but their
continuation until the debt incurred during the emergency was so
reduced as to be readily managed, if not exclusively by the ordinary
revenues of the Government, yet with a greatly reduced system of
internal revenues and for a limited time. But in determining wherein
such reduction shall be made, two great interests of the country are
to be considered:
First, the system of duties on foreign goods, wares, &c.
Second, our national banking system.
It has been proposed to meet this question of reduction by
lowering the rates of duty, and thus to continue in this country
indefinitely the use of direct and indirect taxation, supposing that
such reduction would require the prolonged continuation of internal
taxation.
The first effect of this would be to increase the revenues, as lower
duties would lead for awhile to increased importations; but
ultimately these increased importations would destroy our
manufactures and impoverish the people to the point of inability to
buy largely abroad, and when that point would be reached, we should
have no other source of revenue than internal taxes upon an
impoverished people. At first we should have more revenue than we
need, but in the end much less.
This statement of the effect of lower duties may at first seem
anomalous and questionable, but that such would be the result is
proven by the effect on the revenues of the country of the reduction
in duties in the tariff of 1846 below that of 1842. This will be evident
from the Treasury statistics of the years 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, &c.,
which will show for the latter years a large increase of revenues. A
reduction of duties which would affect the ability of our
manufacturers to compete with foreign makers would cause a large
importation of goods, with two objects: first, to find a market, the
effect of which would be to keep the mills of England and other
countries fully employed; and, second, a repetition of the custom of
English manufacturers to put goods on our markets at low and losing
prices for the purpose of crippling and breaking down our operators.
And the increase of out national revenues would continue until our
fires were stopped, our mills and mines closed, our laborers starved,
and our capital and skill, the work of many years, lost. This time
would be marked, by a renewal of our vassalage to England. Then the
tables would be turned, our revenues would fall off with our inability
to purchase, our taxation would continue and become very onerous,
and in place of a strong, reliant, and self-supporting people,
exercising a healthful influence over the nations of the world, we
would be owned and be the servants of Europe, tilling the ground for
the benefit of its people; our laborers would be brought down to a
level with the pauper labor of Europe.
Our form of government will not permit the employment of
ignorant pauper labor. It is a government of the people, and to have
it continue to grow and prosper the people must be paid such wages
as will enable them to be educated sufficiently to realize and
appreciate the benefits of its free institutions; and knowing these
benefits, they will maintain them. If, on the other hand, it is
desirable that the revenues from duties should be decreased, and
thereby retain both kinds of taxation, the direct and the indirect, the
best possible way to do this would be to largely increase the duties on
imported goods, which would for a time decrease the imports,
thereby decreasing the amount of duties received. This tendency
would last until, through this policy, the wealth and purchasing
power of the country would so largely increase that the revenues
would again increase, both by reason of decreased cost in foreign
countries and because of the purchase by us of articles of special
beauty, skill, and luxury. It may be said (and however paradoxical it
may appear, the assertion is proven by the history of the tariff) that
while the immediate tendency with free-trade duties is to increase
imports and revenues, the ultimate result of such low duties is to
decrease the imports and revenues, due to the decreasing ability of
the country to purchase. The immediate tendency of protective tariffs
is to decrease imports and revenues, but the final result is to increase
the imports and duties, arising from the greater ability of the country
to purchase. But my intention is not to discuss at this time the
question of a tariff, but to show the effect of a change in the duties on
imports upon the revenues of the country.
I clearly recognize that while the public mind is decidedly in favor
of encouraging home manufacturers by levying what are called
protective duties, yet the people are opposed to placing those duties
so high that they become prohibitory and making thereby an
exclusive market for our manufacturers at home. It seems very clear
to my mind, in view of these statements as to the result of decreasing
or increasing the duties on our imports, that no reduction of revenue
is practicable by changes in our tariff.
The second great interest of the people, which will very shortly be
directly affected by the large and increasing surplus revenues of the
country, is the system of national banks, and this through the
decrease of the public indebtedness by the application of the annual
surplus to its payment. The large annual reduction of the public debt
will very shortly begin to affect the confidence of the public in the
continuation of the system. It will increase public anxieties and
excite their fears as to a substitution of any other system for this that
has proven so acceptable and so valuable to the country. If the
national banking system is to be worked out of existence, it will
inevitably cause serious financial trouble.
Financial difficulties among a people like those of this country,
however ill-based or slight, are always attended by disastrous
consequences, because in times of prosperity the energies and
hopefulness of the people are stretched to the utmost limits, and the
shock of financial trouble has the effect of an almost total paralysis
on the business of the country. It is certainly the part of
statesmanship to avoid such a calamity whenever it is possible.
I unhesitatingly declare and believe that the value of our system of
national banks is so great in the benefits the country derives
therefrom and the dangers and losses its continuance will avoid that
it were better to continue in existence an indebtedness equal to the
wants of the banks which the country may from time to time require
until some equally conservative plan may be offered that will enable
us to dispense with the system.
It is also important in this connection for Senators to bear in mind
that the increasing business of the country will annually require
increased banking facilities, and consequently increased bonds as the
basis on which they can be organized; and it should not be
overlooked that a possible determination by Congress to pay off by
retiring or by funding the greenbacks will create a great hiatus in the
circulating medium of the country, which can only be replaced by
additional national-bank notes based upon an equivalent amount of
public indebtedness.
In view of the statements I have made, I cannot but conclude that
the wisest and most prudent course for Congress is to leave the
question of changes in the tariff laws to be adjusted as they may from
time to time require, and to make whatever reduction of the income
of the Government that may be found desirable by reducing the
changes in the internal-revenue laws.
The national revenue laws as they now are may be greatly and
profitably changed. They are very burdensome to a heavily-taxed
people, and such burdens should be relieved wherever it is possible.
This can now be done with safety by providing that so much of the
public debt may be paid off from time to time as may not be required
to sustain the system of national banks.
I move that the resolution be referred to the Committee on
Finance.
The motion was agreed to.
 Extracts from Speech of Hon. Thomas H.
Benton,

On Proposed Amendments of the Constitution in relation to the

election of President and Vice-President, Delivered in the U. S.
Senate Chamber, A. D. 1824.
He said:—The evil of a want of uniformity in the choice of
Presidential electors, is not limited to its disfiguring effect upon the
face of our government, but goes to endanger the rights of the
people, by permitting sudden alterations on the eve of an election,
and to annihilate the rights of the small States, by enabling the large
ones to combine, and to throw all their votes into the scale of a
particular candidate. These obvious evils make it certain that any
uniform rule would be preferable to the present state of things. But,
in fixing on one, it is the duty of statesmen to select that which is
calculated to give to every portion of the Union its due share in the
choice of a chief magistrate, and to every individual citizen a fair
opportunity of voting according to his will. This would be effected by
adopting the District System. It would divide every State into
districts equal to the whole number of votes to be given, and the
people of each district would be governed by its own majority, and
not by a majority existing in some remote part of the State. This
would be agreeable to the rights of individuals: for in entering into
society, and submitting to be bound by the decision of the majority,
each individual retained the right of voting for himself wherever it
was practicable, and of being governed by a majority of the vicinage,
and not by majorities brought from remote sections to overwhelm
him with their accumulated numbers. It would be agreeable to the
interests of all parts of the States; for each State may have different
interests in different parts; one part may be agricultural, another
manufacturing, another commercial; and it would be unjust that the
strongest should govern, or that two should combine and sacrifice
the third. The district system would be agreeable to the intention of
our present constitution, which, in giving to each elector a separate
vote, instead of giving to each State a consolidated vote, composed of
all its electoral suffrages, clearly intended that each mass of persons
entitled to one elector, should have the right of giving one vote,
according to their own sense of their own interest.
The general ticket system now existing in ten States, was the
offspring of policy, and not of any disposition to give fair play to the
will of the people. It was adopted by the leading men of those States,
to enable them to consolidate the vote of the State. It would be easy
to prove this by referring to facts of historical notoriety. It
contributes to give power and consequence to the leaders who
manage the elections, but it is a departure from the intention of the
constitution; violates the rights of the minorities, and is attended
with many other evils.
The intention of the constitution is violated because it was the
intention of that instrument to give to each mass of persons, entitled
to one elector, the power of giving an electoral vote to any candidate
they preferred. The rights of minorities are violated, because a
majority of one will carry the vote of the whole State. The principle is
the same, whether the elector is chosen by general ticket, or by
legislative ballot; a majority of one, in either case, carries the vote of
the whole State. In New York, thirty-six electors are chosen; nineteen
is a majority, and the candidate receiving this majority is fairly
entitled to receive nineteen votes; but he counts in reality thirty-six:
because the minority of seventeen are added to the majority. These
seventeen votes belong to seventeen masses of people, of 40,000
souls each, in all 680,000 people, whose votes are seized upon, taken
away, and presented to whom the majority pleases. Extend the
calculation to the seventeen States now choosing electors by general
ticket or legislative ballot, and it will show that three millions of
souls, a population equal to that which carried us through the
Revolution, may have their votes taken from them in the same way.
To lose their votes is the fate of all minorities, and it is theirs only to
submit; but this is not a case of votes lost, but of votes taken away,
added to those of the majority, and given to a person to whom the
minority was opposed.
 He said, this objection (to the direct vote of the people) had a
weight in the year 1787, to which it is not entitled in the year 1824.
Our government was then young, schools and colleges were scarce,
political science was then confined to few, and the means of diffusing
intelligence were both inadequate and uncertain. The experiment of
a popular government was just beginning; the people had been just
released from subjection to an hereditary king, and were not yet
practiced in the art of choosing a temporary chief for themselves. But
thirty-six years have reversed this picture; thirty-six years, which
have produced so many wonderful changes in America, have
accomplished the work of many centuries upon the intelligence of its
inhabitants. Within that period, schools, colleges, and universities
have multiplied to an amazing extent. The means of diffusing
intelligence have been wonderfully augmented by the establishment
of six hundred newspapers, and upwards of five thousand post-
offices. The whole course of an American’s life, civil, social, and
religious, has become one continued scene of intellectual and of
moral improvement. Once in every week, more than eleven thousand
men, eminent for learning and for piety, perform the double duty of
amending the hearts, and enlightening the understandings, of more
than eleven thousand congregations of people. Under the benign
influence of a free government, both our public institutions and
private pursuits, our juries, elections, courts of justice, the liberal
professions, and the mechanical arts, have each become a school of
political science and of mental improvement. The federal legislature,
in the annual message of the President, in reports of heads of
departments, and committees of Congress, and speeches of
members, pours forth a flood of intelligence which carries its waves
to the remotest confines of the republic. In the different States,
twenty-four State executives and State legislatures, are annually
repeating the same process within a more limited sphere. The habit
of universal travelling, and the practice of universal interchange of
thought, are continually circulating the intelligence of the country,
and augmenting its mass. The face of our country itself, its vast
extent, its grand and varied features, contribute to expand the
human intellect and magnify its power. Less than half a century of
the enjoyment of liberty has given practical evidence of the great
moral truth, that under a free government, the power of the intellect
is the only power which rules the affairs of men; and virtue and
intelligence the only durable passports to honor and preferment. The
conviction of this great truth has created an universal taste for
learning and for reading, and has convinced every parent that the
endowments of the mind and the virtues of the heart, are the only
imperishable, the only inestimable riches which he can leave to his
posterity.
This objection (the danger of tumults and violence at the elections)
is taken from the history of the ancient republics; and the tumultuary
elections of Rome and Greece. But the justness of the example is
denied. There is nothing in the laws of physiology which admits a
parallel between the sanguinary Roman, the volatile Greek, and the
phlegmatic American. There is nothing in the state of the respective
countries, or in the manner of voting, which makes one an example
for the other. The Romans voted in a mass, at a single voting place,
even when the qualified voters amounted to millions of persons.
They came to the polls armed, and divided into classes, and voted,
not by heads, but by centuries.
In the Grecian republics all the voters were brought together in a
great city, and decided the contest in one great struggle.
In such assemblages, both the inducement to violence, and the
means of committing it, were prepared by the government itself. In
the United States all this is different. The voters are assembled in
small bodies, at innumerable voting places, distributed over a vast
extent of country. They come to the polls without arms, without
odious instructions, without any temptation to violence, and with
every inducement to harmony.
If heated during the day of election, they cool off upon returning to
their homes, and resuming their ordinary occupations.
But let us admit the truth of the objection. Let us admit that the
American people would be as tumultuary at this presidential election
as were the citizens of the ancient republics at the election of their
chief magistrates. What then? Are we thence to infer the inferiority
of the officers thus elected, and the consequent degradation of the
countries over which they presided? I answer no. So far from it, that
I assert the superiority of these officers over all others ever obtained
for the same countries, either by hereditary succession, or the most
select mode of election. I affirm those periods of history to be the
most glorious in arms, the most renowned in arts, the most
celebrated in letters, the most useful in practice, and the most happy
in the condition of the people, in which the whole body of the citizens
voted direct for the chief officer of their country. Take the history of
that commonwealth which yet shines as the leading star in the
firmament of nations. Of the twenty-five centuries that the Roman
state has existed, to what period do we look for the generals and
statesmen, the poets and orators, the philosophers and historians,
the sculptors, painters and architects, whose immortal works have
fixed upon their country the admiring eyes of all succeeding ages? Is
it to the reign of the seven first kings?—to the reigns of the emperors,
proclaimed by the prætorian bands?—to the reigns of the Sovereign
Pontiffs, chosen by a select body of electors in a conclave of most
holy cardinals? No.—We look to none of these, but to that short
interval of four centuries and a half which lies between the expulsion
of the Tarquins, and the re-establishment of monarchy in the person
of Octavius Cæsar. It is to this short period, during which the
consuls, tribunes, and prætors, were annually elected by a direct vote
of the people, to which we look ourselves, and to which we direct the
infant minds of our children, for all the works and monuments of
Roman greatness; for roads, bridges, and aqueducts, constructed; for
victories gained, nations vanquished, commerce extended, treasure
imported, libraries founded, learning encouraged, the arts
flourishing, the city embellished, and the kings of the earth humbly
suing to be admitted into the friendship, and taken under the
protection of the Roman people. It was of this magnificent period
that Cicero spoke, when he proclaimed the people of Rome to be the
masters of kings, and the conquerors and commanders of all the
nations of the earth. And, what is wonderful, during this whole
period, in a succession of four hundred and fifty annual elections, the
people never once prepared a citizen to the consulship who did not
carry the prosperity and glory of the Republic to a point beyond that
at which he had found it.
It is the same with the Grecian Republics. Thirty centuries have
elapsed since they were founded; yet it is to an ephemeral period of
one hundred and fifty years only the period of popular elections
which intervened between the dispersing of a cloud of petty tyrants,
and the coming of a great one in the person of Philip, King of
Macedon, that we are to look for that galaxy of names which shed so
much lustre upon their country, and in which we are to find the first
cause of that intense sympathy which now burns in our bosoms at
the name of Greece.
These short and brilliant periods exhibit the great triumph of
popular elections; often tumultuary, often stained with blood, but
always ending gloriously for the country.
Then the right of suffrage was enjoyed; the sovereignty of the
people was no fiction. Then a sublime spectacle was seen, when the
Roman citizen advanced to the polls and proclaimed: “I vote for Cato
to be consul;” the Athenian, “I vote for Aristides to be Archon;” the
Hebran, “I vote for Pelopidas to be Bœotrach;” the Lacedemonian, “I
vote for Leonidas to be first of the Ephori,” and why not an
American citizen the same? Why may he not go up to the poll and
proclaim, “I vote for Thomas Jefferson to be President of the United
States?” Why is he compelled to put his vote in the hands of another,
and to incur all the hazards of an irresponsible agency, when he
himself could immediately give his own vote for his own chosen
candidate, without the slightest assistance from agents or managers?
But I have other objections to these intermediate electors. They are
the peculiar and favorite institution of aristocratic republics, and
elective monarchies. I refer the Senate to the late republics of Venice
and Genoa; of France, and her litter; to the Kingdom of Poland; the
empire of Germany, and the Pontificate of Rome. On the contrary, a
direct vote by the people is the peculiar and favorite institution of
democratic republics; as we have just seen in the governments of
Rome, Athens, Thebes, and Sparta; to which may be added the
principal cities of the Amphyctionic and Achaian leagues, and the
renowned republic of Carthage when the rival of Rome.
I have now answered the objections which were brought forward
in the year ’78. I ask for no judgment upon their validity of that day,
but I affirm them to be without force or reason in the year 1824.
Time and EXPERIENCE have so decided. Yes, time and experience,
the only infallible tests of good or bad institutions, have now shown
that the continuance of the electoral system will be both useless and
dangerous to the liberties of the people, and that the only effectual
mode of preserving our government from the corruptions which have
undermined the liberties of so many nations, is, to confide the
election of our chief magistrates to those who are farthest removed