TERMS OF AND QUALIFICATIONS FOR OFFICE.

Federal.- Presidents are elected for four years, senators for six years and representatives for two years. Article VI, ¶ 3 of the Constitution requires that senators and representatives, members of State legislatures and all executive and judicial officers, State and National, "shall be bound by oath or affirmation" to support the Constitution, but "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." No senator, representative or Federal office holder may be a Presidential elector (Art. II, § 1, ¶ 2). The Constitution states that "no person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years and been fourteen years a resident within the United States." (Art. II, § 1, ¶ 5). Hence, foreign-born citizens are excluded from this office but children born of parents residing abroad temporarily are not considered foreign-born. No restriction is placed by the Constitution upon the number of terms a President may serve but Washington's precedent of two terms has always been followed. A senator must be at least 30 years old, nine years a citizen of the United States and at the time of election an inhabitant of the State represented. A member of the House must be at least 25 years of age, seven years a citizen of the United States and at the time of election an inhabitant of the State represented (Art. I, § 2, ¶ 2, § 3, 13). This does not prevent their establishing homes in Washington while maintaining their legal residences in the States represented. Article I, § 6, ¶ 2, says: "No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civic office under the authority of the United States which shall have been created or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office." Accordingly, if a senator or representative accept any Federal office, his seat in Congress thereby becomes vacant, but if an office-holder be elected to either branch of Congress he may retain his position until his active duties in the legislature begin, whereupon the other office becomes vacant. Regarding the judiciary the Constitution makes no stipulations, the justices being appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The same provision holds true of Cabinet officials, save that no one interested in the import trade may become Secretary of the Treasury; though all members of the Cabinet are expected to sever all business or outside connections. (See CABINET AND CABINET GOVERNMENT; EXECUTIVE). All other Federal offices are filled by appointment, which is subject only to the restrictions and limitations of custom or Congressional enactments. Appointive offices may be held by women, minors or aliens. See APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE; TENURE OF OFFICE.

State. The States quite effectively control their office-holders. The only stipulation in the Constitution as first adopted regarding State

office-holders was that they should "be bound by oath or affirmation" to support the Constitution (Art. VI, ¶ 3). The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments provided that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" and that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude." Hence any law enacted by a State which expressly deprives a negro citizen of the right to vote or to hold office would be unconstitutional, but the courts have upheld laws which indirectly disqualify certain classes of negroes and therefore they cannot hold office. In the early State constitutions are to be found numerous religious tests for office-holders. The man possessing moderate means might vote, but legislation was restricted to well-to-do Christians, and in some States none but a rich Christian could aspire to the governorship. In New Hampshire, New Jersey and South Carolina, no Hebrew, atheist or Roman Catholic could become governor and none but a Christian in Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and South Carolina. Maryland did not open public offices to Jews until 1826. In some New England States church members alone could vote, while the South Carolina constitution of 1778 extended the privilege to "every free white man, and no other person, who acknowledges the being of a God, and believes in a future state of rewards and punishments." The early constitutions also required in many cases that officeholders be "Christians," or "of the Protestant religion," or should believe "in the Trinity and Inspiration of the Scriptures" (Delaware 1776), or should declare themselves "to be of the Christian religion" (Massachusetts 1780). In New York, Delaware, Maryland and Georgia no priest nor minister of any creed could hold a civil office, though in Georgia the prohibition is limited to the assembly. (Wiley, Edwin, and Rines, Irving E., The United States, Vol. V, pp. 98-99). Indeed, as McMaster says:

"The government set up by many a constitution, despite the principle announced in its preamble, was that of a class. Nowhere, save in Vermont, did manhood suffrage exist. Elsewhere no man voted who did not pay a property tax, or rent a house, or own a specified number of acres of land, or have a specified yearly income. Each one of the State constitutions guaranteed liberty of conscience; but the man who did not exercise that liberty of conscience in such wise as to become a Protestant or a Catholic, a trinitarian or a believer in the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments must give up all hope of political preferment. Even to such as could subscribe to creeds and doctrines, the way to public office was barred by property qualifications, which increased with the dignity of the office until it became absolutely impossible for a poor man to become a candidate for the State senate or the governorship." (McMaster, J. B., History of the People of the United States,' Vol. V, p. 377).

Most of these requirements have been eliminated, though eight States still retain remnants, among them being South Carolina, whose constitution of 1895 (Art. IV, § 3) provides that no one may be governor "who denies the existence of the Supreme Being." Property qualifications also have been eliminated gradually from the State constitutions. In our early history religious qualifications were not deemed sufficient; heavy property qualifications were added, especially for executive officers, for the governor must not only be pious but rich; the