One of the hard lessons from English rule prior to the
revolution was the King’s and the Parliament’s decision to save a few quid, and
take over private residences to quarter their forces. Where this occurred, it clearly demonstrated
to the average citizen the English were an occupying force the rights of the
citizen were clearly secondary to the desires of the crown. From this lesson came the third Amendment.
“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be
quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war,
but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
When the
constitution was being written, many considered the lack of a bill of rights as
a reason to reject the new document. One
of the original authors of the Constitution, James Madison, eventually came to
believe in the value of such amendments and submitted a proposal to the House
to add 17 amendments to the basic document, the senate reduced this number to
12 by combining some and rejecting others.
When submitted to the states the first two amendments were not approved. One became a part of history, while the other
took two hundred years before it was finally ratified. The original first amendment dealt with the
size of the House of Representatives, and the original second amendment dealt
with congressional pay, and was eventually ratified as the 27th
amendment. Which brings us now to the
issue of quartering troops in private residences.
This is the least litigated of all the amendments, but why
is it even included? At the creation of
the U.S. the general sense was a concern about a large standing army and this
was one of the provisions intended to make that large standing army
unattractive and unaffordable. It was,
therefore, simply a restatement of what many of the states had made a standard
right in their state constitutions. It did
not pave new ground, it met a common expectation of the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment