The largest legislature in the English-speaking world is its oldest and most august–the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The second largest is the most important and most powerful–the Congress of the United States of America.
The third largest is the New Hampshire state legislature.
The General Court, as it is formally known, is divided into two houses, a nice, tidy Senate of only 24 members and a not-so-tidy but very democratic
(albeit very Republican) House of Representatives of 400 members.
”That`s one legislator for every 2,500 people,” said John Sunnunu, the state`s Republican governor. ”It`s the most democratic legislature in the country.”
Without taking a formal position on it, Sunnunu was implying his opposition to a downright subversive proposal being noised about in these precincts–cutting the House in half, to a mere 200 members.
It will never happen, for which all may be grateful, if only because it is the kind of change so urgently sought by people who take political science seriously. These are the kind of people who want government always to make sense. Such men are dangerous. Such women, too.
This is the last real citizen legislature. Its members earn $100 a year. Yes, that`s a hundred dollars and that`s a year and that`s no typographical error.
New Hampshire likes it this way, and always has. Government has been distrusted here as long as it has existed. When the state`s first
constitutional convention in 1779 proposed having a governor, the people turned down the constitution twice, even though it contained, and still does, a provision encouraging rebellion against ”arbitrary power and oppression.” When the people finally agreed to have a governor at all, they limited him to a two-year term and buffered his power by insisting that major contracts and appointments be cleared by a five-member elected Executive Council, which still meets every two weeks.
According to Byron Champlin, the able spokesman for the House of Representatives, there are now 397 House members (people die), of whom 134 are women. Whether this is because New Hampshire is unusually liberated or because the low pay renders the job undesirable for a family`s principal wage-earner is open to interpretation.
There is a dark side to this conservative populism. New Hampshire is chintzy, to the benefit of many taxpayers but to the detriment of those who need help. ”If you have a retarded kid, you don`t move here,” was the way the situation was summed up a few years ago by Gerald Carmen, an active Republican from Manchester who helped Ronald Reagan get nominated in 1980 and who now is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.
Carmen did not say what happens to people who already live here before they have a retarded child, but the suspicion is that unless they are filthy rich they move to New York or Maryland or someplace with better services.
To be fair, just last week the House voted more money for handicapped children, and did it without debate, the members all shouting ”aye” from their seats.
That`s all they have. Seats. Lined up in several curved aisles facing the podium. No desks, not even for the majority leader, who just sits in a front-row seat. Why, give them desks and the next thing you know they`d want offices and a staff and they`d start putting on airs, like congressmen.
If one day`s activity last week was any guide, they comport themselves better than congressmen. Faint praise, to be sure, but there is something encouraging about legislators who at least appear to listen to the debates in their chamber.
This could be because, stuck in the middle of the long rows of chairs, most of them can`t get out to wander about as Congressmen do, so they sit there and listen.
And there`s plenty to listen to. Unlike Congress, there is no time limit on speeches. Once a member steps up to one of the two microphones on either side of the speaker`s podium he or she can go on forever, and sometimes does. Whatever the result, the process is refreshing. Most of the country, of course, cannot afford to have so many legislators that almost every citizen personally knows his representative.
New Hampshire is an anachronism. That`s what America needs. More anachronisms.
