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CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT. A Study in
American Politics. i6mo, 11.25.
MERE LITERATURE, and Other Essays. i2mo,
$1.50.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT
A STUDY IN AMERICAN POLITICS
BY
WOODROW WILSON
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUQHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
be ffitoetfibe prcjrf Cambridge
Copyright, 1886,
BY WOODRCW WILSON
All rights reserved.
To
THS PiTIENT GUIDE OF HIS YOUTH,
TliE GRACIOUS COMPANION OF HIS MANHOOD,
BIS BEST INSTRUCTOR AND MOST LENIENT CRITIC,
ffifjis Uaoit
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE TO FIFTEENTH EDITION.
I HAVE been led by the publication of a
French translation of this little volume to read
it through very carefully, for the first time since
its first appearance. The re-reading has con-
vinced me that it ought not to go to another
impression without a word or two by way of
preface with regard to the changes which our
singular system of Congressional government
has undergone since these pages were written.
I must ask those who read them now to re-
member that they were written during the
years 1883 and 1884, and that, inasmuch as
they describe a living system, like all other
living things subject to constant subtle modifi-
cations, alike of form and of function, their
description of the government of the United
States is not as accurate now as I believe it to
have been at the time I wrote it.
This is, as might have been expected, more
VI PREFACE.
noticeable in matters of detail than in matters
of substance. There are now, for example, not
three hundred and twenty-five, but three hun-
dred and fifty-seven members in the House of
Representatives ; and that number will, no
doubt, be still further increased by the reappor-
tionment which will follow the census of the
present year. The number of committees in
both Senate and House is constantly on the in-
crease. It is now usually quite sixty in the
House, and in the Senate more than forty.
There has been a still further addition to the
number of the " spending " committees in the
House of Representatives, by the subdivision of
the powerful Committee on Appropriations.
Though the number of committees in nominal
control of the finances of the country is still as
large as ever, the tendency is now towards a
concentration of all that is vital in the business
into the hands of a few of the more prominent,
which are most often mentioned in the text.
The auditing committees on the several depart-
ments, for example, have now for some time
exercised little more than a merely nominal
oversight over executive expenditures.
PREFACE. vii
Since the text was written, the Tenure of
Office Act, which sought to restrict the Presi-
dent's removal from office, has been repealed;
and even before its repeal it was, in fact, inop-
erative. After the time of President Johnson,
against whom it was aimed, the party in power
in Congress found little occasion to insist upon
its enforcement ; its constitutionality was doubt-
ful, and it fell into the background. I did not
make sufficient allowance for these facts in
writing the one or two sentences of the book
which refer to the Act.
Neither did I give sufficient weight, I now
believe, to the powers of the Secretary of the
Treasury. However minutely bound, guided,
restricted by statute, his power has proved at
many a critical juncture in our financial history
notably in our recent financial history of
the utmost consequence. Several times since
this book was written, the country has been wit-
ness to his decisive influence upon the money
markets, in the use of his authority with regard
to the bond issues of the government and his
right to control the disposition of the funds of
the Treasury. In these matters, however, he
Till PREFACE.
has exercised, not political, but business power.
He has helped the markets as a banker would
help them. He has altered no policy. He has
merely made arrangements which would release
money for use and facilitate loan and invest-
ment. The country feels safer when an experi-
enced banker, like Mr. Gage, is at the head of
the Treasury, than when an experienced poli-
tician is in charge of it.
All these, however, are matters of detail.
There are matters of substance to speak of also.
It is to be doubted whether I could say quite
so confidently now as I said in 1884 that the
Senate of the United States faithfully repre-
sents the several elements of the nation's make-
up, and furnishes us with a prudent and
normally constituted moderating and revising
chamber. Certainly vested interests have now
got a much more formidable hold upon the
Senate than they seemed to have sixteen years
ago. Its political character also has undergone
a noticeable change. The tendency seems to be
to make of the Senate, instead of merely a
smaller and more deliberate House of Repre-
sentatives, a body of successful party managers.
PREFACE. ix
Still, these features of its life may be tempo-
rary, and may easily be exaggerated. We do
not yet know either whether they will persist,
or, should they persist, whither they will lead us.
A more important matter at any rate, a
thing more concrete and visible is the grad-
ual integration of the organization of the
House of Representatives. The power of the
Speaker has of late years taken on new phases.
He is now, more than ever, expected to guide
and control the whole course of business in the
House, if not alone, at any rate through the
instrumentality of the small Committee on
Rules, of which he is chairman. That com-
mittee is expected'not only to reformulate and
revise from time to time the permanent Rules
of the House, but also to look closely to the
course of its business from day to day, make its
programme, and virtually control its use of its
time. The committee consists of five members ;
but the Speaker and the two other members of
the committee who represent the majority in
the House determine its action ; and its action
is allowed to govern the House. It in effect
regulates the precedence of measures. When-
X PREFACE.
ever occasion requires, it determines what shall,
and what shall not, be undertaken. It is like a
steering ministry, without a ministry's public
responsibility, and without a ministry's right to
speak for both houses. It is a private piece of
party machinery within the single chamber for
which it acts. The Speaker himself not as a
member of the Committee on Rules, but by the
exercise of his right to " recognize " on the floor
undertakes to determine very absolutely what
bills individual members shall be allowed to
bring to a vote, out of the regular order fixed
by the rules or arranged by the Committee on
Rules.
This obviously creates, in* germ at least, a
recognized and sufficiently concentrated leader-
ship within the House. The country is begin-
ning to know that the Speaker and the Com-
mittee on Rules must be held responsible in all
ordinary seasons for the success or failure of
the session, so far as the House is concerned.
The congressional caucus has fallen a little into
the background. It is not often necessary to
call it together, except when the majority is
impatient or recalcitrant under the guidance of
PREFACE. XI
the Committee on Rules. To this new leader-
ship, however, as to everything else connected
with committee government, the taint of privacy
attaches. It is not leadership upon the open
floor, avowed, defended in public debate, set
before the view and criticism of the country.
It integrates the House alone, not the Senate ;
does not unite the two houses in policy ; affects
only the chamber in which there is the least
opportunity for debate, the least chance that
responsibility may be properly and effectively
lodged and avowed. It has only a very remote
and partial resemblance to genuine party leader-
ship.
Much the most important change to be no-
ticed is the result of the war with Spain upon
the lodgment and exercise of power within our
federal system : the greatly increased power and
opportunity for constructive statesmanship given
the President, by the plunge into international
politics and into the administration of distant
dependencies, which has been that war's most
striking and momentous consequence. When
foreign affairs play a prominent part in the
politics and policy of a nation, its Executive
xu PREFACE.
must of necessity be its guide: must utter
every initial judgment, take every first step of
action, supply the information upon which it is
to act, suggest and in large measure control
its conduct. The President of the United
States is now, as of course, at the front of
affairs, as no president, except Lincoln, has
been since the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, when the foreign relations of the new
nation had first to be adjusted. There is no
trouble now about getting the President's
speeches printed and read, every word. Upon
hfs choice, his character, his experience hang
some of the most weighty issues of the future.
The government of dependencies must be largely
in his hands. Interesting things may come out
of the singular change.
For one thing, new prizes in public service
may attract a new order of talent. The nation
may get a better civil service, because of the
sheer necessity we shall be under of organizing
a service capable of carrying the novel burdens
we have shouldered.
It may be, too, that the new leadership of the
Executive, inasmuch as it is likely to last, will
PREFACE. xm
have a very far-reaching effect upon our whole
method of government. It may give the heads
of the executive departments a new influence
upon the action of Congress. It may bring
about, as a consequence, an integration which
will substitute statesmanship for government by
mass meeting. It may put this whole volume
hopelessly out of date.
WOODROW WILSON.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, 15 August, 1900.
PREFACE.
THE object of these essays is not to exhaust
criticism of the government of the United States,
but only to point out the most characteristic prac-
tical features of the federal system. Taking
Congress as the central and predominant power
of the system^ their object is to illustrate every-
thing Congressional. Everybody has seen, and
critics without number have said, that our form
of national government is singular, possessing a
character altogether its own ; but thdre is abun-
dant evidence that very few have seen just
wherein it differs most essentially from the other
governments of the world. There have been
and are other federal systems quite similar, and
scarcely any legislative or administrative princi-
ple of our Constitution was young even when
that Constitution was framed. It is our legisla-
tive and administrative machinery which makes
our government essentially different from all
other great governmental systems. The most
XVI PREFACE.
striking contrast in modern politics is not be-
tween presidential and monarchical govern-
ments, but between Congressional and Parlia-
mentary governments. Congressional govern-
ment is Committee government ; Parliamentary
government is government by a responsible Cab-
inet Ministry. These are the two principal
types which present themselves for the instruc-
tion of the modern student of the practical in
politics : administration by semi-independent
executive agents who obey the dictation of a leg-
islature to which they are not responsible, and
administration by executive agents who are the
accredited leaders and accountable servants of a
legislature virtually supreme in all things. My
chief aim in these essays has been, therefore,
an adequate illustrative contrast of these two
types of government, with a view to making as
plain as possible the actual conditions of federal
administration. In short, I offer, not a com-
mentary, but an outspoken presentation of such
cardinal facts as may be sources of practical
suggestion. ^
WOODROW WILSON.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, October 7, 1884.
CONTENTS.
PAOl
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES . . 58
III. THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. REVENUE
AND SUPPLY 130
IV. THE SENATE 193
V. THE EXECUTIVE 242
VL CONCLUSION ....,. 294
CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT:
A STUDY IN AMERICAN POLITICS.
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The laws reach but a very little way. Constitute government how you
please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of
powers, which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of minis-
ters of state. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends upon
them. Without them your commonwealth is no better than a scheme
upon paper ; and not a living, active, effective organization. BURKE.
The great fault of political writers is their too close adherence to the
forms of the system of state which they happen to be expounding or ex-
amining. They stop short at the anatomy of institutions, and do not pen-
etrate to the secret of their functions. JOHN MORLEY.
IT would seem as if a very wayward fortune
had presided over the history of the Constitution
of the United States, inasmuch as that great
federal charter has been alternately violated by
its friends and defended by its enemies. It
came hard by its establishment in the first place,
prevailing with difficulty over the strenuous
forces of dissent which were banded against it.
While its adoption was under discussion the
voices of criticism were many and authoritative,
the voices of opposition loud in tone and omi-
1
2 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
nous in volume, and the Federalists finally tri-
umphed only by dint of hard battle against foes,
formidable both in numbers and in skill. But
the victory was complete, astonishingly com-
plete. Once established, the new government
had only the zeal of its friends to fear. Indeed,
after its organization very little more is heard
of the party of opposition ; they disappear so
entirely from politics that one is inclined to
think, in looking back at the party history of
that time, that they must have been not only
conquered but converted as well. There was
well-nigh universal acquiescence in the new or-
der of things. Not everybody, indeed, professed
himself a Federalist, but everybody conformed to
federalist practice. There were jealousies and
bickerings, of course, in the new Congress of the
Union, but no party lines, and the differences
which caused the constant brewing and breaking
of storms in Washington's first cabinet were of
personal rather than of political import. Ham-
ilton and Jefferson did not draw apart because
the one had been an ardent and the other only
a lukewarm friend of the Constitution, so much
as because they were so different in natural bent
and temper that they would have been like to
disagree and come to drawn points wherever or
however brought into contact. The one had in-
herited warm blood and a bold sagacity, while
INTRODUCTORY. 3
in the other a negative philosophy ran suitably
through cool veins. They had not been meant
for yoke-fellows.
There was less antagonism in Congress, how-
ever, than in the cabinet ; and in none of the
controversies that did arise was there shown any
serious disposition to quarrel with the Constitu-
tion itself ; the contention was as to the obedi-
ence to be rendered to its provisions. No one
threatened to withhold his allegiance, though
there soon began to be some exhibition of a dis-
position to confine obedience to the letter of the
new commandments, and to discountenance all
attempts to do what was not plainly written in
the tables of the law. It was recognized as no
longer fashionable to say aught against the prin-
ciples of the Constitution ; but all men could
not be of one mind, and political parties began
to take form in antagonistic schools of consti-
tutional construction. There straightway arose
two rival sects of political Pharisees, each pro-
fessing a more perfect conformity and affecting
greater " ceremonial cleanliness " than the other.
The very men who had resisted with might and
main the adoption of the Constitution became,
under the new division of parties, its champions,
as sticklers for a strict, a rigid, and literal con-
struction.
They were consistent enough in this, because
4 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
it was quite natural that their one-time fear of a
strong central government should pass into a
dread of the still further expansion of the power
of that government, by a too loose construction
of its charter ; but what I would emphasize here
is not the motives or the policy of the conduct
of parties in our early national politics, but the
fact that opposition to the Constitution as a con-
stitution, and even hostile criticism of its provi-
sions, ceased almost immediately upon its adop-
tion ; and not only ceased, but gave place to an
undiscriminating and almost blind worship of its
principles, and of that delicate dual system of
sovereignty, and that complicated scheme of
double administration which it established. Ad-
miration of that one-time so much traversed body
of law became suddenly all the vogue, and criti-
cism was estopped. From the first, even down
to the time immediately preceding the war, the
general scheme of the Constitution went vnchal-
lenged ; nullification itself did not always wear
its true garb of independent state sovereignty,
but often masqueraded as a constitutional right \
and the most violent policies took care to make
show of at least formal deference to the worship-
ful fundamental law. The divine right of kings
never ran a more prosperous course than did
this unquestioned prerogative of the Constitu-
tion to receive universal homage. The convic-
INTRODUCTORY. 5
tion that our institutions were the best in the
world, nay more, the model to which all civilized
states must sooner or later conform, could not
be laughed out of us by foreign critics, nor
shaken out of us by the roughest jars of the
system.
Now there is, of course, nothing in all this
that is inexplicable, or even remarkable ; any
one can see the reasons for it and the benefits
of it without going far out of his way ; but the
point which it is interesting to note is that we of
the present generation are in the first season of
free, outspoken, unrestrained constitutional crit-
icism. We are the first Americans to hear our
own countrymen ask whether the Constitution is
still adapted to serve the purposes for which it
was intended ; the first to entertain any serious
doubts about the superiority of our own institu-
tions as compared with the systems of Europe ;
the first to think of remodeling the administra-
tive machinery of the federal government, and
of forcing new forms of responsibility upon
Congress.
The evident explanation of this change of at-
titude towards the Constitution is that we have
been made conscious by the rude shock of the
war and by subsequent developments of policy,
that there has been a vast alteration in the con-
ditions of government ; that the checks and bal-
6 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
ances which once obtained are no longer effcc
tive; and that we are really living under a
constitution essentially different from that which
we have been so long worshiping as our own
peculiar and incomparable possession. In short,
this model government is no longer conformable
with its own original pattern. While we have
been shielding it from criticism it has slipped
away from us. The noble charter of fundamen-
tal law given us by the Convention of 1787 is
still our Constitution ; but it is now onrform of
government rather in name than in reality, the
form of the Constitution being one of nicely ad-
justed, ideal balances, whilst the actual form of
our present government is simply a scheme of
congressional supremacy. National legislation,
of course, takes force now as at first from the
authority of the Constitution ; but it would be
easy to reckon by the score acts of Congress
which can by no means be squared with that
great instrument's evident theory. We continue
to think, indeed, according to long-accepted con-
stitutional formulae, and it is still politically un-
orthodox to depart from old-time phraseology
in grave discussions of affairs; but it is plain
to those who look about them that most of the
commonly received opinions concerning federal
constitutional balances and administrative ar-
rangements are many years behind the actual
INTRODUCTORY. 1
practices of the government at Washington, and
that we are farther than most of us realize from
the times and the policy of the framers of the
Constitution. It is a commonplace observation
of historians that, in the development of con-
stitutions, names are much more persistent than
the functions upon which they were originally
bestowed ; that institutions constantly undergo
essential alterations of character, whilst retain-
ing the names conferred upon them in their first
estate ; and the history of our own Constitution
is but another illustration of this universal prin-
ciple of institutional change. There has been a
constant growth of legislative and administrative
practice, and a steady accretion of precedent in
the management of federal affairs, which have
broadened the sphere and altered the functions
of the government without perceptibly affecting
the vocabulary of our constitutional language.
Ours is, scarcely less than the British, a living
and fecund system. It does not, indeed, find its
rootage so widely in the hidden soil of unwritten
law ; its tap-root at least is the Constitution ; but
the Constitution is now, like Magna Carta and
the Bill of Rights, only the sap-centre of a sys-
tem of government vastly larger than the stock
from which it has branched, a system some
of whose forms have only very indistinct and
rudimeiital beginnings in the simple substance
8 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
of the Constitution, and which exercises many
functions apparently quite foreign to the primi-
tive properties contained in the fundamental law.
The Constitution itself is not a complete sys-
tem ; it takes none but the first steps in organi-
zation. It does little more than lay a foundation
of principles. It provides with all possible brev-
ity for the establishment of a government having,
in several distinct branches, executive, legislative,
and judicial powers. It vests executive power in
a single chief magistrate, for whose election and
inauguration it makes carefully definite provision,
and whose privileges and prerogatives it defines
with succinct clearness; it grants specifically
enumerated powers of legislation to a representa-
tive Congress, outlining the organization of the
two houses of that body and definitely providing
for the election of its members, whose number it
regulates and the conditions of whose choice it
names ; and it establishes a Supreme Court with
ample authority of constitutional interpretation,
prescribing the manner in which its judges shall
be appointed and the conditions of their official
tenure. Here the Constitution's work of organ-
ization ends, and the fact that it attempts nothing
more is its chief strength. For it to go beyond
elementary provisions would be to lose elasticity
and adaptability. The growth of the nation and
the consequent development of the governmental
INTRODUCTORY. 9
system would snap asunder a constitution which
could not adapt itself to the new conditions of an
advancing society. If it could not stretch itself
to the measure of the times, it must be thrown
off and left behind, as a by-gone device; and
there can, therefore, be no question that our
Constitution has proved lasting because of its
simplicity. It is a corner-stone, not a complete
building ; or, rather, to return to the old figure,
it is a root, not a perfect vine.
The chief fact, therefore, of our national his-
tory is that from this vigorous tap-root has grown
a vast constitutional system, a system branch-
ing and expanding in statutes and judicial decis-
ions, as well as in unwritten precedent ; and one
of the most striking facts, as it seems to me, in
the history of our politics is, that that system
has never received complete and competent crit-
ical treatment at the hands of any, even the most
acute, of our constitutional writers. They view
it, as it were, from behind. Their thoughts are
dominated, it would seem, by those incomparable
papers of the " Federalist," which, though they
were written to influence only the voters of 1788,
still, with a strange, persistent longevity of power,
shape the constitutional criticism of the present
day, obscuring much of that development of con-
stitutional practice which has since taken place.
The Constitution in operation is manifestly a
10 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
very different thing from the Constitution of the
books. " An observer who looks at the living
reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper
description. He will see in the life much which
is not in the books ; and he will not find in the
rough practice many refinements of the literary
theory." l It is, therefore, the difficult task of
one who would now write at once practically and
critically of our national government to escape
from theories and attach himself to facts, not al-
lowing himself to be confused by a knowledge
of what that government was intended to be, or
led away into conjectures as to what it may one
day become, but striving to catch its present
phases and to photograph the delicate organism
in all its characteristic parts exactly as it is to-
day ; an undertaking all the more arduous and
doubtful of issue because it has to be entered
upon without guidance from writers of acknowl-
edged authority.
The leading inquiry in the examination of any
system of government must, of course, concern
primarily the real depositaries and the essential
machinery of power. There is always a centre
of power : where in this system is that centre ?
in whose hands is self -sufficient authority lodged,
1 These are Mr. Bagehot's words with reference to the
British constitutional system. See his English Constitution
(last American edition), p. 69.
INTRODUCTORY. 11
and through what agencies does that authority
speak and act ? The answers one gets to these
and kindred questions from authoritative manuals
of constitutional exposition are not satisfactory,
chiefly because they are contradicted by self-
evident facts. It is said that there is no single
or central force in our federal scheme ; and so
there is not in the federal scheme, but only a
balance of powers and a nice adjustment of in-
teractive checks, as all the books say. How is it,
however, in the practical conduct of the federal
government? In that, unquestionably, the pre-
dominant and controlling force, the centre and
source of all motive and of all regulative power,
is Congress. All niceties of constitutional re-
striction and even many broad principles of con-
stitutional limitation have been overridden, and
a thoroughly organized system of congressional
control set up which gives a very rude negative
to some theories of balance and some schemes
for distributed powers, but which suits well with
convenience, and does violence to none of the
principles of self-government contained in the
Constitution.
This fact, however, though evident enough, is
not on the surface. It does not obtrude itself
upon the observation of the world. It runs
through the undercurrents of government, and
takes shape only in the inner channels of legisla-
12 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
tion and administration which are not open to
the common view. It can be discerned most
readily by comparing the " literary theory " of
the Constitution with the actual machinery of
legislation, especially at those points where that
machinery regulates the relations of Congress
with the executive departments, and with the at-
titude of the houses towards the Supreme Court
on those occasions, happily not numerous, when
legislature and judiciary have come face to face
in direct antagonism. The " literary theory " is
distinct enough ; every American is familiar with
the paper pictures of the Constitution. Most
prominent in such pictures are the ideal checks
and balances of the federal system, which may
be found described, even in the most recent
books, in terms substantially the same as those
used in 1814 by John Adams in his letter to
John Taylor. " Is there," says Mr. Adams, " a
constitution upon record more complicated with
balances than ours ? In the first place, eighteen
states and some territories are balanced against
the national government. ... In the second
place, the House of Eepresentatives is balanced
against the Senate, the Senate against the House.
In the third place, the executive authority is, in
some degree, balanced against the legislative.
In the fourth place, the judicial power is bal-
anced against the House, the Senate, the execu
INTRODUCTORY. 13
live power, and the state governments. In the
fifth place, the Senate is balanced against the
President in all appointments to office, and in
all treaties. ... In the sixth place, the people
hold in their hands the balance against their
own representatives, by biennial . . . elections.
In the seventh place, the legislatures of the
several states are balanced against the Senate
by sextennial elections. In the eighth place, the
electors are balanced against the people in the
choice of the President. Here is a complicated
refinement of balances, which, for anything I
recollect, is an invention of our own and pecul-
iar to us." 1
All of these balances are reckoned essential
in the theory of the Constitution ; but none is so
quintessential as that between the national and
the state governments ; it is the pivotal quality
of the system, indicating its principal, which is
its federal characteristic. The object of this
balance of thirty-eight States " and some terri-
tories " against the powers of the federal govern-
ment, as also of several of the other balances
enumerated, is not, it should be observed, to
prevent the invasion by the national authorities
1 Works, vol. vi., p. 467 : " Letter to Jno. Taylor." The words
and sentences omitted in the quotation contain Mr. Adams's
opiuions as to the value of the several balances, some of which
h* thinks of doubtful utility, and others of which he, without
tewiution, pronounces altogether pernicious.
14 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
of those provinces of legislation by plain ex
pression or implication reserved to the States,
such as the regulation of municipal institutions,
the punishment of ordinary crimes, the enact,
ment of laws of inheritance and of contract,
the erection and maintenance of the common
machinery of education, and the control of other
such like matters of social economy and every-day
administration, but to check and trim national
policy on national questions, to turn Congress
back from paths of dangerous encroachment on
middle or doubtful grounds of jurisdiction, to
keep sharp, when it was like to become dim, the
line of demarcation between state and federal
privilege, to readjust the weights of jurisdiction
whenever either state or federal scale threatened
to kick the beam. There never was any great
likelihood that the national government would
care to take from the States their plainer pre-
rogatives, but there was always a violent proba-
bility that it would here and there steal a march
over the borders where territory like its own
invited it to appropriation; and it was for a
mutual defense of such border-land that the two
governments were given the right to call a halt
upon one another. It was purposed to guard
not against revolution, but against unrestrained
exercise of questionable powers.
The extent to which the restraining power of
INTRODUCTORY. 15
the States was relied upon in the days of the
Convention, and of the adoption of the Constitu-
tion, is strikingly illustrated in several of the best
known papers of the " Federalist ; " and there
is no better means of realizing the difference
between the actual and the ideal constitutions
than this of placing one's self at the point of
view of the public men of 1787-89. They were
disgusted with the impotent and pitiable Con-
federation, which could do nothing but beg and
deliberate ; they longed to get away from the
selfish feuds of " States dissevered, discordant,
belligerent," and their hopes were centred in the
establishment of a strong and lasting union,
such as could secure that concert and facility of
common action in which alone there could be
security and amity. They were, however, by
no means sure of being able to realize their
hopes, contrive how they might to bring the
States together into a more perfect confedera-
tion. The late colonies had but recently become
compactly organized, self-governing States, and
were standing somewhat stiffly apart, a group
of consequential sovereignties, jealous to main-
tain their blood-bought prerogatives, and quick
to distrust any power set above them, or arro-
gating to itself the control of their restive wills.
It was not to be expected that the sturdy, self-
reliant, masterful men who had won independ-
16 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
ence for their native colonies, by passing through
the flames of battle, and through the equally
fierce fires of bereavement and financial ruin,
would readily transfer their affection and alle-
giance from the new-made States, which were
their homes, to the federal government, which
was to be a mere artificial creation, and which
could be to no man as his home government.
As things looked then, it seemed idle to appre-
hend a too great diminution of state rights :
there was every reason, on the contrary, to fear
that any union that could be agreed upon would
lack both vitality and the ability to hold its
ground against the jealous self-assertion of the
sovereign commonwealths of its membership.
Hamilton but spoke the common belief of all
thinking men of the time when he said : " It
will always be far more easy for the state gov-
ernments to encroach upon the national author-
ities than for the national government to en-
croach upon the state authorities ; " and he
seemed to furnish abundant support for the
opinion, when he added, that " the proof of this
proposition turns upon the greater degree of in-
fluence which the state governments, if they ad-
minister their affairs uprightly and prudentty,
will generally possess over the people ; a cir-
cumstance which, at the same time, teaches us
that there is an inherent and intrinsic weakness
INTRODUCTORY. 17
in all federal constitutions, and that too much
pains cannot be taken in their organization to
give them all the force that is compatible with
the principles of liberty." l
Read in the light of the present day, such
views constitute the most striking of all com-
mentaries upon our constitutional history. Mani-
festly the powers reserved to the States were ex-
pected to serve as a very real and potent check
upon the federal government ; and yet we can
see plainly enough now that this balance of state
against national authorities has proved, of all
constitutional checks, the least effectual. The
proof of the pudding is the eating thereof, and
we can nowadays detect in it none of that
strong flavor of state sovereignty which its cooks
thought they were giving it. It smacks, rather,
of federal omnipotence, which they thought to
mix in only in very small and judicious quanti-
ties. " From the nature of the case," as Judge
Cooley says, " it was impossible that the powers
reserved to the States should constitute a re-
straint upon the increase of federal power, to
the extent that was at first expected. The fed-
eral government was necessarily made the final
judge of its own authority, and the executor of
its own will, and any effectual check to the grad-
ual amplification of its jurisdiction must there
1 Federalist, No. 17.
2
18 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
fore be found in the construction put by those
administering it upon the grants of the Consti-
tution, and in their own sense of constitutional
obligation. And as the true line of division be-
tween federal and state powers has, from the
very beginning, been the subject of contention
and of honest differences of opinion, it must
often happen that to advance and occupy some
disputed ground will seem to the party having
the power to do so a mere matter of constitu-
tional duty." 1
During the early years of the new national
government there was, doubtless, much potency
in state will ; and had federal and state powers
then come face to face, before Congress and the
President had had time to overcome their first
awkwardness and timidity, and to discover the
safest walks of their authority and the most ef-
fectual means of exercising their power, it is
probable that state prerogatives would have pre-
vailed. The central government, as every one
remembers, did not at first give promise of a
very great career. It had inherited some o
the contempt which had attached to the weak
Congress of the Confederation. Two of the
thirteen States held aloof from the Union until
they could be assured of its stability and suc-
cess ; many of the other States had come into
1 Cooley's Principles of Const. Law, p. 143.
INTRODUCTORY. 19
it reluctantly, all with a keen sense of sacrifice,
and there could not be said to be any very wide-
spread or undoubting belief in its ultimate sur-
vival. The members of the first Congress, too,
came together very tardily, and in no very cor-
dial or confident spirit of cooperation ; and after
they had assembled they were for many months
painfully embarrassed, how and upon what sub-
jects to exercise their new and untried func-
tions. The President was denied formal prece-
dence in dignity by the Governor of New York,
and must himself have felt inclined to question
the consequence of his official station, when he
found that amongst the principal questions with
which he had to deal were some which concerned
no greater things than petty points of etiquette
and ceremonial; as, for example, whether one
day in the week would be sufficient to receive
visits of compliment, " and what would be said
if he were sometimes to be seen at quiet tea-
parties." l But this first weakness of the new
government was only a transient phase in its
history, and the federal authorities did not in-
vite a direct issue with the States until they had
had time to reckon their resources and to learn
facility of action. Before Washington left the
presidential chair the federal government had
been thoroughly organized, and it fast gathered
1 McMaater, Hist, of the People of the U. S., vol. i., p. 564.
20 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
strength and confidence as it addressed itself
year after year to the adjustment of foreign re-
lations, to the defense of the western frontiers,
and to the maintenance of domestic peace. For
twenty-five years it had no chance to think of
those questions of internal policy which, in later
days, were to tempt it to stretch its constitu-
tional jurisdiction. The establishment of the
public credit, the revival of commerce, and the
encouragement of industry ; the conduct, first, of
a heated controversy, and finally of an unequal
war with England; the avoidance, first, of too
much love, and afterwards of too violent hatred
of France ; these and other like questions of
great pith and moment gave it too much to do
to leave it time to think of nice points of con-
stitutional theory affecting its relations with the
States.
But still, even in those busy times of inter-
national controversy, when the lurid light of the
French Revolution outshone all others, and when
men's minds were full of those ghosts of '76,
which took the shape of British aggressions, and
could not be laid by any charm known to diplo-
macy, even in those times, busy about other
things, there had been premonitions of the un-
equal contest between state and federal authori-
ties. The purchase of Louisiana had given new
form and startling significance to the assertion
INTRODUCTORY. 21
of national sovereignty, the Alien and Sedition
Laws had provoked the plain-spoken and em-
phatic protests of Kentucky and Virginia, and
the Embargo had exasperated New England to
threats of secession.
Nor were these open assumptions of question-
able prerogatives on the part of the national
government the most significant or unequivocal
indications of an assured increase of federal
power. Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury,
had taken care at the very beginning to set the
national policy in ways which would unavoida-
bly lead to an almost indefinite expansion of the
sphere of federal legislation. Sensible of its
need of guidance in those matters of financial
administration which evidently demanded its
immediate attention, the first Congress of the
Union promptly put itself under the direction of
Hamilton. " It is not a little amusing," says Mr.
Lodge, "to note how eagerly Congress, which
had been ably and honestly struggling with the
revenue, with commerce, and with a thousand de-
tails, fettered in all things by the awkwardness
inherent in a legislative body, turned for relief
to the new secretary." l His advice was asked
and taken in almost everything, and his skill as
a party leader made easy many of the more dif-
ficult paths of the new government. But no
1 Lodge's Alexander Hamilton (Am. Statesmen Series), p. 85.
22 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
sooner had the powers of that government begun
to be exercised under his guidance than they be-
gan to grow. In his famous Report on Manu-
factures were laid the foundations of that sys-
tem of protective duties which was destined to
hang all the industries of the country upon the
skirts of the federal power, and to make every
trade and craft in the land sensitive to every
wind of party that might blow at Washington ;
and in his equally celebrated Report in favor of
the establishment of a National Bank, there was
called into requisition, for the first time, that
puissant doctrine of the " implied powers " of
the Constitution which has ever since been the
chief dynamic principle in our constitutional
history. " This great doctrine, embodying the
principle of liberal construction, was," in the
language of Mr. Lodge, " the most formidable
weapon in the armory of the Constitution ; and
when Hamilton grasped it he knew, and his op-
ponents felt, that here was something capable of
conferring on the federal government powers of
almost any extent." l It served first as a sanc-
tion for the charter of the United States Bank,
an institution which was the central pillar of
Hamilton's wonderful financial administration,
and around which afterwards, as then, played so
many of the lightnings of party strife. But the
1 Lodge's ALjcander Hamilton, p. 105.
INTRODUCTORY. 23
Bank of the United States, though great, was
not the greatest of the creations of that lusty
and seductive doctrine. Given out, at length,
with the sanction of the federal Supreme Court, 1
and containing, as it did, in its manifest char-
acter as a doctrine of legislative prerogative, a
very vigorous principle of constitutional growth,
it quickly constituted Congress the dominant,
nay, the irresistible, power of the federal system,
relegating some of the chief balances of the Con-
stitution to an insignificant r61e in the " literary
theory " of our institutions.
Its effect upon the status of the States in the
federal system was several-fold. In the first
place, it clearly put the constitutions of the
States at a great disadvantage, inasmuch as there
was in them no like principle of growth. Their
stationary sovereignty could by no means keep
pace with the nimble progress of federal influ-
ence in the new spheres thus opened up to it.
The doctrine of implied powers was evidently
both facile and irresistible. It concerned the
political discretion of the national legislative
power, and could, therefore, elude all obstacles
of judicial interference ; for the Supreme Court
very early declared itself without authority to
question the legislature's privilege of determin-
1 Its final and most masterly exposition, by C. J. Marshal],
may be seen inMcCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton, 316.
24 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
ing the nature and extent of its own powers in
the choice of means for giving effect to its con-
stitutional prerogatives, and it has long stood as
an accepted canon of judicial action, that judges
should be very slow to oppose their opinions to
the legislative will in cases in which it is not
made demonstrably clear that there has been a
plain violation of some unquestionable constitu-
tional principle, or some explicit constitutional
provision. Of encroachments upon state as well
as of encroachments upon federal powers, the
federal authorities are, however, in most cases
the only, and in all cases the final, judges. The
States are absolutely debarred even from any
effective defense of their plain prerogatives, be-
cause not they, but the national authorities, are
commissioned to determine with decisive and un-
challenged authoritativeness what state powers
shall be recognized in each case of contest or of
conflict. In short, one of the privileges which
the States have resigned into the hands of the
federal government is the all-inclusive privilege
of determining what they themselves can do.
Federal courts can annul state action, but state
courts cannot arrest the growth of congressional
power. 1
1 The following passage from William Maclay's Sketches of
Debate in the First Senate of the United States (pp. 292-3) it
lustrates how clearly the results of this were forecast by saga-
INTRODUCTORY. 25
But this is only the doctrinal side of the case,
simply its statement with an " if " and a "but."
Its practical issue illustrates still more forcibly
the altered and declining status of the States in
the constitutional system. One very practical
issue has been to bring the power of the federal
government home to every man's door, as, no
less than his own state government, his imme-
diate over-lord. Of course every new province
into which Congress has been allured by the
principle of implied powers has required for its
administration a greater or less enlargement of
the national civil service, which now, through its
hundred thousand officers, carries into every
community of the land a sense of federal power,
cious men from the first : " The system laid down by these
gentlemen (the Federalists) was as follows, or rather the de-
velopment of the designs of a certain party : The general
power to carry the Constitution into effect by a constructive
interpretation would extend to every case that Congress may
deem necessary or expedient. . . . The laws of the United
States will be held paramount to all " state " laws, claims,
and even constitutions. The supreme power is with the gen-
eral government to decide in this, as in everything else, for
the States have neglected to secure any umpire or mode of
decision in case of difference between them. Nor is there
any point in the Constitution for them to rally under. They
may give an opinion, but the opinions of the general govern-
ment must prevail. . . . Any direct and open act would be
termed usurpation. But whether the gradual influence and
encroachments of the general government may not gradually
swallow up the state governments, is another matter."
26 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
as the power of powers, and fixes the federal
authority, as it were, in the very habits of soci-
ety. That is not a foreign but a familiar and
domestic government whose officer is your next-
door neighbor, whose representatives you deal
with every day at the post-office and the custom-
house, whose courts sit in your own State, and
send their own marshals into your own county
to arrest your own fellow-townsman, or to call
you yourself by writ to their witness-stands.
And who can help respecting officials whom he
knows to be backed by the authority and even
by the power of the whole nation, in the per-
formance of the duties in which he sees them
every day engaged? Who does not feel that
the marshal represents a greater power than the
sheriff does, and that it is more dangerous to
molest a mail-carrier than to knock down a
policeman ? This personal contact of every cit-
izen with the federal government, a contact
which makes him feel himself a citizen of a
greater state than that which controls his every-
day contracts and probates his father's will,
more than offsets his sense of dependent loyalty
to local authorities by creating a sensible bond
of allegiance to what presents itself unmistaka-
bly as the greater and more sovereign power.
In most things this bond of allegiance does
not bind him oppressively nor chafe him dis-
INTRODUCTORY. 27
tressingly ; but in some things it is drawn rather
painfully tight. Whilst federal postmasters are
valued and federal judges unhesitatingly obeyed,
and whilst very few people realize the weight of
customs -duties, and as few, perhaps, begrudge
license taxes on whiskey and tobacco, everybody
eyes rather uneasily the federal supervisors at
the polls. This is preeminently a country of
frequent elections, and few States care to increase
the frequency by separating elections of state
from elections of national functionaries. The
federal supervisor, consequently, who oversees
the balloting for congressmen, practically super-
intends the election of state officers also ; for state
officers and congressmen are usually voted for
at one and the same time and place, by ballots
bearing in common an entire "party ticket;"
and any authoritative scrutiny of these ballots
after they have been cast, or any peremptory
power of challenging those who offer to cast
them, must operate as" an interference with state
no less than with federal elections. The author-
ity of Congress to regulate the manner of choos-
ing federal representatives pinches when it is
made thus to include also the supervision of
those state elections which are, by no implied
power even, within the sphere of federal prerog-
ative. The supervisor represents the very ugliest
side of federal supremacy ; he belongs to the
28 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
least liked branch of the civil service ; but his
existence speaks very clearly as to the present
balance of powers, and his rather hateful privi-
leges must, under the present system of mixed
elections, result in impairing the self-respect
of state officers of election by bringing home
to them a vivid sense of subordination to the
powers at Washington.
A very different and much larger side of
federal predominance is to be seen in the history
of the policy of internal improvements. I need
not expound that policy here. It has been often
enough mooted and long enough understood to
need no explanation. Its practice is plain and
its persistence unquestionable. But its bearings
upon the status and the policies of the States
are not always clearly seen or often distinctly
pointed out. Its chief results, of course, have
been that expansion of national functions which
was necessarily involved in the application of
national funds by national employees to the clear-
ing of inland water-courses and the improvement
of harbors, and the establishment of the very
questionable precedent of expending in favored
localities moneys raised by taxation which bears
with equal incidence upon the people of all sec-
tions of the country ; but these chief results by
no means constitute the sum of its influence.
Hardly less significant and real, for instance, are
INTRODUCTORY. 29
its moral effects in rendering state administra-
tions less self-reliant and efficient, less prudent
and thrifty, by accustoming them to accepting
subsidies for internal improvements from the
federal coffers ; to depending upon the national
revenues, rather than upon their own energy and
enterprise, for means of developing those re-
sources which it should be the special province
of state administration to make available and
profitable. There can, I suppose, be little doubt
that it is due to the moral influences of this
policy that the States are now turning to the
common government for aid in such things as
education. Expecting to be helped, they will
not help themselves. Certain it is that there is
more than one State which, though abundantly
able to pay for an educational system of the
greatest efficiency, fails to do so, and contents
itself with imperfect temporary makeshifts be-
cause there are immense surpluses every year
in the national treasury which, rumor and unau-
thorized promises say, may be distributed amongst
the States in aid of education. If the federal
government were more careful to keep apart
from every strictly local scheme of improvement,
this culpable and demoralizing state policy could
scarcely live. States would cease to wish, because
they would cease to hope, to be stipendiaries
of the government of the Union, and would ad-
30 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
dress themselves with diligence to their proper
duties, with much benefit both to themselves and
to the federal system. This is not saying that
the policy of internal improvements was either
avoidable, unconstitutional, or unwise, but only
that it has been carried too far ; and that,
whether carried too far or not, it must in any
case have been what it is now seen to be, a big
weight in the federal scale of the balance.
Still other powers of the federal government,
which have so grown beyond their first propor-
tions as to have marred very seriously the sym-
metry of the " literary theory " of our federal
system, have strengthened under the shadow of
the jurisdiction of Congress over commerce and
the maintenance of the postal service. For in-
stance, the Supreme Court of the United States
has declared that the powers granted to Congress
by the Constitution to regulate commerce and to
establish post-offices and post-roads " keep pace
with the progress of the country and adapt them-
selves to new developments of times and circum-
stances. They extend from the horse with its
rider to the stage-coach, from the sailing vessel
to the steamer, from the coach and the steamer
to the railroad, and from the railroad to the
telegraph, as these new agencies are successively
brought into use to meet the demands of increas-
ing population and wealth. They are intended
INTRODUCTORY. 31
for the government of the business to which they
relate, at all times and under all circumstances.
As they were intrusted to the general govern-
ment for the good of the nation, it is not only
the right but the duty of Congress to see to it
that the intercourse between the States and the
transmission of intelligence are not obstructed or
unnecessarily encumbered by state legislation." 1
This emphatic decision was intended to sustain
the right of a telegraph company chartered by
one State to run its line along all post-roads in
other States, without the consent of those States,
and even against their will ; but it is manifest
that many other corporate companies might,
under the sanction of this broad opinion, claim
similar privileges in despite of state resistance,
and that such decisions go far towards making
state powers of incorporation of little worth as
compared with federal powers of control.
Keeping pace, too, with this growth of federal
activity, there has been from the first a steady
and unmistakable growth of nationality of senti-
ment. It was, of course, the weight of war
which finally and decisively disarranged the bal-
ance between state and federal powers ; and it
is obvious that many of the most striking mani-
festations of the tendency towards centralization
1 Pensacola Tel. Co. v. West. Union, 96 U. S. 1, 9. (Quoted
by Judge Cooley in his Principles of Constitutional Law.)
32 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT,
have made themselves seen since the war. But
the history of the war is only a record of the tri-
umph of the principle of national sovereignty.
The war was inevitable, because that principle
grew apace ; and the war ended as it did, because
that principle had become predominant. Ac-
cepted at first simply because it was impera-
tively necessary, the union of form and of law
had become a union of sentiment, and was des-
tined to be a union of institutions. That sense
of national unity and community of destiny
which Hamilton had sought to foster, but which
was feeble in his day of long distances and tardy
inter - communication, when the nation's pulse
was as slow as the stage-coach and the postman,
had become strong enough to rule the conti-
nent when Webster died. The war between the
States was the supreme and final struggle be-
tween those forces of disintegration which still
remained in the blood of the body politic and
those other forces of health, of union and amal-
gamation, which had been gradually building up
that body in vigor and strength as the system
passed from youth to maturity, and as its consti-
tution hardened and ripened with advancing age.
The history of that trenchant policy of " recon-
struction," which followed close upon the termi-
nation of the war, as at once its logical result
and significant commentary, contains a vivid
INTRODUCTORY. 33
picture of the altered balances of the constitu-
tional system which is a sort of exaggerated
miniature, falling very little short of being a
caricature, of previous constitutional tendencies
and federal policies. The tide of federal ag-
gression probably reached its highest shore in
the legislation which put it into the power of the
federal courts to punish a state judge for re-
fusing, in the exercise of his official discretion,
to impanel negroes in the juries of his court, 1
and in those statutes which gave the federal
courts jurisdiction over offenses against state
laws by state officers. 2 But* that tide has often
run very high, and, however fluctuating at times,
has long been well-nigh irresistible by any dykes
of constitutional state privilege; so that Judge
Cooley can say without fear of contradiction that
"The effectual checks upon the encroachments
of federal upon state power must be looked for,
1 18 Stat., part 3, 336. See Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S.
339.
8 Sect. 5515 Rev. Stats. See Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S.
371. Equally extensive of federal powers is that " legal ten-
der" decision (Juilliard v. Greenman) of March, 1884, which
argues the existence of a right to issue an irredeemable paper
currency from the Constitution's grant of other rights charac-
teristic of sovereignty, and from the possession of a similar
right by other governments. But this involves no restriction
of state powers ; and perhaps there ought to be offset against
it that other decision (several cases, October, 1883), which de
nies constitutional sanction to the Civil Rights Act.
3
84 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
not in state power of resistance, but in the
choice of representatives, senators, and presidents
holding just constitutional views, and in a federal
supreme court with competent power to restrain
all departments and all officers within the limits
of their just authority, so far as their acts may
become the subject of judicial cognizance." 1
Indeed it is quite evident that if federal power
be not altogether irresponsible, it is the federal
judiciary which is the only effectual balance-
wheel of the whole system. The federal judges
hold in their hands the fate of state powers, and
theirs is the only authority that can draw effec-
tive rein on the career of Congress. If their
power, then, be not efficient, the time must seem
sadly out of joint to those who hold to the " liter-
ary theory " of our Constitution. By the word
of the Supreme Court must all legislation stand
or fall, so long as law is respected. But, as
I have already pointed out, there is at least
one large province of jurisdiction upon which,
though invited, and possibly privileged to ap-
propriate it, the Supreme Court has, nevertheless,
refused to enter, and by refusing to enter which
it has given over all attempt to guard one of the
principal, easiest, and most obvious roads to
federal supremacy. It has declared itself with-
out authority to interfere with the political dis*
1 Principles of Constitutional Law, pp. 143, 144.
INTRODUCTORY. 35
cretion of either Congress or the President, and
has declined all effort to constrain these its co-
ordinate departments to the performance of any,
even the most constitutionally imperative act. 1
"When, indeed, the President exceeds his au-
thority, or usurps that which belongs to one of
the other departments, his orders, commands, or
warrants protect no one, and his agents become
personally responsible for their acts. The check
of the courts, therefore, consists in their ability
to keep the executive within the sphere of his
authority by refusing to give the sanction of law
to whatever he may do beyond it, and by holding
the agents or instruments of his unlawful action
to strict accountability." 2 But such punishment,
inflicted not directly upon the chief offender but
vicariously upon his agents, can come only after
all the harm has been done. The courts cannot
forestall the President and prevent the doing of
mischief. They have no power of initiative ;
they must wait until the law has been broken and
voluntary litigants have made up their pleadings ;
must wait nowadays many months, often many
years, until those pleadings are reached in the
regular course of clearing a crowded docket.
Besides, in ordinary times it is not from the
executive that the most dangerous encroachments
l Marbury v. Madison, 1 < 'ranch, 137.
a Cooley's Principles, p. 157.
36 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT,
are to be apprehended. The legislature is the
aggressive spirit. It is the motive power of the
government, and unless the judiciary can check
it, the courts are of comparatively little worth as
balance-wheels in the system. It is the subtile,
stealthy, almost imperceptible encroachments of
policy, of political action, which constitute the
precedents upon which additional prerogatives
are generally reared ; and yet these are the very
encroachments with which it is hardest for the
courts to deal, and concerning which, accord-
ingly, the federal courts have declared them-
selves unauthorized to hold any opinions. They
have naught to say upon questions of policy.
Congress must itself judge what measures may
legitimately be used to supplement or make
effectual its acknowledged jurisdiction, what are
the laws " necessary and proper for carrying into
execution " its own peculiar powers, " and all
other powers vested by " the " Constitution in
the government of the United States, or in any
department or officer thereof." The courts are
very quick and keen-eyed, too, to discern pre-
rogatives of political discretion in legislative
acts, and exceedingly slow to undertake to dis-
criminate between what is and what is not a
violation of the spirit of the Constitution. Con-
gress must wantonly go very far outside of the
plain and unquestionable meaning of the Con*
INTRODUCTORY. 37
stitution, must bump its head directly against all
right and precedent, must kick against the very
pricks of all well-established rulings and inter-
pretations, before the Supreme Court will offer
it any distinct rebuke.
Then, too, the Supreme Court itself, however
upright and irreproachable its members, has gen-
erally had and will undoubtedly continue to have
a distinct political complexion, taken from the
color of the times during which its majority was
chosen. The bench over which John Marshall
presided was, as everybody knows, staunchly and
avowedly federalist in its views ; but during the
ten years which followed 1835 federalist justices
were rapidly displaced by Democrats, and the
views of the Court changed accordingly. Indeed
it may truthfully be said that, taking our political
history " by and large," the constitutional inter-
pretations of the Supreme Court have changed,
slowly but none the less surely, with the altered
relations of power between the national parties.
The Federalists were backed by a federalist ju-
diciary ; the period of democratic supremacy wit-
nessed the triumph of democratic principles in
the courts ; and republican predominance has
driven from the highest tribunal of the land all
but one representative of democratic doctrines.
It has been only during comparatively short
periods of transition, when public opinion was
38 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
passing over from one political creed to another,
that the decisions of the federal judiciary have
been distinctly opposed to the principles of the
ruling political party.
But, besides and above all this, the national
courts are for the most part in the power of
Congress. Even the Supreme Court is not be-
yond its control; for it is the legislative privi-
lege to increase, whenever the legislative will
so pleases, the number of the judges upon the
supreme bench, to " dilute the Constitution,"
as Webster once put it, " by creating a court
which shall construe away its provisions ; " and
this on one memorable occasion it did choose to
do. In December, 1869, the Supreme Court de-
cided against the constitutionality of Congress's
pet Legal Tender Acts; and in the following
March a vacancy on the bench opportunely
occurring, and a new justiceship having been
created to meet the emergency, the Senate gave
the President to understand that no nominee
unfavorable to the debated acts would be con-
firmed, two justices of the predominant party's
way of thinking were appointed, the hostile
majority of the court was outvoted, and the
obnoxious decision reversed. 1
The creation of additional justiceships is not,
1 For an incisive account of the whole affair, see an article
entitled " The Session," No. Am. Review, vol. cxi., pp. 48, 49.
INT ROD UCTOR Y. 39
however, the only means by which Congress can
coerce and control the Supreme Court. It may
forestall an adverse decision by summarily de-
priving the court of jurisdiction over the case in
which such a decision was threatened, 1 and that
even while the case is pending; for only a
very small part of the jurisdiction of even the
Supreme Court is derived directly from the Con-
stitution. Most of it is founded upon the Judi-
ciary Act of 1789, which, being a mere act of
Congress, may be repealed at any time that
Congress chooses to repeal it. Upon this Judi-
ciary Act, too, depend not only the powers but
also the very existence of the inferior courts
of the United States, the Circuit and District
Courts ; and their possible fate, in case of a
conflict with Congress, is significantly foreshad-
owed in that Act of 1802 by which a democratic
Congress swept away, root and branch, the sys-
tem of circuit courts which had been created in
the previous year, but which was hateful to the
newly-successful Democrats because it had been
officered with Federalists in the last hours of
John Adams's administration.
This balance of judiciary against legislature
and executive would seem, therefore, to be an-
other of those ideal balances which are to be
found in the books rather than in the rough re-
i 7 Wall. 506.
40 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
alities of actual practice ; for manifestly the
power of the courts is safe only during seasons
of political peace, when parties are not aroused
to passion or tempted by the command of irre-
sistible majorities.
As for some of the other constitutional bal-
ances enumerated in that passage of the letter
to John Taylor which I have taken as a text,
their present inefficacy is quite too plain to
need proof. The constituencies may have been
balanced against their representatives in Mr.
Adams's day, for that was not a day of prima-
ries and of strict caucus discipline. The legis-
latures of the States, too, may have been able to
exercise some appreciable influence upon the ac-
tion of the Senate, if those were days when pol-
icy was the predominant consideration which
determined elections to the Senate, and the legis-
lative choice was not always a matter of astute
management, of mere personal weight, or party
expediency ; and the presidential electors un-
doubtedly did have at one time some freedom of
choice in naming the chief magistrate, but be-
fore the third presidential election some of them
were pledged, before Adams wrote this letter the
majority of them were wont to obey the dictates
of a congressional caucus, and for the last fifty
years they have simply registered the will of
party conventions.
INTRODUCTORY, 41
It is noteworthy that Mr. Adams, possibly be-
cause he had himself been President, describes
the executive as constituting only " in some de-
gree " a check upon Congress, though he puts
no such limitation upon the other balances of
the system. Independently of experience, how-
ever, it might reasonably have been expected
that the prerogatives of the President would
have been one of the most effectual restraints
upon the power of Congress. He was consti-
tuted one of the three great coordinate branches
of the government ; his functions were made of
the highest dignity; his privileges many and
substantial so great, indeed, that it has pleased
the fancy of some writers to parade them as ex-
ceeding those of the British crown; and there
can be little doubt that, had the presidential
chair always been filled by men of commanding
character, of acknowledged ability, and of thor-
ough political training, it would have continued
to be a seat of the highest authority and consid-
eration, the true centre of the federal structure,
the real throne of administration, and the fre-
quent source of policies. Washington and his
Cabinet commanded the ear of Congress, and
gave shape to its deliberations ; Adams, though
often crossed and thwarted, gave character to
the government ; and Jefferson, as President no
less than as Secretary of State, was the real
42 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
leader of his party. But the prestige of the
presidential office has declined with the charac-
ter of the Presidents. And the character of the
Presidents has declined as the perfection of self-
ish party tactics has advanced.
It was inevitable that it should be so. After
independence of choice on the part of the presi-
dential electors had given place to the choice of
presidential candidates by party conventions, it
became absolutely necessary, in the eyes of pol-
iticans, and more and more necessary as time
went on, to make expediency and availability thb
only rules of selection. As each party, when in
convention assembled, spoke only those opinions
which seemed to have received the sanction of
the general voice, carefully suppressing in its
" platform " all unpopular political tenets, and
scrupulously omitting mention of every doctrine
that might be looked upon as characteristic and
as part of a peculiar and original programme,
so, when the presidential candidate came to be
chosen, it was recognized as imperatively nec-
essary that he should have as short a political
record as possible, and that he should wear a
clean and irreproachable insignificance. " Gen-
tlemen," said a distinguished American public
man, " I would make an excellent President, but
a very poor candidate." A decisive career which
gives a man a well-understood place in public
INTRO D UCTOR Y. 43
estimation constitutes a positive disability for
the presidency ; because candidacy must precede
election, and the shoals of candidacy can be
passed only by a light boat which carries little
freight and can be turned readily about to suit
the intricacies of the passage.
I am disposed to think, however, that the de-
cline in the character of the Presidents is not
the cause, but only the accompanying manifes-
tation, of the declining prestige of the presiden-
tial office. That high office has fallen from its
first estate of dignity because its power has
waned ; and its power has waned because the
power of Congress has become predominant.
The early Presidents were, as I have said, men
of such a stamp that they would under any cir-
cumstances have made their influence felt ; but
their opportunities were exceptional. What
with quarreling and fighting with England,
buying Louisiana and Florida, building dykes
to keep out the flood of the French Revolution,
and extricating the country from ceaseless broils
with the South American Republics, the govern-
ment was, as has been pointed out, constantly
busy, during the first quarter century of its ex-
istence, with the adjustment of foreign relations ;
and with foreign relations, of course, the Presi-
dents had ever}rthing to do, since theirs was the
office of negotiation.
44 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Moreover, as regards home policy also those
times were not like ours. Congress was some-
what awkward in exercising its untried powers,
and its machinery was new, and without that
fine adjustment which has since made it perfect
of its kind. Not having as yet learned the art
of governing itself to the best advantage, and
being without that facility of legislation which
it afterwards acquired, the Legislature was glad
to get guidance and suggestions of policy from
the Executive.
But this state of things did not last long.
Congress was very quick and apt in learning
what it could do and in getting into thoroughly
good trim to do it. It very early divided itself
into standing committees which it equipped with
very comprehensive and thorough -going privi-
leges of legislative initiative and control, and set
itself through these to administer the govern-
ment. Congress is (to adopt Mr. Bagehot's de-
scription of Parliament) "nothing less than a
big meeting of more or less idle people. In pro-
portion as you give it power it will inquire into
everything, settle everything, meddle in every-
thing. In an ordinary despotism the powers of
the despot are limited by his bodily capacity,
and by the calls of pleasure ; he is but one man ;
there are but twelve hours in his day, and he
is not disposed to employ more than a small part
INTRODUCTORY. 45
in dull business : he keeps the rest for the court,
or the harein, or for society." But Congress
"is a despot who has unlimited time, who has
unlimited vanity, who has, or believes he has,
unlimited comprehension, whose pleasure is in
action, whose life is work." Accordingly it has
entered more and more into the details of ad-
ministration, until it has virtually taken into its
own hands all the substantial powers of govern-
ment. It does not domineer over the President
himself, but it makes the Secretaries its humble
servants. Not that it would hesitate, upon oc-
casion, to deal directly with the chief magistrate
himself ; but it has few calls to do so, because
our latter-day Presidents live by proxy ; they
are the executive in theory, but the Secretaries
are the executive in fact. At the very first
session of Congress steps were taken towards
parceling out executive work amongst several
departments, according to a then sufficiently
thorough division of labor; and if the President
of that day was not able to direct administra-
tive details, of course the President of to-day is
infinitely less able to do so, and must content
himself with such general supervision as he may
find time to exercise. He is in all every-day
concerns shielded by the responsibility of his
subordinates.
It cannot be said that this change has raised
46 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the cabinet in dignity or power ; it has only al
tered their relations to the scheme of govern-
ment. The members of the President's cabinet
have always been prominent in administration ;
and certainly the early cabinets were no less
strong in political influence than are the cabi-
nets of our own day ; but they were then only
the President's advisers, whereas they are now
rather the President's colleagues. The Presi-
dent is now scarcely the executive ; he is the
head of the administration ; he appoints the
executive. Of course this is not a legal prin-
ciple ; it is only a fact. In legal theory the
President can control every operation of every
department of the executive branch of the gov-
ernment ; but in fact it is not practicable for him
to do so, and a limitation of fact is as potent as
a prohibition of law.
But, though the heads of the executive depart-
ments are thus no longer simply the counselors
of the President, having become in a very real
sense members of the executive, their guiding
power in the conduct of affairs, instead of ad-
vancing, has steadily diminished ; because while
they were being made integral parts of the ma-
chinery of administration, Congress was extend-
ing its own sphere of activity, was getting into
the habit of investigating and managing every
thing. The executive was losing and Congress
INTRODUCTORY. 47
gaining weight ; and the station to which cabi-
nets finally attained was a station of diminished
and diminishing power. There is no distincter
tendency in congressional history than the ten-
dency to subject even the details of administra-
tion to the constant supervision, and all policy
to the watchful intervention, of the Standing
Committees.
I am inclined to think, therefore, that the en-
larged powers of Congress are the fruits rather
of an immensely increased efficiency of organiza-
tion, and of the redoubled activity consequent
upon the facility of action secured by such or-
ganization, than of any definite and persistent
scheme of conscious usurpation. It is safe to
say that Congress always had the desire to have
a hand in every affair of federal government ;
but it was only by degrees that it found means
and opportunity to gratify that desire, and its
activity, extending its bounds wherever perfected
processes of congressional work offered favoring
prospects, has been enlarged so naturally and
so silently that it has almost always seemed of
normal extent, and has never, except perhaps
during one or two brief periods of extraordinary
political disturbance, appeared to reach much
beyond its acknowledged constitutional sphere.
It is only in the exercise of those functions of
public and formal consultation and cooperation
48 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
with the President which are the peculiar offices
of the Senate, that the power of Congress has
made itself offensive to popular conceptions of
constitutional propriety, because it is only in the
exercise of such functions that Congress is com-
pelled to be overt and demonstrative in its claims
of over-lordship. The House of Representatives
has made very few noisy demonstrations of its
usurped right of ascendency ; not because it was
diffident or unambitious, but because it could
maintain and extend its prerogatives quite as
satisfactorily without noise ; whereas the aggres-
sive policy of the Senate has, in the acts of its
" executive sessions," necessarily been overt, in
spite of the closing of the doors, because when
acting as the President's council in the ratifica-
tion of treaties and in appointments to office its
competition for power has been more formally
and directly a contest with the executive than
were those really more significant legislative acts
by which, in conjunction with the House, it has
habitually forced the heads of the executive de-
partments to observe the will of Congress at
every important turn of policy. Hence it is that
to the superficial view it appears that only the
Senate has been outrageous in its encroachments
upon executive privilege. It is not often easy
to see the true constitutional bearing of strictly
legislative action ; but it is patent even to the
INTROD UCTOR Y. 49
jtaast observant that in the matter of appoint-
ments to office, for instance, senators have often
outrun their legal right to give or withhold their
assent to appointments, by insisting upon being
first consulted concerning nominations as well.,
and have thus made their constitutional assent
to appointments dependent upon an unconstitu-
tional control of nominations.
This particular usurpation has been put upon
a very solid basis of law by that Tenure-of -Office
Act, which took away from President Johnson,
in an hour of party heat and passion, that inde-
pendent power of removal from office with which
the Constitution had invested him, but which he
had used in a way that exasperated a Senate not
of his own way of thinking. But though this
teasing power of the Senate's in the matter of
the federal patronage is repugnant enough to the
original theory of the Constitution, it is likely
to be quite nullified by that policy of civil-service
reform which has gained so firm, and mayhap so
lasting, a footing in our national legislation ; and
in no event would the control of the patronage
by the Senate have unbalanced the federal sys-
tem more seriously than it may some day be un-
balanced by an irresponsible exertion of that
body's semi-executive powers in regard to the
foreign policy of the government. More than
one passage in the history of our foreign rela-
50 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
tions illustrates the danger. During the single
congressional session of 1868-9, for example,
the treaty-marring power of the Senate was ex-
erted in a way that made the comparative weak-
ness of the executive very conspicuous, and was
ominous of very serious results. It showed the
executive in the right, but feeble and irresolute ;
the Senate masterful, though in the wrong. Den-
mark had been asked to part with the island of
St. Thomas to the United States, and had at first
refused all terms, not only because she cared
little for the price, but also and principally be-
cause such a sale as that proposed was opposed
to the established policy of the powers of Wes-
tern Europe, in whose favor Denmark wished
to stand ; but finally, by stress of persistent and
importunate negotiation, she had been induced
to yield ; a treaty had been signed and sent to
the Senate ; the people of St. Thomas had sig-
nified their consent to the cession by a formal
vote; and the island had been actually trans-
ferred to an authorized agent of our government,
upon the faith, on the part of the Danish minis-
ters, that our representatives would not have tri-
fled with them by entering upon an important
business transaction which they were not assured
of their ability to conclude. But the Senate lei
the treaty lie neglected in its committee-room;
the limit of time agreed upon for confirmation
INTRODUCTORY. 51
passed; the Danish government, at last bent
upon escaping the ridiculous humiliation that
would follow a failure of the business at that
stage, extended the time and even sent over one
of its most eminent ministers of state to urge the
negotiation by all dignified means ; but the Sen-
ate cared nothing for Danish feelings and could
afford, it thought, to despise President Grant
and Mr. Fish, and at the next session rejected
the treaty, and left the Danes to repossess them-
selves of the island, which we had concluded not
to buy after all.
It was during this same session of 1868-9 that
the Senate teased the executive by throwing
every possible obstacle in the way of the confir-
mation of the much more important treaty with
Great Britain relative to the Alabama claims,
nearly marring for good and all one of the most
satisfactory successes of our recent foreign pol-
icy ; l but it is not necessary to dwell at length
upon these well-known incidents of our later his-
tory, inasmuch as these are only two of innumer-
able instances which make it safe to say that
from whatever point we view the relations of the
executive and the legislature, it is evident that
the power of the latter has steadily increased at
1 For a brilliant account of the senatorial history of these
two treaties, see the article entitled " The Session," No. Am,
Rev., voL cviii. (1869), p. 626 et aeq.
52 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the expense of the prerogatives of the former,
and that the degree in which the one of these
great branches of government is balanced against
the other is a very insignificant degree indeed.
For in the exercise of his power of veto, which
is of course, beyond all comparison, his most
formidable prerogative, the President acts not
as the executive but as a third branch of the
legislature. As Oliver Ellsworth said, at the
first session of the Senate, the President is, as
regards the passage of bills, but a part of Con-
gress ; and he can be an efficient, imperative
member of the legislative system only in quiet
times, when parties are pretty evenly balanced,
and there are no indomitable majorities to tread
obnoxious vetoes under foot.
Even this rapid outline sketch of the two pic-
tures, of the theory and of the actual practices
of the Constitution, has been sufficient, there-
fore, to show the most marked points of differ-
ence between the two, and to justify that careful
study of congressional government, as the real
government of the Union, which I am about to
undertake. The balances of the Constitution
are for the most part only ideal. For all prac-
tical purposes the national government is su-
preme over the state governments, and Con-
gress predominant over its so-called coordinate
branches. Whereas Congress at first overshad.
INTROD UCTOR Y. 53
owed neither President nor federal judiciary, it
now on occasion rules both with easy mastery
and with a high hand ; and whereas each State
once guarded its sovereign prerogatives with
jealous pride, and able men not a few preferred
political advancement under the governments of
the great commonwealths to office under the new
federal Constitution, seats in state legislatures
are now no longer coveted except as possible
approaches to seats in Congress ; and even gov-
ernors of States seek election to the national
Senate as a promotion, a reward for the humbler
services they have rendered their local govern-
ments.
What makes it the more important to under-
stand the present mechanism of national govern-
ment, and to study the methods of congressional
rule in a light unclouded by theory, is that
there is plain evidence that the expansion of
federal power is to continue, and that there
exists, consequently, an evident necessity that it
should be known just what to do and how to do
it, when the tune comes for public opinion to
take control of the forces which are changing
the character of our Constitution. There are
voices in the air which cannot be misunderstood.
The times seem to favor a centralization of gov-
ernmental functions such as could not have sug-
gested itself as a possibility to the f ramers of
54 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the Constitution. Since they gave their work
to the world the whole face of that world has
changed. The Constitution was adopted when
it was six days' hard traveling from New York
to Boston ; when to cross East River was to ven-
ture a perilous voyage ; when men were thank-
ful for weekly mails ; when the extent of the
country's commerce was reckoned not in mill-
ions but in thousands of dollars ; when the coun-
try knew few cities, and had but begun man-
ufactures ; when Indians were pressing upon
near frontiers ; when there were no telegraph
lines, and no monster corporations. Unques-
tionably, the pressing problems of the present
moment regard the regulation of our vast sys-
tems of commerce and manufacture, the control
of giant corporations, the restraint of monopo-
lies, the perfection of fiscal arrangements, the
facilitating of economic exchanges, and many
other like national concerns, amongst which may
possibly be numbered the question of marriage
and divorce ; and the greatest of these problems
do not fall within even the enlarged sphere of
the federal government ; some of them can be
embraced within its jurisdiction by no possible
stretch of construction, and the majority of them
only by wresting the Constitution to strange and
as yet unimagined uses. Still there is a distinct
movement in favor of national control of all
IN TROD TTCTOR Y. 55
questions of policy which manifestly demand
uniformity of treatment and power of adminis-
tration such as cannot be realized by the sepa-
rate, unconcerted action of the States ; and it
seems probable to many that, whether by consti-
tutional amendment, or by still further flights
of construction, yet broader territory will at no
very distant day be assigned to the federal gov-
ernment. It becomes a matter of the utmost
importance, therefore, both for those who would
arrest this tendency, and for those who, because
they look upon it with allowance if not with
positive favor, would let it run its course, to ex-
amine critically the government upon which this
new weight of responsibility and power seems
likely to be cast, in order that its capacity both
for the work it now does and for that which it
may be called upon to do may be definitely es-
timated.
Judge Cooley, in his admirable work on " The
Principles of American Constitutional Law,"
after quoting Mr. Adams's enumeration of the
checks and balances of the federal system, adds
this comment upon Mr. Adams's concluding
statement that that system is an invention of
our own. " The invention, nevertheless, was
suggested by the British Constitution, in which
a system almost equally elaborate was then in
force. In its outward forms that system still
6(5 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
remains ; but there has been for more than a
century a gradual change in the direction of a
concentration of legislative and executive power
in the popular house of Parliament, so that the
government now is sometimes said, with no great
departure from the fact, to be a government by
the House of Commons." But Judge Cooley
does not seem to see, or, if he sees, does not
emphasize the fact, that our own system has
been hardly less subject to " a gradual change in
the direction of a concentration "of all the sub-
stantial powers of government in the hands of
Congress ; so that it is now, though a wide de-
parture from the form of things, " no great
departure from the fact" to describe ours as
a government by the Standing Committees of
Congress. This fact is, however, deducible from
very many passages of Judge Cooley's own writ-
ings ; for he is by no means insensible of that
expansion of the powers of the federal govern-
ment and that crystallization of its methods
which have practically made obsolete the early
constitutional theories, and even the modified
theory which he himself seems to hold.
He has tested the nice adjustment of the the-
oretical balances by the actual facts, and has
carefully set forth the results ; but he has no-
where brought those results together into a sin-
gle comprehensive view which might serve as a
INTRODUCTORY. 57
clear and satisfactory delineation of the Consti-
tution of to-day ; nor has he, or any other writer
of capacity, examined minutely and at length
that internal organization of Congress which de-
termines its methods of legislation, which shapes
its means of governing the executive depart-
ments, which contains in it the whole mechan-
ism whereby the policy of the country is in all
points directed, and which is therefore an es-
sential branch of constitutional study. As the
House of Commons is the central object of ex-
amination in every study of the English Consti-
tution, so should Congress be in every study of
our own. Any one who is unfamiliar with what
Congress actually does and how it does it, with
all its duties and all its occupations, with all its
devices of management and resources of power,
is very far from a knowledge of the constitu-
tional system under which we live ; and to every
one who knows these things that knowledge is
very near.
n.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
No more vital truth was ever uttered than that freedom and free in-
stitutions cannot long be maintained by any people who do not under-
stand the nature of their own government.
LIKE a vast picture thronged with figures of
equal prominence and crowded with elaborate
and obtrusive details, Congress is hard to see
satisfactorily and appreciatively at a single view
and from a single stand-point. Its complicated
forms and diversified structure confuse the vis-
ion, and conceal the system which underlies its
composition. It is too complex to be under-
stood without an effort, without a careful and
systematic process of analysis. Consequently,
very few people do understand it, and its doors
are practically shut against the comprehension
of the public at large. If Congress had a few
authoritative leaders whose figures were very
distinct and very conspicuous to the eye of the
world, and who could represent and stand for
the national legislature in the thoughts of that
very numerous, and withal very respectable, class
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 59
of persons who must think specifically and in
concrete forms when they think at all, those
persons who can make something out of men
but very little out of intangible generalizations,
it would be quite within the region of possibili-
ties for the majority of the nation to follow the
course of legislation without any very serious
confusion of thought. I suppose that almost
everybody who just now gives any heed to the
policy of Great Britain, with regard even to the
reform of the franchise and other like strictly
legislative questions, thinks of Mr. Gladstone
and his colleagues rather than of the House of
Commons, whose servants they are. The ques-
tion is not, What will Parliament do ? but, What
will Mr. Gladstone do ? And there is even less
doubt that it is easier and more natural to look
upon the legislative designs of Germany as
locked up behind Bismarck's heavy brows than
to think of them as dependent upon the determi-
nations of the Reichstag, although as a matter
of fact its consent is indispensable even to the
plans of the imperious and domineering Chan-
cellor.
But there is no great minister or ministry to
represent the will and being of Congress in the
common thought. The Speaker of the House of
Representatives stands as near to leadership as
any one ; but his will does not run as a forma-
60 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
tive and imperative power in legislation much
beyond the appointment of the committees who
are to lead the House and do its work for it, and
it is, therefore, not entirely satisfactory to the
public mind to trace all legislation to him. He
may have a controlling hand in starting it ; but
he sits too still in his chair, and is too evidently
not on the floor of the body over which he pre-
sides, to make it seem probable to the ordinary
judgment that he has much immediate concern
in legislation after it is once set afoot. Every-
body knows that he is a staunch and avowed
partisan, and that he likes to make smooth, when-
ever he can, the legislative paths of his party ;
but it does not seem likely that all important
measures originate with him, or that he is the
author of every distinct policy. And in fact he
is not. He is a great party chief, but the hedg-
ing circumstances of his official position as pre-
siding officer prevent his performing the part of
active leadership. He appoints the leaders of
the House, but he is not himself its leader.
The leaders of the House are the chairmen of
the principal Standing Committees. Indeed, to
be exactly accurate, the House has as many
leaders as there are subjects of legislation ; for
there are as many Standing Committees as there
are leading classes of legislation, and in the con-
sideration of every topic of business the House
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 61
is guided by a special leader in the person of the
chairman of the Standing Committee, charged
with the superintendence of measures of the par-
ticular class to which that topic belongs. It is
this multiplicity of leaders, this many -headed
leadership, which makes the organization of the
House too complex to afford uninformed peo-
ple and unskilled observers any easy clue to its
methods of rule. For the chairmen of the Stand-
ing Committees do not constitute a cooperative
body like a ministry. They do not consult and
concur in the adoption of homogeneous and mu-
tually helpful measures ; there is no thought
of acting in concert. Each Committee goes its
own way at its own pace. It is impossible to
discover any unity or method in the disconnected
and therefore unsystematic, confused, and des-
ultory action of the House, or any common pur-
pose in the measures which its Committees from
time to time recommend.
And it is not only to the unanalytic thought
of the common observer who looks at the House
from the outside that its doings seem helter-
skelter, and without comprehensible rule ; it is
not at once easy to understand them when they
are scrutinized in their daily headway through
open session by one who is inside the House.
The newly-elected member, entering its doors
for the first time, and with no more knowledge
62 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
of its rules and customs than the more intel-
ligent of his constituents possess, always experi-
ences great difficulty in adjusting his precon-
ceived ideas of congressional life to the strange
and unlooked-for conditions by which he finds
himself surrounded after he has been sworn in
and has become a part of the great legislative
machine. Indeed there are generally many
things connected with his career in Washington
to disgust and dispirit, if not to aggrieve, the
new member. In the first place, his local repu-
tation does not follow him to the federal capital.
Possibly the members from his own State know
him, and receive him into full fellowship; but
no one else knows him, except as an adherent of
this or that party, or as a new-comer from this
or that State. He finds his station insignifi-
cant, and his identity indistinct. But this so-
cial humiliation which he experiences in circles
in which to be a congressman does not of itself
confer distinction, because it is only to be one
among many, is probably not to be compared
with the chagrin and disappointment which come
in company with the inevitable discovery that he
is equally without weight or title to consideration
in the House itself. No man, when chosen to the
membership of a body possessing great powers
and exalted prerogatives, likes to find his activity
repressed, and himself suppressed, by imperative
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 63
rules and precedents which seem to have been
framed for the deliberate purpose of making
usefulness unattainable by individual members.
Yet such the new member finds the rules and
precedents of the House to be. It matters not
to him, because it is not apparent on the face
of things, that those rules and precedents have
grown, not out of set purpose to curtail the
privileges of new members as such, but out of
the plain necessities of business ; it remains the
fact that he suffers under their curb, and it is
not until " custom hath made it in him a prop-
erty of easiness " that he submits to them with
anything like good grace.
Not all new members suffer alike, of course,
under this trying discipline ; because it is not
every new member that comes to his seat with
serious purposes of honest, earnest, and duteous
work. There are numerous tricks and subter-
fuges, soon learned and easily used, by means of
which the most idle and self-indulgent members
may readily make such show of exemplary dili-
gence as will quite satisfy, if it does not positively
delight, constituents in Buncombe. But the num-
ber of congressmen who deliberately court use-
lessness and counterfeit well-doing is probably
small. The great majority doubtless have a keen
enough sense of their duty, and a sufficiently un-
hesitating desire to do it ; and it may safely be
64 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
taken for granted that the zeal of new members
is generally hot and insistent. If it be not hot
to begin with, it is like to become so by reason
of friction with the rules, because such men
must inevitably be chafed by the bonds of re-
straint drawn about them by the inexorable ob-
servances of the House.
Often the new member goes to Washington as
the representative of a particular line of policy,
having been elected, it may be, as an advocate of
free trade, or as a champion of protection ; and
it is naturally his first care upon entering on his
duties to seek immediate opportunity for the ex-
pression of his views and immediate means of
giving them definite shape and thrusting them
upon the attention of Congress. His disappoint-
ment is, therefore, very keen when he finds both
opportunity and means denied him. He can in-
troduce his bill ; but that is all he can do, and
he must do that at a particular time and in a
particular manner. This he is likely to learn
through rude experience, if he be not cautious
to inquire beforehand the details of practice.
He is likely to make a rash start, upon the
supposition that Congress observes the ordinary
rules of parliamentary practice to which he has
become accustomed in the debating clubs familiar
to his youth, and in the mass-meetings known to
his later experience. His bill is doubtless ready
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 65
for presentation early in the session, and some
day, taking advantage of a pause in the proceed-
ings, when there seems to be no business before
the House, he rises to read it and move its adop-
tion. But he finds getting the floor an arduous
and precarious undertaking. There are certain
to be others who want it as well as he ; and his
indignation is stirred by the fact that the Speaker
does not so much as turn towards him, though he
must have heard his call, but recognizes some
one else readily and as a matter of course. If
he be obstreperous and persistent in his cries of
" Mr. Speaker," he may get that great func-
tionary's attention for a moment, only to be
told, however, that he is out of order, and that
his bill can be introduced at that stage only by
unanimous consent : immediately there are me-
chanically-uttered but emphatic exclamations of
objection, and he is forced to sit down confused
and disgusted. He has, without knowing it, ob-
truded himself in the way of the " regular order
of business," and been run over in consequence,
without being quite clear as to how the accident
occurred.
Moved by the pain and discomfiture of this first
experience to respect, if not to fear, the rules, the
new member casts about, by study or inquiry, to
find out, if possible, the nature and occasion of
his privileges. He learns that his only safe day
66 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
is Monday. On that day the roll of the States
is called, and members may introduce bills as
their States are reached in the call. So on
Monday he essays another bout with the rules,
confident this tune of being on their safe side,
but mayhap indiscreetly and unluckily over-con-
fident. For if he supposes, as he naturally will,
that after his bill has been sent up to be read by
the clerk he may say a few words in its behalf,
and in that belief sets out upon his long-con-
sidered remarks, he will be knocked down by the
rules as surely as he was on the first occasion
when he gained the floor for a brief moment.
The rap of Mr. Speaker's gavel is sharp, imme-
diate, and peremptory. He is curtly informed
that no debate is in order ; the bill can only be
referred to the appropriate Committee.
This is, indeed, disheartening ; it is his first
lesson in committee government, and the mas-
ter's rod smarts ; but the sooner he learns the
prerogatives and powers of the Standing Com-
mittees the sooner will he penetrate the mys-
teries of the rules and avoid the pain of further
contact with their thorny side. The privileges
of the Standing Committees are the beginning
and the end of the rules. Both the House of
Representatives and the Senate conduct their
business by what may figuratively, but not inac-
curately, be called an odd device of disintegra-
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 67
tion. The House virtually both deliberates and
legislates in small sections. Time would fail it
to discuss all the bills brought in, for they every
session number thousands ; and it is to be
doubted whether, even if time allowed, the or-
dinary processes of debate and amendment would
suffice to sift the chaff from the wheat in the
bushels of bills every week piled upon the
clerk's desk. Accordingly, no futile attempt is
made to do anything of the kind. The work is
parceled out, most of it to the forty-seven Stand-
ing Committees which constitute the regular or-
ganization of the House, some of it to select
committees appointed for special and temporary
purposes. Each of the almost numberless bills
that come pouring in on Mondays is " read a
first and second time," simply perfunctorily
read, that is, by its title, by the clerk, and
passed by silent assent through its first formal
courses, for the purpose of bringing it to the
proper stage for commitment, and referred
without debate to the appropriate Standing
Committee. Practically, no bill escapes com-
mitment save, of course, bills introduced by
committees, and a few which may now and then
be crowded through under a suspension of the
rules, granted by a two - thirds vote though
the exact disposition to be made of a bill is not
always determined easily and as a matter of
68 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
course. Besides the great Committee of Ways
and Means and the equally great Committee on
Appropriations, there are Standing Committees
on Banking and Currency, on Claims, on Com-
merce, on the Public Lands, on Post-Offices and
Post-Roads, on the Judiciary, on Public Expendi-
tures, on Manufactures, on Agriculture, on Mili-
tary Affairs, on Naval Affairs, on Mines and
Mining, on Education and Labor, on Patents, and
on a score of other branches of legislative con-
cern ; but careful and differential as is the top-
ical division of the subjects of legislation which
is represented in the titles of these Committees,
it is not always evident to which Committee each
particular bill should go. Many bills affect
subjects which may be regarded as lying as
properly within the jurisdiction of one as of
another of the Committees ; for no hard and fast
lines separate the various classes of business
which the Committees are commissioned to take
in charge. Their jurisdictions overlap at many
points, and it must frequently happen that bills
are read which cover just this common ground.
Over the commitment of such bills sharp and
interesting skirmishes often take place. There
is active competition for them, the ordinary,
quiet routine of matter-of-course reference being
interrupted by rival motions seeking to give
very different directions to the disposition to be
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 69
made of them. To which Committee should a
bill " to fix and establish the maximum rates of
fares of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
Railroads " be sent, to the Committee on Com-
merce or to the Committee on the Pacific Rail-
roads ? Should a bill which prohibits the mail-
ing of certain classes of letters and circulars go
to the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads,
because it relates to the mails, or to the Commit-
tee on the Judiciary, because it proposes to make
any transgression of its prohibition a crime?
What is the proper disposition of any bill which
thus seems to lie within two distinct committee
jurisdictions ?
The fate of bills committed is generally not
uncertain. As a rule, a bill committed is a bill
doomed. When it goes from the clerk's desk
to a committee-room it crosses a parliamentary
bridge of sighs to dim dungeons of silence whence
it will never return. The means and time of its
death are unknown, but its friends never see it
again. Of course no Standing Committee is
privileged to take upon itself the full powers of
the House it represents, and formally and deci-
sively reject a bill referred to it ; its disapproval,
if it disapproves, must be reported to the House
in the form of a recommendation that the bill
" do not pass." But it is easy, and therefore com-
mon, to let the session pass without making any
70 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
report at all upon bills deemed objectionable or
unimportant, and to substitute for reports upon
them a few bills of the Committee's own draft-
ing ; so that thousands of bills expire with the
expiration of each Congress, not having been
rejected, but having been simply neglected.
There was not time to report upon them.
Of course it goes without saying that the prac-
tical effect of this Committee organization of
the House is to consign to each of the Standing
Committees the entire direction of legislation
upon those subjects which properly come to its
consideration. As to those subjects it is entitled
to the initiative, and all legislative action with
regard to them is under its overruling guidance.
It gives shape and course to the determinations
of the House. In one respect, however, its ini-
tiative is limited. Even a Standing Committee
cannot report a bill whose subject-matter has
not been referred to it by the House, " by the
rules or otherwise ; " it cannot volunteer advice
on questions upon which its advice has not been
asked. But this is not a serious, not even an
operative, limitation upon its functions of sug-
gestion and leadership ; for it is a very simple
matter to get referred to it any subject it wishes
to introduce to the attention of the House. Its
chairman, or one of its leading members, frames
a bill covering the point upon which the Com-
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 71
mittee wishes to suggest legislation ; brings it
in, in his capacity as a private member, on
Monday, when the call of States is made ; has it
referred to his Committee ; and thus secures an
opportunity for the making of the desired re-
port.
It is by this imperious authority of the Stand"
ing Committees that the new member is stayed
and thwarted whenever he seeks to take an ac-
tive part in the business of the House. Turn
which way he may, some privilege of the Com,
mittees stands in his path. The rules are so
framed as to put all business under their man-
agement ; and one of the discoveries which the
new member is sure to make, albeit after many
trying experiences and sobering adventures and
as his first session draws towards its close, is,
that under their sway freedom of debate finds
no place of allowance, and that his long-delayed
speech must remain unspoken. For even a long
congressional session is too short to afford time
for a full consideration of all the reports of the
forty-seven Committees, and debate upon them
must be rigidly cut short, if not altogether ex-
cluded, if any considerable part of the necessary
business is to be gotten through with before ad-
journment. There are some subjects to which
the House must always give prompt attention ;
therefore reports from the Committees on Print-
f2 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
ing and on Elections are always in order ; and
there are some subjects to which careful con-
sideration must always be accorded; therefore
the Committee of Ways and Means and the Com-
mittee on Appropriations are clothed with ex-
traordinary privileges ; and revenue and supply
bills may be reported, and will ordinarily be con-
sidered, at any time. But these four are the only
specially licensed Committees. The rest must
take their turns in fixed order as they are called
on by the Speaker, contenting themselves with
such crumbs of time as fall from the tables of
the four Committees of highest prerogative.
Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, whose long
congressional experience entitles him to speak
with authority, calculates l that, " supposing the
two sessions which make up the life of the
House to last ten months," most of the Commit-
tees have at their disposal during each Con-
gress but two hours apiece in which " to report
upon, debate, and dispose of all the subjects of
general legislation committed to their charge."
For of course much time is wasted. No Con-
gress gets immediately to work upon its first as-
sembling. It has its officers to elect, and after
their election some time must elapse before its
1 In an article entitled " The Conduct of Business in Con-
gress" (North American Review, -vol. cxxviii. p. 113), to which
I am indebted for many details of the sketch in the text.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 73
organization is finally completed by the appoint-
ment of the Committees. It adjourns for holi-
days, too, and generally spares itself long sittings.
Besides, there are many things to interrupt the
call of the Committees upon which most of the
business waits. That call can proceed only dur-
ing the morning hours, the hours just after
the reading of the "Journal," on Tuesdays,
Wednesdays, and Thursdays ; and even then it
may suffer postponement because of the unfin-
ished business of the previous day which is enti-
tled to first consideration. The call cannot pro-
ceed on Mondays because the morning hour of
Mondays is devoted invariably to the call of the
States for the introduction of bills and resolu-
tions ; nor on Fridays, for Friday is " private
bill day," and is always engrossed by the Com-
mittee on Claims, or by other fathers of bills
which have gone upon the " private calendar."
On Saturdays the House seldom sits.
The reports made during these scant morning
hours are ordered to be printed, for future con-
sideration in their turn, and the bills introduced
by the Committees are assigned to the proper
calendars, to be taken up in order at the proper
time. When a morning hour has run out, the
House hastens to proceed with the business on
the Speaker's table.
These are some of the plainer points of the
74 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
rules. They are full of complexity, and of con-
fusion to the uninitiated, and the confusions of
practice are greater than the confusions of the
rules. For the regular order of business is con-
stantly being interrupted by the introduction
of resolutions offered " by unanimous consent,"
and of bills let in under a " suspension of the
rules." Still, it is evident that there is one
principle which runs through every stage of pro-
cedure, and which is never disallowed or abro-
gated, the principle that the Committees shall
rule without let or hindrance. And this is a
principle of extraordinary formative power. It
is the mould of all legislation. In the first
place, the speeding of business under the direc-
tion of the Committees determines the character
and the amount of the discussion to which legis-
lation shall be subjected. The House is con-
scious that time presses. It knows that, hurry
as it may, it will hardly get through with one
eighth of the business laid out for the session,
and that to pause for lengthy debate is to allow
the arrears to accumulate. Besides, most of the
members are individually anxious to expedite
action on every pending measure, because each
member of the House is a member of one or
more of the Standing Committees, and is quite
naturally desirous that the bills prepared by his
Committees, and in which he is, of course, spe-
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 75
cially interested by reason of the particular at-
tention which he has been compelled to give
them, should reach a hearing and a vote as soon
as possible. It must, therefore, invariably hap-
pen that the Committee holding the floor at anj
particular time is the Committee whose proposals
the majority wish to dispose of as summarily as
circumstances will allow, in order that the rest of
the forty-two unprivileged Committees to which
the majority belong may gain the earlier and the
fairer chance of a hearing. A reporting Com-
mittee, besides, is generally as glad to be pushed
as the majority are to push it. It probably has
several bills matured, and wishes to see them
disposed of before its brief hours of oppor-
tunity 1 are passed and gone.
Consequently, it is the established custom of
the House to accord the floor for one hour to
the member of the reporting Committee who has
charge of the business under consideration ; and
that hour is made the^ chief hour of debate.
The reporting committee-man seldom, if ever,
uses the whole of the hour himself for his open-
ing remarks ; he uses part of it, and retains con-
1 No Committee is entitled, when called, to occupy more
than the morning hours of two successive days with the meas-
ures which it has prepared ; though if its second morning hour
expire while the House is actually considering one of its bills,
that single measure may hold over from morning hour to
morning hour until it is disposed of.
76 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
trol of the rest of it ; for by undisputed privilege
it is his to dispose of, whether he himself be upon
the floor or not. No amendment is in order
during that hour, unless he consent to its pres-
entation ; and he does not, of course, yield his
time indiscriminately to any one who wishes to
speak. He gives way, indeed, as in fairness he
should, to opponents as well as to friends of the
measure under his charge ; but generally no one
is accorded a share of his time who has not ob-
tained his previous promise of the floor; and
those who do speak must not run beyond the
number of minutes he has agreed to allow them.
He keeps the course both of debate and of
amendment thus carefully under his own super-
vision, as a good tactician, and before he finally
yields the floor, at the expiration of his hour, he
is sure to move the previous question. To neg-
lect to do so would be to lose all control of the
business in hand ; for unless the previous ques-
tion is ordered the debate may run on at will,
and his Committee's chance for getting its meas-
ures through slip quite away ; and that would
be nothing less than his disgrace. He would be
all the more blameworthy because he had but
to ask for the previous question to get it. As I
have said, the House is as eager to hurry busi-
ness as he can be, and will consent to almost any
limitation of discussion that he may demand;
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 77
though, probably, if he were to throw the reins
upon its neck, it would run at large from very
wantonness, in scorn of such a driver. The pre-
vious question once ordered, all amendments are
precluded, and one hour remains for the sum-
ming-up of this same privileged committee-man
before the final vote is taken and the bill dis-
posed of.
These are the customs which baffle and per-
plex and astound the new member. In these
precedents and usages, when at length he comes
to understand them, the novice spies out the
explanation of the fact, once so confounding and
seemingly inexplicable, that when he leaped to
his feet to claim the floor other members who
rose after him were coolly and unfeelingly pre-
ferred before him by the Speaker. Of course it
is plain enough now that Mr. Speaker knew be-
forehand to whom the representative of the re-
porting Committee had agreed to yield the floor ;
and it was no use for any one else to cry out for
recognition. Whoever wished to speak should,
if possible, have made some arrangement with
the Committee before the business came to a
hearing, and should have taken care to notify
Mr. Speaker that he was to be granted the floor
for a few moments.
Unquestionably this, besides being a very in.
teresting, is a very novel and significant method
78 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
of restricting debate and expediting legislative
action, a method of very serious import, and
obviously fraught with far-reaching constitu-
tional effects. The practices of debate which
prevail in its legislative assembly are manifestly
of the utmost importance to a self-governing
people ; for that legislation which is not thor-
oughly discussed by the legislating body is prac-
tically done in a corner. It is impossible for
Congress itself to do wisely what it does so hur-
riedly ; and the constituencies cannot understand
what Congress does not itself stop to consider.
The prerogatives of the Committees represent
something more than a mere convenient division
of labor. There is only one part of its business
to which Congress, as a whole, attends, that
part, namely, which is embraced under the priv-
ileged subjects of revenue and supply. The
House ne\er accepts the proposals of the Com-
mittee of Ways and Means, or of the Committee
on Appropriations, without due deliberation ;
but it allows almost all of its other Standing
Committees virtually to legislate for it. In form,
the Committees only digest the various matter
introduced by individual members, and prepare
it, with care, and after thorough investigation,
for the final consideration and action of the
House ; but, in reality, they dictate the course
to be taken, prescribing the decisions of the
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 79 ,
House not only, but measuring out, according to
their own wills, its opportunities for debate and
deliberation as well. The House sits, not for
serious discussion, but to sanction the conclu-
sions of its Committees as rapidly as possible.
It legislates in its committee-rooms ; not by the
determinations of majorities, but by the resolu-
tions of specially -com missioned minorities; so
that it is not far from the truth to say that Con-
gress in session is Congress on public exhibition,
whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Con-
gress at work.
Habit grows fast, even upon the unconven-
tional American, and the nature of the House
of Representatives has, by long custom, been
shaped to the spirit of its rules. Representa-
tives have attained, by rigorous self -discipline, to
the perfect stature of the law under which they
live, having purged their hearts as completely
as may be of all desire to do that which it is the
chief object of that law to forbid by giving over
a vain lust after public discussion. The entire
absence of the instinct of debate amongst them,
and their apparent unfamiliarity with the idea
of combating a proposition by argument, was
recently illustrated by an incident which was
quite painfully amusing. The democratic ma-
jority of the House of the Forty -eighth Con-
gress desired the immediate passage of a pension
80 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
bill of rather portentous proportions ; but the
republican minority disapproved of the bill
with great fervor, and, when it was moved by
the Pension Committee, late one afternoon, in a
thin House, that the rules be suspended, and an
early day set for a consideration of the bill, the
Republicans addressed themselves to determined
and persistent " filibustering " to prevent action.
First they refused to vote, leaving the Demo-
crats without an acting quorum ; then, all night
long, they kept the House at roll-calling on dila-
tory and obstructive motions, the dreary drag-
ging of the time being relieved occasionally by
the amusement of hearing the excuses of mem-
bers who had tried to slip off to bed, or by the
excitement of an angry dispute between the
leaders of the two parties as to the responsibility
for the dead-lock. Not till the return of morn-
ing brought in the delinquents to recruit the
democratic ranks did business advance a single
step. Now, the noteworthy fact about this re-
markable scene is, that the minority were not
mano3uvring to gain opportunity or time for
debate, in order that the country might be in-
formed of the true nature of the obnoxious bill,
but were simply fighting a preliminary motion
with silent, dogged obstruction. After the whole
night had been spent in standing out against ac-
tion, the House is said to have been " in no mood
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 81
for the thirty - minutes' debate allowed by the
rules," and a final vote was taken, with only a
word or two said. It was easier and more nat-
ural, as everybody saw, to direct attention to
the questionable character of what was being
attempted by the majority by creating a some-
what scandalous " scene," of which every one
would talk, than by making speeches which no-
body would read. It was a notable commentary
on the characteristic methods of our system of
congressional government.
One very noteworthy result of this system is
to shift the theatre of debate upon legislation
from the floor of Congress to the privacy of the
committee - rooms. Provincial gentlemen who
read the Associated Press dispatches in their
morning papers as they sit over their coffee at
breakfast are doubtless often very sorely puz-
zled by certain of the items which sometimes
appear in the brief telegraphic notes from Wash-
ington. What can they make of this for in-
stance : " The House Committee on Commerce
to-day heard arguments from the congressional
delegation from" such and such States "in ad-
vocacy of appropriations for river and harbor
improvements which the members desire incor-
porated in the River and Harbor Appropriations*
Bill " ? They probably do not understand that
it would have been useless for members not of
6
82 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the Committee on Commerce to wait for any op-
portunity to make their suggestions on the floor
of Congress, where the measure to which they
wish to make additions would be under the au-
thoritative control of the Committee, and where,
consequently, they could gain a hearing only by
the courteous sufferance of the committee-man
in charge of the report. Whatever is to be done
must be done by or through the Committee.
It would seem, therefore, that practically Con-
gress, or at any rate the House of Representa-
tives, delegates not only its legislative but also its
deliberative functions to its Standing Commit-
tees. The little public debate that arises under
the stringent and urgent rules of the House is
formal rather than effective, and it is the discus-
sions which take place in the Committees that
give form to legislation. Undoubtedly these
siftings of legislative questions by the Commit-
tees are of great value in enabling the House to
obtain " undarkened counsel " and intelligent
suggestions from authoritative sources. All so-
ber, purposeful, business-like talk upon ques-
tions of public policy, whether it take place in
Congress or only before the Committees of Con-
gress, is of great value ; and the controversies
which spring up in the committee-rooms, both
amongst the committee-men themselves and be-
O
tween those who appear before the Committees
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 83
as advocates of special measures, cannot but con-
tribute to add clearness and definite consistency
to the reports submitted to the House.
There are, however, several very obvious rea-
sons why the most thorough canvass of business
by the Committees, and the most exhaustive and
discriminating discussion of all its details in
their rooms, cannot take the place or fulfill the
uses of amendment and debate by Congress in
open session. In the first place, the proceedings
of the Committees are private and their discus-
sions unpublished. The chief, and unquestion-
ably the most essential, object of all discussion
of public business is the enlightenment of public
opinion ; and of course, since it cannot hear the
debates of the Committees, the nation is not apt
to be much instructed by them. Only the Com-
mittees are enlightened. There is a conclusive
objection to the publication of the proceedings
of the Committees, which is recognized as of
course by all parliamentary lawyers, namely,
that those proceedings are of no force till con-
firmed by the House. A Committee is commis-
sioned, not to instruct the public, but to instruct
and guide the House.
Indeed it is not usual for the Committees to
open their sittings often to those who desire to
be heard with regard to pending questions ; and
no one can demand a hearing as of right. On
84 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the contrary, they are privileged and accustomed
to hold their sessions in absolute secrecy. It is
made a breach of order for any member to al-
lude on the floor of the House to anything that
has taken place in committee, " unless by a writ-
ten report sanctioned by a majority of the Com-
mittee ; " and there is no place in the regular
order of business for a motion instructing a
Committee to conduct its investigations with
open doors. Accordingly, it is only by the con-
cession of the Committees that arguments are
made before them.
When they do suffer themselves to be ap-
proached, moreover, they generally extend the
leave to others besides their fellow-congressmen.
The Committee on Commerce consents to listen
to prominent 'railroad officials upon the subject
of the regulation of freight charges and fares ;
and scores of interested persons telegraph in-
quiries to the chairman of the Committee of
Ways and Means as to the time at which they
are to be permitted to present to the Commit-
tee their views upon the revision of the tariff.
The speeches made before the Committees at
their open sessions are, therefore, scarcely of
such a kind as would be instructive to the
public, and on that account worth publishing.
They are as a rule the pleas of special pleaders,
the arguments of advocates. They have about
TEE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 85
them none of the searching, critical, illuminating
character of the higher order of parliamentary
debate, in which men are pitted against each
other as equals, and urged to sharp contest and
masterful strife by the inspiration of political
principle and personal ambition, through the ri-
valry of parties and the competition of policies.
They represent a joust between antagonistic in-
terests, not a contest of principles. They could
scarcely either inform or elevate public opinion,
even if they were to obtain its heed.
For the instruction and elevation of public
opinion, in regard to national affairs, there is
needed something more than special pleas for
special privileges. There is needed public dis-
cussion of a peculiar sort : a discussion by the
sovereign legislative body itself, a discussion in
which every feature of each mooted point of pol-
icy shall be distinctly brought out, and every
argument of significance pushed to the farthest
point of insistence, by recognized leaders in that
body ; and, above all, a discussion upon which
something something of interest or importance,
some pressing question of administration or of
law, the fate of a party or the success of a con-
spicuous politician evidently depends. It is
only a discussion of this sort that the public will
heed ; no other sort will impress it.
There could, therefore, be no more unwelcome
86 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
revelation to one who has anything approaching
a, statesman - like appreciation of the essential
conditions of intelligent self-government than
just that which must inevitably be made to every
one who candidly examines our congressional
system ; namely, that, under that system, such
discussion is impossible. There are, to begin
with, physical and architectural reasons why
business-like debate of public affairs by the
House of Representatives is out of the question.
To those who visit the galleries of the represen-
tative chamber during a session of the House
these reasons are as obvious as they are aston-
ishing. It would be natural to expect that a
body which meets ostensibly for consultation
and deliberation should hold its sittings in a
room small enough to admit of an easy inter-
change of views and a ready concert of action,
where its members would be brought into close,
sympathetic contact ; and it is nothing less than
astonishing to find it spread at large through the
vast spaces of such a chamber as the hall of the
House of Representatives, where there are no
close ranks of cooperating parties, but each
member has a roomy desk and an easy revolv-
ing chair ; where broad aisles spread and stretch
themselves ; where ample, soft-carpeted areas lie
about the spacious desks of the Speaker and
clerks ; where deep galleries reach back from the
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 87
outer limits of the wide passages which lie be-
yond " the bar " : an immense, capacious cham-
ber, disposing its giant dimensions freely beneath
the great level lacunar ceiling through whose
glass panels the full light of day pours in. The
most vivid impression the visitor gets in looking
over that vast hall is the impression of space.
A speaker must needs have a voice like O'Con-
nell's, the practical visitor is apt to think, as he
sits in the gallery, to fill even the silent spaces
of that room ; how much more to overcome the
disorderly noises that buzz and rattle through it
when the representatives are assembled, a voice
clear, sonorous, dominant, like the voice of a
clarion. One who speaks there with the voice
and lungs of the ordinary mortal must content
himself with the audience of those members in
his own immediate neighborhood, whose ears he
rudely assails in vehement efforts to command
the attention of those beyond them, and who,
therefore, cannot choose but hear him.
It is of this magnitude of the hall of the rep-
resentatives that those news telegrams are sig-
nificant which speak of an interesting or witty
speech in Congress as having drawn about the
speaker listeners from all parts of the House.
As one of our most noted wits would say, a
member must needs take a Sabbath day's jour-
ney to get within easy hearing distance of a
88 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
speaker who is addressing the House from the
opposite side of the hall ; for besides the space
there are the noises intervening, the noises of
loud talking and of the clapping of hands for
the pages, making the task of the member who
is speaking " very like trying to address the
people in the omnibuses from the curbstone in
front of the Astor House." l
But these physical limitations to debate,
though serious and real, are amongst the least
important, because they are amongst the least
insuperable. If effective and business-like pub-
lic discussions were considered indispensable by
Congress, or even desirable, the present cham-
ber could readily be divided into two halls : the
one a commodious reading-room where the mem-
bers might chat and write at ease as they now
do in the House itself ; and the other a smaller
room suitable for debate and earnest business.
This, in fact, has been several times proposed,
but the House does not feel that there is any
urgency about providing facilities for debate,
because it sees no reason to desire an increase of
speech-making, in view of the fact that, notwith-
standing all the limitations now put upon discus-
sion, its business moves much too slowly. The
1 Quoted from an exceedingly life-like and picturesque de-
scription of the House which appeared in the New York Na-
tion for April 4, 1878.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 89
early Congresses had time to talk ; Congresses
of to-day have not. Before that wing of the
Capitol was built in which the representative
chamber now is, the House used to sit in the
much smaller room, now empty save for the stat-
uary to whose exhibition it is devoted ; and there
much speech-making went on from day to day ;
there Calhoun and Randolph and Webster and
Clay won their reputations as statesmen and
orators. So earnest and interesting were the
debates of those days, indeed, that the principal
speeches delivered in Congress seem to have
been usually printed at length in the metro-
politan journals. 1 But the number and length
of the speeches was even then very much de-
plored ; and so early as 1828 a writer in the
" North American Review " condemns what he
calls " the habit of congressional debating," with
the air of one who speaks against some abuse
which every one acknowledges to be a nuisance. 2
Eleven years later a contributor to the " Demo-
cratic Review " 3 declared that it had " been
gravely charged upon " Mr. Samuel Cushman,
then a member of the Twenty-fifth Congress from
New Hampshire, " that he moves the previous
question. Truly," continues the essayist, " he
1 No. Am. Rev., vol. xxvi., p. 162.
2 Id., the same article.
8 "Glances at Congress," Dem. Rev., March, 1839.
90 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
does, and for that very service, if he had nevei
done anything else, he deserves a monument as
a public benefactor. One man who can arrest
a tedious, long-winded, factious, time-killing de-
bate, is worth forty who can provoke or keep
one up. It requires some moral courage, some
spirit, and some tact also, to move the previous
question, and to move it, too, at precisely the
right point of time."
This ardent and generous defense of Mr. Cush-
man against the odious accusation of moving the
previous question would doubtless be exquisitely
amusing to the chairman of one of the Standing
Committees of the Forty -eighth Congress, to
whom the previous question seems one of the
commonest necessities of life. But, after all,
he ought not to laugh at the ingenuous essayist,
for that was not the heyday of the rules ; they
then simply served and did not tyrannize over
the House. They did not then have the oppor-
tunity of empire afforded them by the scantiness
of time which hurries the House, and the weight
of business which oppresses it ; and they were
at a greater disadvantage in a room where ora-
tory was possible than they are in a vast cham-
ber where the orator's voice is drowned amidst
the noises of disorderly inattention. Nowadays
would-be debaters are easily thrust out of Con-
gress and forced to resort to the printing-office;
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 91
are compelled to content themselves with speak-
ing from the pages of the " Record " instead of
from their places in the House. Some people
who live very far from Washington may imag-
ine that the speeches which are spread at large
in the columns of the " Congressional Record,"
or which their representative sends them in
pamphlet form, were actually delivered in Con-
gress ; but every one else knows that they were
not ; that Congress is constantly granting leave
to its members to insert in the official reports of
the proceedings speeches which it never heard
and does not care to hear, but which it is not
averse from printing at the public expense, if it
is desirable that constituents and the country at
large should read them. It will not stand be-
tween a member and his constituents so long as
it can indulge the one and satisfy the others
without any inconvenience to itself or any seri-
ous drain upon the resources of the Treasury.
The public printer does not object.
But there are other reasons still more organic
than these why the debates of Congress cannot,
under our present system, have that serious pur-
pose of search into the merits of policies and
that definite and determinate party or, if you
will, partisan aim without which they can
never be effective for the instruction of public
opinion, or the cleansing of political action.
92 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
The chief of these reasons, because the parent
of all the rest, is that there are in Congress no
authoritative leaders who are the recognized
spokesmen of their parties. Power is nowhere
concentrated ; it is rather deliberately and of set
policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It
is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seign-
iories, in each of which a Standing Committee
is the court -baron and its chairman lord -pro-
prietor. These petty barons, some of them not
a little powerful, but none of them within reach
of the full powers of rule, may at will exercise
an almost despotic sway within their own shires,
and may sometimes threaten to convulse even
the realm itself; but both their mutual jeal-
ousies and their brief and restricted opportuni-
ties forbid their combining, and each is very far
from the office of common leader.
I know that to some this scheme of distributed
power and disintegrated rule seems a very excel-
lent device whereby we are enabled to escape a
dangerous " one-man power " and an untoward
concentration of functions ; and it is very easy
to see and appreciate the considerations which
make this view of committee government so
popular. It is based upon a very proper and
salutary fear of irresponsible power ; and those
who most resolutely maintain it always fight
from the position that all leadership in legis-
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 93
lation is hard to restrain in proportion to its size
and to the strength of its prerogatives, and that
to divide it is to make it manageable. They
aver, besides, that the less a man has to do
that is to say, the more he is confined to single
departments and to definite details the more
intelligent and thorough will his work be. They
like the Committees, therefore, just because they
are many and weak, being quite willing to
abide their being despotic within their narrow
spheres.
It seems evident, however, when the question
is looked at from another stand-point, that, as a
matter of fact and experience, the more power is
divided the more irresponsible it becomes. A
mighty baron who can call half the country to
arms is watched with greater jealousy, and, there-
fore, restrained with more vigilant care than is
ever vouchsafed the feeble master of a single and
solitary castle. The one cannot stir abroad upon
an innocent pleasure jaunt without attracting the
suspicious attention of the whole country-side ;
the other may vex and harry his entire neighbor-
hood without fear of let or hindrance. It is ever
the little foxes that spoil the grapes. At any
rate, to turn back from illustration to the facts
of the argument, it is plain enough that the petty
character of the leadership of each Committee
contributes towards making its despotism sure
94 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
by making its duties uninteresting. The Senate
almost always discusses its business with con-
siderable thoroughness ; and even the House,
whether by common consent or by reason of such
persistent "filibustering" on the part of the
minority as compels the reporting Committee
and the majority to grant time for talk, some-
times stops to debate committee reports at
length ; but nobody, except, perhaps, newspaper
editors, finds these debates interesting reading.
Why is it that many intelligent and patriotic
people throughout this country, from Virginia to
California, people who, beyond all question,
love their State and the Union more than they
love our cousin state over sea, subscribe for
the London papers in order to devour the par-
liamentary debates, and yet would never think
or troubling themselves to make tedious progress
through a single copy of the " Congressional
Record " ? Is it because they are captivated by
the old-world dignity of royal England with its
nobility and its court pageantry, or because of a
vulgar desire to appear better versed than their
neighbors in foreign affairs, and to affect famil-
iarity with British statesmen ? No ; of course
not. It is because the parliamentary debates
are interesting and ours are not. In the British
House of Commons the functions and privileges
of our Standing Committees are all concentrated
THE BOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 95
in the hands of the Ministry, who have, besides,
some prerogatives of leadership which even our
Committees do not possess, so that they carry
all responsibility as well as great power, and all
debate wears an intense personal and party in-
terest. Every important discussion is an arraign-
ment of the Ministry by the Opposition, an
arraignment of the majority by the minority ;
and every important vote is a party defeat and a
party triumph. The whole conduct of the gov-
ernment turns upon what is said in the Com-
mons, because the revelations of debate often
change votes, and a Ministry loses hold upon
power as it loses hold upon the confidence of the
Commons. This great Standing Committee goes
out whenever it crosses the will of the majority.
It is, therefore, for these very simple and obvious
reasons that the parliamentary debates are read
on this side of the water in preference to the
congressional debates. They affect the minis-
ters, who are very conspicuous persons, and in
whom, therefore, all the intelligent world is
interested; and they determine the course of
politics in a great empire. The season of a
parliamentary debate is a great field day on
which Liberals and Conservatives pit their full
forces against each other, and people like to
watch the issues of the contest.
Our congressional debates, on the contrary,
96 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
have no tithe of this interest, because they have
no tithe of such significance and importance.
The committee reports, upon which the debates
take place, are backed by neither party ; they
represent merely the recommendations of a small
body of members belonging to both parties, and
are quite as likely to divide the vote of the
party to which the majority of the Committee
belong as they are to meet with opposition from
the other side of the chamber. If they are
carried, it is no party triumph ; if they are lost,
it is no party discomfiture. They are no more
than the proposals of a mixed Committee, and
may be rejected without political inconvenience
to either party or reproof to the Committee ; just
as they may be passed without compliment to
the Committee or political advantage to either
side of the House. Neither party has any great
stake in the controversy. The only importance
that can attach to the vote must hang upon its
relation to the next general election. If the
report concern a question which is at the time so
much in the public eye that all action upon it is
likely to be marked and remembered against the
day of popular action, parties are careful to vote
as solidly as possible on what they conceive to be
the safe side ; but all other reports are disposed
of without much thought of their influence upon
the fortunes of distant elections, because that
influence is remote and problematical.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 97
In a word, the national parties do not act in
Congress under the restraint of a sense of im-
mediate responsibility. Responsibility is spread
thin ; and no vote or debate can gather it. It
rests not so much upon parties as upon indi-
viduals ; and it rests upon individuals in no
such way as would make it either just or effica-
cious to visit upon them the iniquity of any
legislative act. Looking at government from a.
practical and business-like, rather than from a
theoretical and abstractly-ethical point of view,
treating the business of government as a busi-
ness, it seems to be unquestionably and in a
high degree desirable that all legislation should
distinctly represent the action of parties as par-
ties. I know that it has been proposed by en-
thusiastic, but not too practical, reformers to do
away with parties by some legerdemain of gov-
ernmental reconstruction, accompanied and sup-
plemented by some rehabilitation, devoutly to
be wished, of the virtues least commonly con-
trolling in fallen human nature ; but it seems to
me that it would be more difficult and less desir-
able than these amiable persons suppose to con-
duct a government of the many by means of any
other device than party organization, and that
the great need is, not to get rid of parties, but
to find and use some expedient by which they
can be managed and made amenable from day
98 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
to day to public opinion. Plainly this cannot be
effected by punishing here and there a member
of Congress who has voted for a flagrantly dishon-
est appropriation bill, or an obnoxious measure
relating to the tariff. Unless the punishment
can be extended to the party if any such be
recognizable with which these members have
voted, no advantage has been won for self-gov-
ernment, and no triumph has been gained by
public opinion. It should be desired that parties
should act in distinct organizations, in accordance
with avowed principles, under easily recognized
leaders, in order that the voters might be able to
declare by their ballots, not only their condem-
nation of any past policy, by withdrawing all
support from the party responsible for it ; but
also and particularly their will as to the future
administration of the government, by bringing
into power a party pledged to the adoption of an
acceptable policy.
It is, therefore, a fact of the most serious con-
sequence that by our system of congressional
rule no such means of controlling legislation is
afforded. Outside of Congress the organization
of the national parties is exceedingly well-defined
and tangible; no one could wish it, and few
could imagine it, more so ; but within Congress
it is obscure and intangible. Our parties mar-
shal their adherents with the strictest possible
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 99
discipline for the purpose of carrying elections,
but their discipline is very slack and indefinite in
dealing with legislation. At least there is within
Congress no visible, and therefore no controllable
party organization. The only bond of cohesion
is the caucus, which occasionally whips a party
together for cooperative action against the time
for casting its vote upon some critical question.
There is always a majority and a minority, in-
deed, but the legislation of a session does not
represent the policy of either ; it is simply an
aggregate of the bills recommended by Com-
mittees composed of members from both sides of
the House, and it is known to be usually, not
the work of the majority men upon the Com-
mittees, but compromise conclusions bearing some
shade or tinge of each of the variously-colored
opinions and wishes of the committee-men of both
parties.
It is plainly the representation of both parties
on the Committees that makes party responsibility
indistinct and organized party action almost im-
possible. If the Committees were composed en-
tirely of members of the majority, and were thus
constituted representatives of the party in power,
the whole course of congressional proceedings
would unquestionably take on a very different
aspect. There would then certainly be a com-
pact opposition to face the organized majority.
100 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Committee reports would be taken to represent
the views of the party in power, and, instead of
the scattered, unconcerted opposition, without
plan or leaders, which now sometimes subjects
the propositions of the Committees to vexatious
hindrances and delays, there would spring up
debate under skillful masters of opposition, who
could drill their partisans for effective warfare
and give shape and meaning to the purposes of
the minority. But of course there can be no
such definite division of forces so long as the ef-
ficient machinery of legislation is in the hands
of both parties at once ; so long as the parties
are mingled and harnessed together in a common
organization.
It may be said, therefore, that very few of the
measures which come before Congress are party
measures. They are, at any rate, not brought
in as party measures. They are indorsed by se-
lect bodies of members chosen with a view to
constituting an impartial board of examination
for the judicial and thorough consideration of
each subject of legislation ; no member of one
of these Committees is warranted in revealing
any of the disagreements of the committee-room
or the proportions of the votes there taken ; and
no color is meant to be given to the supposition
that the reports made are intended to advance
any party interest. Indeed, only a very slight
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 101
examination of the measures which originate
with the Committees is necessary to show that
most of them are framed with a view to securing
their easy passage by giving them as neutral and
inoffensive a character as possible. The mani-
fest object is to dress them to the liking of all
factions.
Under such circumstances, neither the failure
nor the success of any policy inaugurated by one
of the Committees can fairly be charged to khe
account of either party. The Committee acted
honestly, no doubt, and as they thought best ;
and there can, of course, be no assurance that,
by taking away its congressional majority from
the party to which the greater number of the
committee-men belong, a Committee could be
secured which would act better or differently.
The conclusion of the whole matter is, then,
that public opinion cannot be instructed or ele-
vated by the debates of Congress, not only be-
cause there are few debates seriously undertaken
by Congress, but principally because no one not
professionally interested in the daily course of
legislation cares to read what is said by the de-
baters when Congress does stop to talk, inas-
much as nothing depends upon the issue of the
discussion. The ordinary citizen cannot be in-
duced to pay much heed to the details, or even
to the main principles, of law-making, unless
102 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
something else more interesting than the law it-
self be involved in the pending decision of the
law-makers. If the fortunes of a party or the
power of a great political leader are staked upon
the final vote, he will listen with the keenest in-
terest to all that the principal actors may have
to say, and absorb much instruction in so doing ;
but if no such things hang in the balance, he
will not turn from his business to listen ; and if
the true issues are not brought out in eager pub-
lic contests which catch his ear because of their
immediate personal interest, but must be sought
amidst the information which can be made com*
plete only by reading scores of newspapers, he
will certainly never find them or care for them,
and there is small use in printing a " Record "
which he will not read.
I know not how better to describe our form of
government in a single phrase than by calling it
a government by the chairmen of the Standing
Committees of Congress. This disintegrate min-
istry, as it figures on the floor of the House of
Representatives, has many peculiarities. In the
first place, it is made up of the elders of the as-
sembly ; for, by custom, seniority in congres-
sional service determines the bestowal of the
principal chairmanships ; in the second place, it
is constituted of selfish and warring elements ;
for chairman fights against chairman for use of
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 103
the time of the assembly, though the most part
of them are inferior to the chairman of Ways
and Means, and all are subordinate to the chair-
man of the Committee on Appropriations ; in
the third place, instead of being composed of
the associated leaders of Congress, it consists of
the dissociated heads of forty-eight " little legis-
latures " (to borrow Senator Hoar's apt name
for the Committees) ; and, in the fourth place, it
is instituted by appointment from Mr. Speaker,
who is, by intention, the chief judicial, rather
than the chief political, officer of the House.
It is highly interesting to note the extraor-
dinary power accruing to Mr. Speaker through
this pregnant prerogative of appointing the
Standing Committees of the House. That power
is, as it were, the central and characteristic incon-
venience and anomaly of our constitutional sys-
tem, and on that account excites both the curios-
ity and the wonder of the student of institutions.
The most esteemed writers upon our Constitution
have failed to observe, not only that the Stand-
ing Committees are the most essential machinery
of our governmental system, but also that the
Speaker of the House of Representatives is the
most powerful functionary of that system. So
sovereign is he within the wide sphere of his in-
fluence that one could wish for accurate knowl-
edge as to the actual extent of his power. But
104 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Mr. Speaker's powers cannot be Known accu-
rately, because they vary with the character of
Mr. Speaker. All Speakers have, of late years
especially, been potent factors in legislation, but
some have, by reason of greater energy or less
conscience, made more use of their opportunities
than have others.
The Speaker's privilege of appointing the
Standing Committees is nearly as old as Con-
gress itself. At first the House tried the plan
of balloting for its more important Committees,
ordering, in April, 1789, that the Speaker should
appoint only those Committees which should con-
sist of not more than three members ; but less
than a year's experience of this method of or-
ganizing seems to have furnished satisfactory
proof of its impracticability, and in J.anuary,
1790, the present rule was adopted : that " All
committees shall be appointed by the Speaker,
unless otherwise specially directed by the
House." The rules of one House of Represen-
tatives are not, however, necessarily the rules of
the next. No rule lives save by biennial readop-
tion. Each newly-elected House meets without
rules for its governance, and amongst the first
acts of its first session is usually the adoption of
the resolution that the rules of its predecessor
shall be its own rules, subject, of course, to such
revisions as it may, from time to time, see fit to
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 105
make. Mr. Speaker's power of appointment,
accordingly, always awaits the passage of this
resolution ; but it never waits in vain, for no
House, however foolish in other respects, has yet
been foolish enough to make fresh trial of elect-
ing its Committees. That mode may do well
enough for the cool and leisurely Senate, but it
is not for the hasty and turbulent House.
It must always, of course, have seemed emi-
nently desirable to all thoughtful and experi-
enced men that Mr. Speaker should be no more
than the judicial guide and moderator of the
proceedings of the House, keeping apart from
the heated controversies of party warfare, and
exercising none but an impartial influence upon
the course of legislation ; and probably when he
was first invested with the power of appointment
it was thought possible that he could exercise
that great prerogative without allowing his per-
sonal views upon questions of public policy to
control or even affect his choice. But it must
very soon have appeared that it was too much to
expect of a man who had it within his power to
direct affairs that he should subdue all purpose
to do so, and should make all appointments with
an eye to regarding every preference but his
own ; and when that did become evident, the
rule was undoubtedly retained only because none
better could be devised. Besides, in the early
106 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
years of the Constitution the Committees were
very far from having the power they now possess.
Business did not then hurry too fast for discus-
sion, and the House was in the habit of scrutiniz-
ing the reports of the Committees much more
critically than it now pretends to do. It delib-
erated in its open sessions as well as in its pri-
vate committee-rooms, ,nd the functionary who
appointed its committees was simply the nomi-
nator of its advisers, not, as is the Speaker of
to-day, the nominor of its rulers.
It is plain, therefore, that the office of Speaker
of the House of Representatives is in its present
estate a constitutional phenomenon of the first
importance, deserving a very thorough and crit-
ical examination. If I have succeeded, in what
I have already said, in making clear the extraor-
dinary power of the Committees in directing
legislation, it may now go without the saying
that he who appoints those Committees is an au-
tocrat of the first magnitude. There could be no
clearer proof of the great political weight of the
Speaker's high commission in this regard than
the keen strife which every two years takes place
over the election to the speakership, and the in-
tense interest excited throughout the country as
to the choice to be made. Of late years, the
newspapers have had almost as much to say
about the rival candidates for that office as
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 107
about the candidates for the presidency itself,
having come to look upon the selection made as
a sure index of the policy to be expected in leg-
islation.
I The Speaker is of course chosen by the party
which commands the majority in the House, and
it has sometimes been the effort of scheming,
self-seeking men of that majority to secure the
elevation of some friend or tool of their own to
that office, from which he can render them ser-
vice of the most substantial and acceptable sort.
But, although these intrigues have occasionally
resulted in the election of a man of insignificant
parts and doubtful character, the choice has
usually fallen upon some representative party
man of well-known antecedents and clearly-
avowed opinions ; for the House cannot, and
will not willingly, put up with the intolerable
inconvenience of a weak Speaker, and the ma-
jority are urged by self-respect and by all the
weightiest considerations of expediency, as well
as by a regard for the interests of the public
business, to place one of their accredited leaders
in the chair. If there be differences of opinion
within the party, a choice between leaders be-
comes a choice between policies and assumes the
greatest significance. The Speaker is . expected
to constitute the Committees in accordance with
bis own political views, and this or that candi-
108 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
date is preferred by his party, not at all because
of any supposed superiority of knowledge of the
precedents and laws of parliamentary usage, but
because of his more popular opinions concerning
the leading questions of the day.
Mr. Speaker, too, generally uses his powers as
freely and imperatively as he is expected to use
them. He unhesitatingly acts as the legislative
chief of his party, organizing the Committees in
the interest of this or that policy, not covertly
and on the sly, as one who does something of
which he is ashamed, but openly and confidently,
as one who does his duty. Nor does his official
connection with the Committees cease upon their
appointment. It is his care to facilitate their
control of the business of the House, by recog-
nizing during the consideration of a report only
those members with whom the reporting com-
mittee-man has agreed to share his time, and by
keeping all who address the House within the
strictest letter of the rules as to the length of
their speeches, as well as by enforcing all those
other restrictions which forbid independent action
on the part of individual members. He must see
to it that the Committees have their own way.
In so doing he is not exercising arbitrary powers
which circumstances and the habits of the as-
sembly enable him safely to arrogate; he is
simply enforcing the plain letter and satisfying
the evident spirit of the rules.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 109 1
A student of Roman law and institutions,
looking at the Rules of the House of Representa-
tives through glasses unaccustomed to search out
aught but antiquities, might be excused for claim-
ing that he found in the customs of the House a
striking reproduction of Roman legislative meth-
ods. The Roman assembly, he would remind us,
could not vote and debate at the same time ; it
had no privileges of amendment, but had to adopt
every law as a whole or reject it as a whole ; and
no private member had a right to introduce a bill,
that being the exclusive prerogative of the magis-
trates. But though he might establish a parallel
satisfactory to himself between the magistrates
of Rome and the Committees at Washington,
and between the undebatable, unamendable laws
of the ancient, and the undebated, unamended
laws of the modern, republic, he could hardly
find in the later system that compensating ad-
vantage which scholars have noted as giving to
Roman legislation a clearness and technical per-
fection such as is to be found in none of the
modern codes. Since Roman laws could not be
amended in their passage, and must carry their
meaning plainly to the comprehension of the
commons, clear and brief drafting was cultivated
as of the first necessity in drawing up measures
which were first to gain popular approval and
then to succeed or fail in accomplishing their
110 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
ends according as they proved workable or im-
practicable.
No such comparison of our own with other
systems can, however, find any favor in the eyes
of a certain class of Americans who pride them-
selves upon being nothing if not patriotic, and
who can consequently find no higher praise for
the peculiar devices of committee government
than that they are our own invention. " An ill-
favored thing, sir, but mine own." No one will
readily believe, however, that congressmen
even those of them who belong to this dutiful
class cherish a very loving admiration for the
discipline to which they are nowadays subjected.
As the accomplished librarian of Congress has
declared, " the general conviction may be said to
exist, that, under the great control over legisla-
tion and current business by the Speaker, and by
the powerful Committee on Appropriations, com-
bined with the rigor of the Rules of the House,
there is less and less opportunity for individual
members to make any influential mark in legis-
lation. Independence and ability are repressed
under the tyranny of the rules, and practically
the power of the popular branch of Congress is
concentrated in the Speaker and a few very
few expert parliamentarians." And of course
members of Congress see this. " We have but
three forces in this House," exclaimed a jocose
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Ill
member from the Pacific coast, " the Brahmins
of the Committee of Ways and Means not the
brains but the Brahmins of the House ; the
white-button mandarins of the Appropriations
Committee : the dignified oligarchy called the
Committee on Rules ; the Speaker of the House ;
and the illustrious gentleman from Indiana."
Naturally all men of independent spirit chafe
under the arbitrary restraints of such a system,
and it would be much more philosophical to con-
clude that they let it stand because they can de-
vise nothing better, than that they adhere to its
inconvenient practices because of their admira-
tion for it as an American invention.
However that may be, the number of those
who misuse the rules is greater than the number
of those who strive to reform them. One of the
most startling of the prevalent abuses is the hasty
passage of bills under a suspension of the rules,
a device "by means of which," says Senator
Hoar, " a large proportion, perhaps the majority,
of the bills which pass the House are carried
through." This practice may be very clearly
understood by following further Mr. Hoar's own
words : " Every Monday after the morning hour,
and at any time during the last ten days of a
session, motions to suspend the rules are in order.
At these times any member may move to suspend
the rules and pass any proposed bill. It requires
112 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
two thirds of the members voting to adopt such
a motion. Upon it no debate or amendment is
in order. In this way, if two thirds of the body
agree, a bill is by a single vote, without discus-
sion and without change, passed through all the
necessary stages, and made a law, so far as the
House of Representatives can accomplish it ; and
in this mode hundreds of measures of vital im-
portance receive, near the close of an exhaust-
ing session, without being debated, amended,
printed, or understood, the constitutional assent
of the representatives of the American people."
One very obvious comment to be made upon
habits of procedure so palpably pernicious is,
that nothing could be more natural under rules
which repress individual action with so much
stringency. Then, too, the mills of the Commit-
tees are known to grind slowly, and a very quick
and easy way of getting rid of minor items of
business is to let particular bills, of apparently
innocent meaning or laudable intent, run through
without commitment. There must be some out-
let, too, through which the waters of delayed and
accumulated business may be drained off as the
end of a session draws near. Members who
know how to take the House at an indulgent
moment, and can in a few words make out a
primd facie case for the action they urge, can
always secure a suspension of the rules.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 113
To speak very plainly, it is wonderful that
under such a system of government legislation is
not oftener at sixes and sevens than it actually
is. The infinitely varied and various interests
of fifty millions of active people would be hard
enough to harmonize and serve, one would think,
were parties efficiently organized in the pursuit
of definite, steady, consistent policies ; and it is
therefore simply amazing to find how few out-
rageously and fatally foolish, how few bad or
disastrous, things have been done by means of
our disintegrate methods of legislation. The
Committees of the House to whom the principal
topics of legislation are allotted number more
than thirty. We are ruled by a score and a half
of " little legislatures." Our legislation is con-
glomerate, not homogeneous. The doings of one
and the same Congress are foolish in pieces and
wise in spots. They can never, except by acci-
dent, have any common features. Some of the
Committees are made up of strong men, the ma-
jority of them of weak men ; and the weak are
as influential as the strong. The country can
get the counsel and guidance of its ablest repre-
sentatives only upon one or two subjects ; upon
the rest it must be content with the impotent
service of the feeble. Only a very small part of
its most important business can be done well ;
the system provides for having the rest of it done
8
114 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
miserably, and the whole of it taken together
done at haphazard. There could be no more in-
teresting problem in the doctrine of chances than
that of reckoning the probabilities of there being
any common features of principle in the legisla-
tion of an opening session. It might lighten and
divert the leisure of some ingenious mathemati-
cian to attempt the calculation.
It was probably some such reflections as these
which suggested the proposal, made not long
since in the House, that there should be ap-
pointed, along with the usual Standing Commit-
tees, a new committee which should be known
as the Executive Committee of the House, and
should be empowered to examine and sort all the
bills reported favorably by the other Standing
Committees, and bring them forward in what
might seem to it the order of their importance ;
a committee which should, in short, digest pend-
ing measures and guide the House in arranging
its order of business. But it is seriously to be
doubted whether such an addition to the present
organization would do more than tighten the tyr-
anny of committee rule and still further restrict
freedom of debate and action. A committee to
superintend committees would add very little to
the efficiency of the House, and would certainly
contribute nothing towards unifying legislation,
unless the new committee were to be given the
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 115
power, not yet thought of, of revising the work
of the present Standing Committees. Such an
executive committee is not quite the device
needed.
Apparently committee government is but one
of many experiments in the direction of the reali-
zation of an idea best expressed so far as my
reading shows by John Stuart Mill ; and is
too much like other experiments to be quite as
original and unique as some people would like to
believe. There is, said Mr. Mill, a " distinction
between the function of making laws, for which
a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit,
and that of getting good laws made, which is
its proper duty, and cannot be satisfactorily ful-
filled by any other authority ; " and there is, con-
sequently, " need of a legislative commission, as
a permanent part of the constitution of a free
country ; consisting of a small number of highly-
trained political minds, on whom, when parlia-
ment has determined that a law shall be made,
the task of making it should be devolved ; parlia-
ment retaining the power of passing or rejecting
the bill when drawn up, but not of altering it
otherwise than by sending proposed amendments
to be dealt with by the commission." 1 It would
seem, as I have said, that committee government
is one form of the effort, now making by all self-
1 Autobiography, pp. 264, 265.
116 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
governing peoples, to set up a satisfactory legia
lative commission somewhat after this order ; and
it might appear to some as if the proposed exec-
utive committee were a slight approximation to
that form of the effort which is typified in the
legislative functions of the British cabinet. It
cannot, of course, be claimed that the forty-eight
legislative commissions of the House of Repre-
sentatives always answer the purpose when the
House wants to get good laws made, or that each
of them consists invariably of " a small number
of highly-trained political minds ; " but every-
body sees that to say that they fall short of re-
alizing the ideal would be nothing less than hy-
percritical.
In saying that our committee government has,
germinally, some of the features of the British
system, in which the ministers of the crown, the
cabinet, are chosen from amongst the leaders of
the parliamentary majority, and act not only as
advisers of the sovereign but also as the great
standing committee or "legislative commission"
of the House of Commons, guiding its business
and digesting its graver matters of legislation,
I mean, of course, only that both systems repre-
sent the common necessity of setting apart some
small body, or bodies, of legislative guides
through whom a " big meeting " may get laws
made. The difference between our device and
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 117*
the British is that we have a Standing Commit-
tee, drawn from both parties, for the considera-
tion of each topic of legislation, whereas our
English cousins have but a single standing com-
mittee that is charged with the origination of
legislation, a committee composed of the men
who are recognized as the leaders of the party
dominant in the state, and who serve at the
same time as the political heads of the executive
departments of the government.
The British system is perfected party govern-
ment. No effort is made in the Commons, such
as is made in the House of Representatives in
the composition of the Committees, to give the
minority a share in law-making. Our minorities
are strongly represented on the Standing Com-
mittees ; the minority in the Commons is not rep-
resented at all in the cabinet. It is this feature
of closely organized party government, whereby
the responsibility for legislation is saddled upon
the majority, which, as I have already pointed
out, gives to the debates and action of parlia-
ment an interest altogether denied to the pro-
ceedings of Congress. All legislation is made a
contest for party supremacy, and if legislation
goes wrong, or the majority becomes discontented
with the course of policy, there is nothing for it
but that the ministers should resign and give
place to the leaders of the Opposition, unless a
new election should procure for them a recruited
118 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
following. Under such a system mere silent
voting is out of the question ; debate is a pri-
mary necessity. It brings the representatives of
the people and the ministers of the Crown face
to face. The principal measures of each session
originate with the ministers, and embody the
policy of the administration. Unlike the reports
of our Standing Committees, which are intended
to be simply the digested substance of the more
sensible bills introduced by private members, the
bills introduced into the House of Commons by
the cabinet embody the definite schemes of the
government ; and the fact that the Ministry is
made up of the leaders of the majority and rep-
resents always the principles of its party, makes
the minority only the more anxious to have a
chance to criticise its proposals. Cabinet gov-
ernment is a device for bringing the executive
and legislative branches into harmony and co-
operation without uniting or confusing their
functions. It is as if the majority in the Com-
mons deputized its leaders to act as the advisers
of the Crown and the superintendents of the
public business, in order that they might have
the advantage of administrative knowledge and
training in advising legislation and drafting
laws to be submitted to parliament. This ar-
rangement enlists the majority in behalf of suc-
cessful administration without giving the minis*
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 119
ters any power to coerce or arbitrarily influence
legislative action. Each session of the Lords
and Commons becomes a grand inquest into the
affairs of the empire. The two estates sit as it
were in committee on the management of the
public business sit with open doors, and spare
themselves no fatigue in securing for every in-
terest represented a full, fair, and impartial
hearing.
It is evident why public debate is the very
breath of life to such a system. The Ministry's
tenure of office depends upon the success of the
legislation they urge. If any of their proposals
are negatived by parliament, they are bound to
accept their defeat as an intimation that their ad-
ministration is no longer acceptable to the party
they represent, and are expected to resign, or to
appeal, if they prefer, to the country for its ver-
dict, by exercising their privilege of advising the
sovereign to dissolve parliament and issue writs
for a new election. It is, consequently, inevita-
ble that the Ministry should be subjected to the
most determined attacks and the keenest criti-
cisms of the Opposition, and should be every
day of the session put to the task of vindicating
their course and establishing anew their claim to
the confidence of their party. To shrink from
discussion would be to confess weakness ; to suf-
fer themselves to be worsted in discussion would
120 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
be seriously to imperil their power. They must
look to it, therefore, not only that their policy
be defensible, but that it be valiantly defended
also.
As might be expected, then, the Ministry sel-
dom find the task of leading the House an easy
one. Their plans are kept under an unceasing
fire of criticism from both sides of the House ;
for there are independent sharp-shooters behind
the ministers as well as heavy batteries in front
of them ; and there are many amongst their pro-
fessed followers who give aid and comfort to the
enemy. There come ever and again showers of
stinging questions, too, from friends and foes
alike, questions great and small, direct and
indirect, pertinent and impertinent, concerning
every detail of administration and every tend-
ency of policy.
But, although the initiative in legislation and
the general direction of the business of parlia-
ment are the undisputed prerogatives of " the
government," as the Ministry is called, they
have not, of course, all the time of the House at
their disposal. During the session, certain days
of each week are set apart for the introduction
and debate of bills brought in by private mem-
bers, who, at the opening of the session, draw
lots to decide the precedence of their bills or
motions on the orders of the day. If many
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 121
draw, those who get last choice of time find the
session near its end, and private members' days
being absorbed by belated government measures,
before their opportunity has come, and must
content themselves with hoping for better for-
tune next year ; but time is generally found for
a very fair and full consideration of a large
number of private members' bills, and no mem-
ber is denied a chance to air his favorite opin-
ions in the House or to try the patience of his
fellow -members by annual repetitions of the
same proposition. Private members generally
find out by long experience, however, that they
can exert a more telling influence upon legisla-
tion by pressing amendments to government
schemes, and can effect more immediate and sat-
isfactory results by keeping the Ministry con-
stantly in mind of certain phases of public opin-
ion, than they could hope to exert or effect by
themselves introducing measures upon which
their party might hesitate to unite. Living as
he does under a system which makes it the min-
ister's wisest policy to allow the utmost freedom
of debate, each member can take as prominent
a part in the proceedings of the House as his
abilities give him title to take. If he have any-
thing which is not merely frivolous to say, he
will have repeated opportunities to say it ; for
the Commons cough down only the bores and
tho talkors for tVio snko of talk.
122 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
The House of Commons, as well as our House
of Representatives, has its committees, even its
standing committees, but they are of the old-fash-
ioned sort which merely investigate and report,
not of the new American type which originate
and conduct legislation. Nor are they appointed
by the Speaker. They are chosen with care by a
" Committee of Selection " composed of members
of both parties. The Speaker is kept carefully
apart from politics in all his functions, acting
as the impartial, judicial president of the body.
"Dignity of presence, courtliness of manner,
great physical endurance, courage and impartial-
ity of judgment, a consummate tact, and familiar-
ity, ' born of life-long experience,' with the writ-
ten and unwritten laws of the House," such
are the qualities of the ideal Speaker. When
he takes the chair he turns his back on partisan
alliances and serves both parties alike with even
hand. Such are the traditions of the office that
its occupant feels himself as strictly bound to
unbiased judgment as is the chiefest judge of the
realm ; and it has become no uncommon thing
for a Speaker of tried ability to preside during
several successive Parliaments, whether the party
to whose suffrages he originally owed his eleva-
tion remains in power or no. His political prin-
ciples do not affect his fitness for judicial func-
tions.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 123
The Commons in session present an interest-
ing picture. Constrained by their habits of de-
bate to sit in quarters suitable for the purpose,
they crowd together in a hall of somewhat
cramped proportions. It seems a place fit for
hand to hand combats. The cushioned benches
on which the members sit rise in close series on
either side of a wide central aisle which they
face. At one end of this aisle is raised the
Speaker's chair, below and in front of which,
invading the spaces of the aisle, are the desks
of the wigged and gowned clerks. On the front
benches nearest the Speaker and to his right sit
the cabinet ministers, the leaders of the Gov-
ernment ; opposite, on the front benches to the
Speaker's left, sit the leaders of the Opposition.
Behind and to the right-of the ministers gather
the majority ; behind and to the left of their
leaders, the minority. Above the rear benches
and over the outer aisles of the House, beyond
" the bar," hang deep galleries from which the
outside world may look down upon the eager
contests of the two parties which thus sit face
to face with only the aisle between them. From
these galleries the fortunate listen to the words
of leaders whose names fill the ear of the world.
The organization of the French Assembly is
in the main similar to that of the British Com-
mons. Its leaders are the executive officers of
124 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the government, and are chosen from the ranks
of the legislative majority by the President of
the Republic, much as English cabinets are
chosen by English sovereigns. They too are re-
sponsible for their policy and the acts of their
administration to the Chamber which they lead.
They, like their British prototypes, are the ex-
ecutive committee of the legislative body, and
upon its will their tenure of office depends.
It cannot be said, however, that the proceed-
ings of the French Assembly very closely resem-
ble those of the British Commons. In the hall
of the Deputies there are no close benches which
face each other, and no two homogeneous parties
to strive for the mastery. There are parties
and parties, factions and factions, coteries and
coteries. There are Bonapartists and Legiti-
matists, Republicans and Clericals, stubborn re-
actionists and headlong radicals, stolid con-
servatives and vindictive destructionists. One
hears of the Centre, the Right Centre and the
Left Centre, the Right, the Left, the Extreme
Right and the Extreme Left. Some of these
are, of course, mere factions, mere groups of ir-
reconcilables ; but several of them are, on the
other hand, numerous and powerful parties upon
whose mutual attractions and repulsions depend
the formation, the authority, and the duration of
cabinets.
THE BOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 125
Of course, too, there is in a body so made
up a great deal of combustible material which
the slightest circumstance suffices to kindle into
a sudden blaze. The Assembly would not be
French if it were not always excitable and some-
times uproarious. Absolute turbulence is so
probable a contingency in its economy that a
very simple and quickly applicable device is pro-
vided for its remedy. Should the deputies lose
their heads altogether and become unmanage-
able, the President mayjw on his hat, and by
that sign, unless calm be immediately restored,
the sitting is adjourned for one hour, at the ex-
piration of which time it is to be expected that
the members may resume the business of the
day in a cooler frame of mind. There are other
rules of procedure observed in the Chamber
which seem to foreign eyes at first sight very
novel ; but which upon closer examination may
be seen to differ from some of the practices of
our own House of Representatives in form rather
than in essence. In France greater freedom of
speech is allowed individual members than is
possible under committee government, but rec-
ognition is not given to just any one who first
gets the floor and catches the presiding officer's
eye, as it is in the House of Commons, where
none but the ministers are accorded any right
of precedence in gaining a hearing. Those who
126 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
wish to speak upon any pending question " in-
scribe " their names beforehand on a list in the
keeping of the President, and the discussion is
usually confined to thos<e members who have
" inscribed." When this list has been exhausted,
the President takes the sense of the Chamber
as to whether the debate shall be closed. The
Chamber need not wait, however, to hear all the
gentlemen who have put their names upon the
list. If une portion notable of it tires sooner
of the discussion or thinks itself sufficiently in-
formed before all who wish to inform it have
spoken, it may demand that the debate be
brought to an end. Of course such a demand
will not be heeded if it come from only a few
isolated members, and even une portion notable
may not interrupt a speaker with this peremp-
tory call for what we should denominate the
previous question, but which the French parlia-
mentarian knows as the cldture. A demand
for the cldture is not debatable. One speech
may be made against it, but none in its favor.
Unless it meet with very powerful resistance,
it is expected to go through of its own weight.
Even the cldture, however, must give way if a
member of the Ministry claims the right to
speak ; for a minister must always be heard,
ind after he has spoken, moreover, there must
always be allowed one speech in reply. Neither
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 127
can the cldture be pronounced unless a major-
ity of the deputies are present ; and in case
of doubt as to the will of the Chamber in the
matter, after two votes have been taken with-
out eliciting a full-voiced and indubitable as-
sent, the discussion is tacitly suffered to pro-
ceed.
These rules are not quite so compulsive and
inexorable as are those which sustain the govern-
ment of our Standing Committees, nor do they
seem quite imperative enough for the effectual
governance of rampant deputies in their mo-
ments of wildest excitement ; but they are some-
what more rigid than one would expect to find
under a system of ministerial responsibility,
the purity of whose atmosphere depends so di-
rectly upon a free circulation of debate. They
are meant for a body of peculiar habits and
a fiery temperament, a body which is often
brought screaming to its feet by the words of a
passionate speaker, which is time and again be-
trayed into stormy disquiet, and which is ever
being blown about by every passing wind of ex-
citement. Even in its minor points of observ-
ance, the Chamber is essentially un-English.
Members do not speak from their seats, as we
are accustomed to see members of our public
assemblies do, but from the " tribune," which
is a conspicuous structure erected near the
128 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
desks of the President and secretaries, a
box-like stand, closely resembling those narrow,
quaintly-fashioned pulpits which are still to be
seen in some of the oldest of our American
churches. And since deputies must gain its
commanding top before they may speak, there
are said to be many exciting races for this place
of vantage. Sometimes, indeed, very unseemly
scenes take place, when several deputies, all
equally eager to mount the coveted stand, reach
its narrow steps at the same moment and con-
test the privilege of precedence, especially if
their friends rally in numbers to their assistance.
The British House of Commons and the French
Chamber, though so unlike in the elements which
compose them, and so dissimilar in their modes
of procedure, are easily seen to be alike in con-
stitutional significance, being made close kin by
the principle of cabinet government, which they
both recognize and both apply in its fullest
efficacy. In both England and France a min-
istry composed of the chief officers of the ex-
ecutive departments are constituted at once the
leaders of legislation and the responsible heads
of administration, a binding link between the
legislative and executive branches of the govern-
ment. In this regard these two systems present
a strong contrast to our own. They recognize
and support simple, straightforward, inartificial
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 129
party government, under a standing committee
of responsible party leaders, bringing legislature
and executive side by side in intimate but open
cooperation ; whilst we, preferring to keep Con-
gress and the departments at arm's length, per-
mit only a less direct government by party ma-
jorities, checking party action by a complex
legislative machinery of two score and eight
composite, semi - ministerial Committees. The
English take their parties straight, we take
ours mixed.
There is another aspect, however, in which all
three of these systems are alike. They are alike
in their essential purpose, which is to enable a
mass meeting of representatives to superintend
administration and get good laws made. Con-
gress does not deal so directly with our execu-
tive as do the French and English parliaments
with theirs, and cannot, therefore, control it
quite so effectually; there is a great deal of
friction amongst the many wheels of committee
government ; but, in the long run, Congress is
quite as omnipotent as either the Chamber of
Deputies or the House of Commons ; and,
whether there be two score committees with
functions mainly legislative, or only one with
functions half legislative, half executive, we
have one form or another of something like
Mr. Mill's "legislative commission."
9
m.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
BEVENUE AND SUPPLY.
The highest works of statesmanship require these three things : Great
power in the minister, genius to counsel and support him, enlightenment
in parliament to weigh and decide upon his plans. PROFESSOR SEEI.EY.
When men are not acquainted with each other's principles, nor expe-
rienced in each other's talents, nor at all practiced in their mutual habi-
tudes and dispositions by joint efforts of business ; no personal confidence,
no friendship, no common interest subsisting among them ; it is evidently
impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance,
or efficacy. BURKE.
" IT requires," says Mr. Bagehot, " a great
deal of time to have opinions," and if one is to
judge from the legislative experience of some
very enlightened nations, it requires more time
to have opinions about finance than about any
other subject. At any rate, very few nations
have found time to have correct opinions about
it. Governments which never consult the gov-
erned are usually content with very shabby,
short-sighted methods of taxation, with any
methods, indeed, which can be made to yield the
desired revenues without much trouble ; and the
agents of a self-governing people are quite sure
TEE HOUSE OF I&PRESENTAT1VES. 131
to be too busy with elections and party manage-
ment to have leisure to improve much upon the
practices of autocrats in regard to this impor-
tant care of administration. And yet this sub-
ject of finance seems to be interesting enough
in a way. It is one of the commonplaces of
our history that, ever since long before we came
westward across the ocean, we have been readier
to fight about taxation than about any other one
thing, than about a good many other things
put together, indeed. There are several sadly
bloody spots in the financial history of our race.
It could probably be shown, however, if one
cared to take time to show it, that 'it is easy to
get vexed about mismanagement of the finances
without knowing how they might be better man-
aged. What we do not like is that we are taxed,
not that we are stupidly taxed. We do not
need to be political economists to get angry
about it ; and when we have gotten angry about
it in the past our rulers have not troubled them-
selves to study political economy in order to find
out the best means of appeasing us. Generally
they have simply shifted the burden from the
shoulders of those who complained, and were
able to make things unpleasant, to the shoulders
of those who might complain, but could not give
much trouble.
Of course there are some taxes which are
132 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
much more hateful than others, and have on that
account to be laid more circumspectly. All di-
rect taxes are heartily disliked by every one who
has to pay them, and as heartily abused, except
by those who have never owned an ounce or an
inch of property, and have never seen a tax-bill.
The heart of the ordinary citizen regards them
with an inborn aversion. They are so straight-
forward and peremptory in their demands. They
soften their exactions with not a grain of con-
sideration. The tax-collector, consequently, is
never esteemed a lovable man. His methods
are too blunt, and his powers too obnoxious.
He comes to us, not with a " please," but with
a " must." His requisitions always leave our
pockets lighter and our hearts heavier. We
cannot, for the life of us, help thinking, as
we fold up his receipt and put it away, that
government is much too expensive a luxury as
nowadays conducted, and that that receipt is
incontestable documentary proof of unendurable
extortion. What we do not realize is, that life
would be robbed of one of its chief satisfactions
if this occasion of grumbling were to be taken
away.
Indirect taxes, on the other hand, offend
scarcely anybody. It is one of the open secrets
of finance that in almost every system of taxa-
tion the indirect overcrow the direct taxes by
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 133
many millions, and have a knack for levying
on the small resources of insignificant persons
which direct taxes have never learned. They
know how to coax pennies out of poor people
whose names have never been on the tax-collec-
tor's books. But they are very sly, and have at
command a thousand successful disguises. High
or complicated tariffs afford them their most fre-
quent and abundant opportunities. Most people
have very short thoughts, which do not extend
beyond the immediate phenomena of direct
vision, and so do not recognize the hand of
the government in the high prices charged them
in the shops. Very few of us taste the tariff in
our sugar ; and I suppose that even very thought-
ful topers do not perceive the license-tax in their
whiskey. There is little wonder that financiers
have always been nervous in dealing with direct,
but confident and free of hand in laying indirect,
taxes.
It may, therefore, be accounted one of the
customary advantages which our federal govern-
ment possesses over the governments of the
States, that it has almost always, in ordinary
times, derived its entire revenue from prompt
and facile indirect taxes, whilst the States have
had to live upon the tardy and begrudged income
derivable from a direct levy. Since we have
had to support two governments it has been
134 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
wisely resolved to let us, as long as possible, feel
the weight of only one of them, and that the
one which can get at us most readily, and, at '
the same time, be most easily and promptly con-
trolled by our votes. It is a plain, convenient,
and, on the whole, satisfactory division of do-
main, though the responsibility which it throws
on state legislatures is more apt to pinch and
prove vexatious than is that which it lays upon
Congress. Mr. Gladstone, the greatest of Eng-
lish financiers, once playfully described direct
and indirect taxes as two sisters, daughters
of Necessity and Invention, " differing only
as sisters may differ, . . . the one being more
free and open, the other somewhat more shy,
retiring, and insinuating ;" and frankly owned
that, whether from " a lax sense of moral ob-
ligation or not," he, as Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, " thought it not only allowable, but
even an act of duty, to pay his addresses to them
both." But our chancellors of the exchequer,
the chairmen of the Committee of Ways and
Means, are bound by other traditions of court-
ship, and have, besides, usually shown no suscep-
tibility to the charms of the blunt and forward
elder of these two sisters. They have been con-
stant, even if now and again a little wayward,
in their devotion to the younger.
I suppose that no one ever found the paths pi
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 135
finance less thorny and arduous than have our
national publicists. If their tasks be compared
with those of European and English financiers,
it is plain to see that their lines have fallen in
pleasant places. From almost the very first they
have had boundless resources to draw upon, and
they have certainly of late days had free leave
to spend limitless revenues in what extravagances
they pleased. It has come to be infinitely more
trouble to spend our enormous national income
than to collect it. The chief embarrassments
have arisen, not from deficits, but from sur-
pluses. It is very fortunate that such has been
the case, because for the best management of the
finances of a nation, when revenue is scant and
economy imperative, it is absolutely necessary
to have financial administration in the hands
of a few highly-trained and skillful men acting
subject to a very strict responsibility, and this is
just what our committee system does not allow.
As in other matters of legislation, so in finance,
we have many masters acting under a very dim
and inoperative accountability. Of course under
such ministration our financial policy has always
been unstable, and has often strayed very far
from the paths of wisdom and providence ; for
even when revenue is superabundant and ex-
travagance easy, irresponsible, fast and loose
methods of taxation and expenditure must work
136 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
infinite harm. The only difference is that during
such times the nation is not so sensitive to the ill
effects wrought by careless policy. Mismanage-
ment is not generally blamed until a great many
people have discovered it by being hurt by it.
Meantime, however, it is none the less interest-
ing and important to study our government, with
a view to gauging its qualities and measuring
accurately its capabilities for good or bad ser-
vice ; and the study can doubtless be much more
dispassionately conducted before we have been
seriously hurt by foolish, unsteady administra-
tion than afterwards. The forces of the wind
can be reckoned with much more readily while
they are blowing only a gale than after they
have thrown a hurricane upon us.
The national income is controlled by one Com-
mittee of the House and one of the Senate ; the
expenditures of the government are regulated
by fifteen Committees of the House and five of
the Senate ; and the currency is cared for by
two Committees of the House and one of the
Senate ; by all of which it appears that the
financial administration of the country is in
the hands of twenty-four Committees of Con-
gress, a mechanism of numerous small and
great functions, quite complex enough to be
worth careful study, perhaps too complex to be
studied directly without an aiding knowledge of
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 137
some simpler system with which it may be com-
pared. Our own budget may be more readily
followed through all the vicissitudes of com-
mittee scrutiny, and all the varied fortunes of
committee action, after one has traced some other
budget through the simpler processes of some
other system of government.
The British system is, perhaps, in its main
features, the simplest in existence. It is, be-
sides, the pattern after which the financial sys-
tems of the chief governments of Europe have
been modeled, and which we have ourselves in
a measure copied ; so that by prefacing the study
of other systems by a careful examination of the
British, in its present form, one may start with
the great advantage of knowing the character-
istics of what may fairly be called the parent
stock. Parliament, then, in the first place,
simply controls, it does not originate, measures
of financial administration. It acts through the
agency and under the guidance of the ministers
of the Crown. Early in each annual session
" the estimates " are submitted to the Commons,
which, when hearing such statements, sits in
Committee of the Whole House, known as Com-
mittee of Supply. The estimates come before
the House in truly formidable shape. Each de-
partment presents its estimates in a huge quarto
volume, "crammed with figures and minute
138 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
entries of moneys wanted for the forthcoming
year." l But the House itself does not have to
digest this various and overwhelming mass of
figures. The digesting is done in the first in-
stance by the official leaders of the House.
" The ministers in charge of the naval and mili-
tary services lay before the Committee [of Sup-
ply] their respective statements of the sums
which will be required for the maintenance of
those services ; and somewhat later in the ses-
sion a common estimate for the various civil ser-
vices is submitted also." Those statements are,
as it were, condensed synopses of the details of
the quartos, and are made with the object of
rendering quite clear to the House, sitting under
the informal rules of Committee, the policy of
the expenditures proposed and the correctness
of the calculations upon which they are based.
Any member may ask what pertinent questions
he pleases of the minister who is making the
statement, so that nothing needing elucidation
may be passed by without full explanation.
After the statement has been completed to the
satisfaction of the Committee, a vote is taken, at
the motion of the minister, upon each item oi
1 The National Budget, etc. (English Citizen Series), p. 146.
In what I have to say of the English system, I follow this
volume, pp. 146-149, and another volume of the same admir-
able series, entitled Central Government, pp. 36-47, most <*t
my quotations being from the latter.
TEE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 139
expenditure, and the duties of the Committee of
Supply have been performed.
The estimates are always submitted " on the
collective responsibility of the whole cabinet."
" The army and navy estimates have, as a rule,
been considered and settled in cabinet council
before being submitted to the House ; and the
collective responsibility of the Ministry is in this
case, therefore, not technical merely, but sub-
stantial." If the estimates are resisted and re-
jected by the Committee, the ministers, of course,
resign. They " cannot acquiesce in a refusal on
the part of parliament to sanction the expendi-
ture which " they " have assumed the responsi-
bility of declaring necessary for the support of
the civil government, and the maintenance of the
public credit at home and abroad." The votes
in Committee of Supply are, therefore, vital in
the history of every administration, being taken
as sure indexes of the amount of confidence
placed by the House in the government.
But the votes in Committee of Supply are only
the first steps in parliament's annual supervision
of the public finances. They are simply the
spending votes. In order to consider the means
by which money is to be raised to meet the out-
lays sanctioned by the Committee of Supply, the
House resolves itself into Committee of the
Whole, under the name of the Committee of Ways
140 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
and Means. It is to this Committee that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer submits his budget
every year, on or soon before the fifth of April,
the date at which the national accounts are made
up, the financial year closing on the thirty-first
of March. In order to prepare his budget, the
Chancellor must of course have early knowledge
of the estimates made for the various services.
Several months, therefore, before the estimates
are laid before the House in Committee of Sup-
ply, the various departments are called upon by
the Treasury to send in statements of the sums
required to defray the expenses of the current
year, and these estimates are carefully examined
by the Chancellor, with a view not only to ex-
ercising his duty of keeping the expenditures
within the limits of economy, but also to ascer-
taining how much revenue he will have to secure
in order to meet the proper expenditure con-
templated. He must balance estimated needs
over against estimated resources, and advise the
House in Committee of Ways and Means as to
the measures by which taxation is to be made to
afford sufficient revenue. Accordingly he calls
in the aid of the permanent heads of the revenue
departments who furnish him with "their esti-
mates of the public revenue for the ensuing year,
upon the hypothesis that taxation will remain
unchanged."
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 141
Having with such aids made up his budget,
the Chancellor goes before the Committee of
Ways and Means prepared to give a clear his-
tory of the financial administration of the year
just closed, and to submit definite plans for
adjusting the taxation and providing for the
expected outlays of the year just opening. The
precedents of a wise policy of long standing for-
bid his proposing to raise any greater revenue
than is absolutely necessary for the support of
the government and the maintenance of the pub-
lic credit. He therefore never asks the Com-
mittee to lay taxes which promise a considerable
surplus. He seeks to obtain only such an over-
plus of income as will secure the government
against those slight errors of underestimation
of probable expenses or of oven estimation of
probable revenue as the most prudent of ad-
ministrations is liable to make. If the estimated
revenue considerably exceed the estimated ex-
penses, he proposes such remissions of taxation
as will bring the balance as near equality as
prudence will permit ; if the anticipated expenses
run beyond the figure of the hoped-for revenue,
ie asks that certain new taxes be laid, or that
certain existing taxes be increased ; if the bal-
ance between the two sides of the forecast account
shows a pretty near approach to equilibrium, so
the scale of revenue be but a little the heavier
142 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
of the two, he contents himself with suggesting
such a readjustment of existing taxes as will be
likely to distribute the burden of taxation more
equitably amongst the tax-paying classes, or fa-
cilitate hampered collections by simplifying the
complex methods of assessment and imposition.
Such is the budget statement to which the
House of Commons listens in Committee of
Ways and Means. This Committee may deal
with the proposals of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer with somewhat freer hand than the
Committee of Supply may use in passing upon
the estimates. The Ministry is not so stiffly
insistent upon having its budget sanctioned as
it is upon having its proposed expenditures ap
proved. It is understood to pledge itself to aslr
for no more money than it honestly needs ; but
it simply advises with the House as to the best
way of raising that money. It is punctiliously
particular about being supplied with the funds
it asks for, but not quite so exacting as to the
ways and means of supply. Still, no Ministry
can stand if the budget be rejected out of hand,
or if its demands for the means of meeting a
deficiency be met with a flat refusal, no alterna-
tive means being suggested by the Opposition.
Such votes would be distinct declarations of a
want of confidence in the Ministry, and would
of course force them to resign.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 143
The Committee of Ways and Means, then,
carries out, under the guidance of the Chancel-
lor of the Exchequer, the resolutions of the Com-
mittee of Supply. The votes of the latter Com-
mittee, authorizing the expenditures mapped out
in the estimates, are embodied in " a resolution
proposed in Committee of Ways and Means for
a general grant out of the Consolidated Fund
'towards making good the supply granted to
Her Majesty ; ' " and that resolution, in order
that it may be prepared for the consideration of
the House of Lords^and the Crown, is afterwards
cast by the House into the form of a Bill, which
passes through the regular stages and in due
course becomes law. The proposals of the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer with reference to changes
in taxation are in like manner embodied in reso-
lutions in Committee of Ways and Means, and
subsequently, upon the report of the Commit-
tee, passed by the House in the shape of Bills,
" Ways and Means Bills " generally pass the
Lords without trouble. The absolute control of
the Commons over the subjects of revenue and
supply has been so long established that the
upper House would not now dream of disputing
it ; and as the power of the Lords is simply a
privilege to accept or reject a money bill as \
whole, including no right to amend, the peers are
wont to let such bills go through without much
scrutiny.
144 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
But so far I have spoken only of that part
of parliament's control of the finances which
concerns the future. The "Ways and Means
Bills" provide for coming expenses and a pro.
spective revenue. Past expenses are supervised
in a different way. There is a double process of
audit by means of a special Audit Department
of the Civil Service, which is, of course, a
part of the permanent organization of the ad-
ministration, having it in charge " to examine
the accounts and vouchers of the entire expendi-
ture," and a special committee nominated each
year by the House " to audit the Audit Depart-
ment." This committee is usually made up of
the most experienced business men in the Com-
mons, and before it "all the accounts of the
completed financial year are passed in review."
" Minute inquiries are occasionally made by it
into the reasons why certain items of expendi-
ture have occurred ; it discusses claims for com-
pensation, grants, and special disbursements, in
addition to the ordinary outgoings of the depart-
ment, mainly, to be sure, upon the information
and advice of the departments themselves, but
still with a certain independence of view and
judgment which must be valuable."
The strictness and explicitness with which the
public accounts are kept of course greatly facil-
itate the process of audit. The balance which is
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 145
struck on the thirty-first of every March is of the
most definite sort. It deals only with the actual
receipts and disbursements of the completed fiscal
year. At that date all unexpended credits lapse.
If the expenditure of certain sums has been
sanctioned by parliamentary vote, but some of
the granted moneys remain undrawn when April
comes in, they can be used only after a regrant
by the Commons. There are, therefore, no un
closed accounts to obscure the view of the audit-
ing authorities. Taxes and credits have the same
definite period, and there are no arrears or unex-
pended balances to confuse the book-keeping.
The great advantages of such a system in the
way of checking extravagances which would
otherwise be possible, may be seen by comparing
it with the system in vogue in France, in whose
national balance-sheet " arrears of taxes in one
year overlap with those of other years," and
"credits old jostle credits new," so that it is
said to be "always three or four years before
the nation can know what the definitive expen-
diture of a given year is."
For the completion of this sketch of financial
administration under the Commons it is of course
necessary to add a very distinct statement of
what I may call the accessibility of the financial
officers of the government. They are always
present to be questioned. The Treasury dspart-
10
146 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
ment is, as becomes its importance, exceptionally
well represented in the House. The Chancel-
lor of the Exchequer, the working chief of the
department, is invariably a member of the Com-
mons, " and can be called to account by interro-
gation or motion with respect to all matters of
Treasury concern " with respect, that is, to
well-nigh "the whole sphere of the discipline
and economy of the Executive Government ; "
for the Treasury has wide powers of supervision
over the other departments in all matters which
may in any way involve an outlay of public
money. "And not only does the invariable pres-
ence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the
House of Commons make the representation of
that department peculiarly direct, but, through
the Secretary of the Treasury, and, with respect
to certain departmental matters, through the
Junior Lords, the House possesses peculiar facil-
ities for ascertaining and expressing its opinion
upon the details of Treasury administration."
It has its responsible servants always before it,
and can obtain what glimpses it pleases into the
inner workings of the departments which it wishes
to control.
It is just at this point that our own system of
financial administration differs most essentially
from the systems of England, of the Continent,
and of the British colonial possessions. Con*
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 147
gress does not come into direct contact with the
financial officers of the government. Executive
and legislature are separated by a Hard and fast
line, which sets them apart in what was meant to
be independence, but has come to amount to iso-
lation. Correspondence between them is carried
on by means of written communications, which,
like all formal writings, are vague, or by means
of private examinations of officials in committee-
rooms to which the whole House cannot be
audience. No one who has read official docu-
ments needs to be told how easy it is to conceal
the essential truth under the apparently candid
and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and
particularizing report; how different those an^
swers are which are given with the pen from
a private office from those which are given with
the tongue when the speaker is looking an as-
sembly in the face. It is sufficiently plain, too,
that resolutions which call upon officials to give
testimony before a committee are a much clum-
sier and less efficient means of eliciting informa-
tion than is a running fire of questions addressed
to ministers who are always in their places in
the House to reply publicly to all interrogations.
It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the
House of Representatives is much less intimately
acquainted with the details of federal Treasury
affairs than is such a body as the House of
148 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Commons, with the particulars of management
in the Treasury which it oversees by direct and
constant communication with the chief Treasury
officials.
This is the greater drawback in our system,
because, as a further result of its complete sep-
aration from the executive, Congress has to orig-
inate and perfect the budget for itself. It does
not hear the estimates translated and expounded
in condensed statements by skilled officials who
have made it their business, because it is to their
interest, to know thoroughly what they are talk-
ing about; nor does it have the benefit of the
guidance of a trained, practical financier when
it has to determine questions of revenue. The
Treasury is not consulted with reference to prob-
lems of taxation, and motions of supply are dis-
posed of with no suggestions from the depart-
ments beyond an itemized statement of the
amounts needed to meet the regular expenses of
an opening fiscal year.
In federal book-keeping the fiscal year closes
on the thirtieth of June. Several months before
that year expires, however, the estimates for the
twelve months which are to succeed are made
ready for the use of Congress. In the autumn
each department and bureau of the public service
reckons its pecuniary needs for the fiscal year
which is to begin on the following first of July
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 149
(making explanatory notes, and here and there
an interjected prayer for some unwonted expen-
diture, amongst the columns of figures), and
sends the resulting document to the Secretary
of the Treasury. These reports, including of
course the estimates of the various bureaux of
his own department, the Secretary has printed in
a thin quarto volume of some three hundred and
twenty-five pages, which for some reason or oth-
er, not quite apparent, is called a " Letter from
the Secretary of the Treasury transmitting esti-
mates of appropriations required for the fiscal
year ending June 30," . . . and which boasts a
very distinct arrangement under the heads Civil
Establishment, Military Establishment, Naval
Establishment, Indian Affairs, Pensions, Publip
Works, Postal Service, etc., a convenient sum-
mary of the chief items, and a complete index.
In December this " Letter " is sent, as a part
of the Secretary of the Treasury's annual report
to Congress, to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, immediately after the conven-
ing of that body, and is referred to the Standing
Committee on Appropriations. The House it-
self does not hear the estimates read ; it simply
passes the thin quartos over to the Committee ;
though, of course, copies of it may be procured
and studied by any member who chooses to scru-
tinize the staring pages of columned figures with
150 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the dutiful purpose of keeping an eye upon the
uses made of the public revenue. Taking these
estimates into consideration, the Committee on
Appropriations found upon them the "general
appropriation bills," which the rules require
them to report to the House " within thirty
days after their appointment, at every session
of Congress, commencing on the first Monday
in December," unless they can give satisfactory
reasons in writing for not doing so. The " gen-
eral appropriation bills " provide separately for
legislative, executive, and judicial expenses ; for
sundry civil expenses ; for consular and diplo-
matic expenses ; for the Army ; for the Navy ;
for the expenses of the Indian department ; for
the payment of invalid and other pensions ; for
the support of the Military Academy ; for for-
tifications ; for the service of the Post-Office de-
partment, and for mail transportation by ocean
steamers.
It was only through the efforts of a later-day
spirit of vigilant economy that this practice of
making the appropriations for each of the sev-
eral branches of the public service in a separate
bill was established. During the early years
of the Constitution very loose methods of appro-
priation prevailed. All the moneys for the year
were granted in a single bill, entitled " An Act
making Appropriations for the support of the
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 151
Government ; " and there was no attempt to
specify the objects for which they were to be
spent. The gross sum given could be applied at
the discretion of the heads of the executive de-
partments, and was always large enough to allow
much freedom in the undertaking of new schemes
of administration, and in the making of such ad-
ditions to the clerical force of the different offices
as might seem convenient to those in control.
It was not until 1862 that the present practice
of somewhat minutely specifying the uses to be
made of the funds appropriated was reached,
though Congress had for many years been by
slow stages approaching such a policy. The
history of appropriations shows that " there has
been an increasing tendency to limit the discre-
tion of the executive departments, and bring the
details of expenditure more immediately under
the annual supervision of Congress ; " a tendency
which has specially manifested itself since the
close of the recent war between the States. 1 In
this, as in other things, the appetite for govern-
ment on the part of Congress has grown with
that perfection of organization which has ren-
dered the gratification of its desire for power
easily attainable. In this matter of appropria-
1 See an article entitled " National Appropriations and Mis-
appropriations," by the late President Garfield, North Amer*
<an Review, vol. cxxviii. pp 578 et seq.
152 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
tions, however, increased care has unquestionably
resulted in a very decided curtailment of extrava-
gance in departmental expenditure, though Con-
gress has often shown a blind ardor for retrench-
ment which has fallen little short of parsimony,
and which could not have found place in its leg-
islation had it had such adequate means of confi-
dential communication with the executive depart-
ments as would have enabled it to understand
their real needs, and to discriminate between true
economy and those scant allowances which only
give birth to deficiencies, and which, even under
the luckiest conditions, serve only for a very
brief season to create the impression which they
are usually meant to beget, that the party in
power is the party of thrift and honesty, seeing
in former appropriations too much that was cor-
rupt and spendthrift, and desiring to turn to the
good ways of wisdom and frugality.
There are some portions of the public expen-
diture which do not depend upon the annual
gifts of Congress, but which are provided for
by statutes which run without limit of date.
These are what are known as the " permanent
appropriations." They cover, on the one hand,
such indeterminate charges as the interest on the
public debt, the amounts annually paid into the
sinking fund, the outlays of refunding, the inter-
est on the bonds issued to the Pacific Railways j
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 153
and, on the other hand, such specific charges as
the maintenance of the militia service, the costs
of the collection of the customs revenue, and the
interest on the bequest to the Smithsonian Insti-
tution. Their aggregate sum constitutes no in-
significant part of the entire public expense. In
1880, in a total appropriation of about $307,000,-
000, the permanent appropriations fell short of
the annual grant by only about sixteen and a half
millions. In later years, however, the proportion
has been smaller, one of the principal items, the
interest on the public debt, becoming, of course,
continually less as the debt is paid off, and other
items reaching less amounts, at the same time
that the figures of the annual grants have risen
rather than fallen.
With these permanent grants the Committee
on Appropriations has, of course, nothing to do,
except that estimates of the moneys to be drawn
under authority of such grants are submitted to
its examination in the Secretary of the Treasury's
" Letter," along with the estimates for which spe-
cial appropriations .are asked. Upon these latter
estimates the general appropriations are based.
The Committee may report its bills at any stage
of the House's business, provided only that it does
not interrupt a member who is speaking; and
these bills when reported may at any time, by a
majority vote, be made a special order of the day.
154 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Of course their consideration is the most impera-
tive business of the session. They must be passed
before the end of June, else the departments will
be left altogether without means of support. The
chairman of the Committee on Appropriations
is, consequently, a very masterful authority in the
House. He can force it to a consideration of the
business of his Committee at almost any time ;
and by withholding his reports until the session
is well advanced can crowd all other topics from
the docket. For much time is spent over each
of the " general appropriation bills." The spend-
ing of money is one of the two things that Con-
gress invariably stops to talk about ; the other
being the raising of money. The talk is made
always in Committee of the Whole, into which
the House at once resolves itself whenever ap-
propriations are to be considered. While mem-
bers of this, which may be called the House's
Committee of Supply, representatives have the
freest opportunity of the session for activity, for
usefulness, or for meddling, outside the sphere of
their own committee work. It is true that the
" five-minutes' rule " gives each speaker in Com-
mittee of the Whole scant time for the expres-
sion of his views, and that the House can refuse
to accord full freedom of debate to its other self,
the Committee of the Whole, by limiting the
time which it is to devote to the discussion of
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 155
matters referred to it, or by providing for its
discharge from the further consideration of any
bill committed to it, after it shall have acted
without debate on all amendments pending or
that may be offered ; but as a rule every mem-
ber has a chance to offer what suggestions he
pleases upon questions of appropriation, and
many hours are spent in business-like debate
and amendment of such bills, clause by clause
and item by item. The House learns pretty
thoroughly what is in each of its appropriation
bills before it sends it to the Senate.
But, unfortunately, the dealings of the Senate
with money bills generally render worthless the
painstaking action of the House. The Senate
has been established by precedent in the very
freest possible privileges of amendment as re-
gards these bills no less than as regards all
others. The Constitution is silent as to the
origination of bills appropriating money. It
says simply that " all bills for raising revenue
shall originate in the House of Representatives,"
and that in considering these " the Senate may
propose or concur with amendments as on other
bills " (Art. I., Sec. VII.) ; but, " by a practice
as old as the Government itself, the constitu-
tional prerogative of the House has been held to
apply to all the general appropriation bills," 1
1 Senator Hoar's article, already several times quoted.
156 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
and the Senate's right to amend these has been
allowed the widest conceivable scope. The up-
per house may add to them what it pleases ;
may go altogether outside of their original pro-
visions and tack to them entirely new features
of legislation, altering not only the amounts but
even the objects of expenditure, and making out
of the materials sent them by the popular cham-
ber measures of an almost totally new character.
As passed by the House of Representatives,
appropriation bills generally provide for an ex-
penditure considerably less than that called for
by the estimates ; as returned from the Senate,
they usually propose grants of many additional
millions, having been brought by that less sensi-
tive body up almost, if not quite, to the figures
of the estimates.
After passing their ordeal of scrutiny and
amendment in the Senate, the appropriation bills
return with their new figures to the House. But
when they return it is too late for the House to
put them again into the crucible of Committee
of the Whole. The session, it may be taken
for granted, was well on towards its middle age
before they were originally introduced by the
House Committee on Appropriations ; after they
reached the Senate they were referred to its cor-
responding Committee ; and the report of that
Committee upon them was debated at the lei
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 157
surely length characteristic of the weightier pro-
ceedings of the upper chamber ; so that the last
days of the session are fast approaching when
they are sent down to the House with the work
of the Senate's hand upon them. The House is
naturally disinclined to consent to the radical
alterations wrought by the Senate, but there is
no time to quarrel with its colleague, unless it
can make up its mind to sit through the heat of
midsummer, or to throw out the bill and accept
the discomforts of an extra session. If the ses-
sion be the short one, which ends, by constitu-
tional requirement, on the 4th of March, the
alternative is the still more distasteful one of
leaving the appropriations to be made by the
next House.
The usual practice, therefore, is to adjust
such differences by means of a conference be-
tween the two Houses. The House rejects the
Senate's amendments without hearing them
read ; the Senate stoutly refuses to yield ; a
conference ensues, conducted by a committee of
three members from each chamber ; and a com-
promise is effected, by such a compounding of
disagreeing propositions as gives neither party to
the quarrel the victory, and commonly leaves the
grants not a little below the amounts asked for
by the departments. As a rule, the Conference
Committee consists, on the part of the House, of
158 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the chairman of its Committee on Appropria-
tions, some other well-posted member of that Com-
mittee, and a representative of the minority. Its
reports are matters of highest prerogative. They
may be brought in even while a member is speak-
ing. It is much better to silence a speaker than
to delay for a single moment, at this stage of the
session, the pressing, imperious question of the
supplies for the support of the government. The
report is, therefore, acted upon immediately and
in a mass, and is generally adopted without de-
bate. So great is the haste that the report is
passed upon before being printed, and without
giving any one but the members of the Con-
ference Committee time to understand what it
really contains. There is no chance of remark
or amendment. It receives at once sanction or
rejection as a whole ; and the chances are, of
course, in favor of its being accepted, because
to reject it would but force a new conference
and bring fresh delays.
It is evident, therefore, that after all the care-
ful and thorough-going debate and amendment
of Committee of the Whole in the House, and
all the grave deliberation of the Senate to which
the general appropriations are subjected, they
finally pass in a very chaotic state, full of pro-
visions which neither the House nor the Senate
likes, and utterly vague and unintelligible to
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 159
every one save the members of the Conference
Committee ; so that it would seem almost as if
the generous portions of time conscientiously
given to their consideration in their earlier
stages had been simply time thrown away.
The result of the under-appropriation to which
Congress seems to have become addicted by long
habit in dealing with the estimates, is, of course,
the addition of another bill to the number of the
regular annual grants. As regularly as the an-
nual session opens there is a Deficiency Bill to
be considered. Doubtless deficiencies frequently
arise because of miscalculations or extravagance
on the part of the departments; but the most
serious deficiencies are those which result from
the close-fistedness of the House Committee on
Appropriations, and the compromise reductions
which are wrung from the Senate by conference
committees. Every December, consequently,
along with the estimates for the next fiscal year,
or at a later period of the session in special com-
munications, come estimates of deficiencies in the
appropriations for the current year, and the ap-
parent economies of the grants of the preceding
session have to be offset in the gifts of the inev-
itable Deficiency Bill. It is as if Congress had
designedly established the plan of making semi-
annual appropriations. At each session it grants
part of the money to be spent after the first of
160 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
July following, and such sums as are needed to
supplement the expenditures previously author-
ized to be made after the first of July preceding.
It doles out their allowances in installments to
its wards, the departments.
It is usual for the Appropriations Committees
of both Houses, when preparing the annual bills,
to take the testimony of the directing officers of
the departments as to the actual needs of the
public service in regard to all the principal items
of expenditure. Having no place upon the floor
of the House, and being, in consequence, shut
out from making complete public statements
concerning the estimates, the heads of the sev-
eral executive departments are forced to confine
themselves to private communications with the
House and Senate Committees. Appearing be-
fore those Committees in person, or addressing
them more formally in writing, they explain and
urge the appropriations asked in the " Letter "
containing the estimates. Their written com-
munications, though addressed only to the chair-
man of one of the Committees, frequently reach
Congress itself, being read in open session by
some member of the Committee in order to jus-
tify or interpret the items of appropriation pro-
posed in a pending bill. Not infrequently the
head of a department exerts himself to secure
desired supplies by dint of negotiation with in-
THE BOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 161
dividual members of the Committee, and by re-
peated and insistent private appeals to their
chairman.
Only a very small part of the relations be-
tween the Committees and the departments is a
matter of rule. Each time that the estimates
come under consideration the Committees must
specially seek, or the departments newly volun-
teer, information and advice. It would seem,
however, that it is now less usual for the Com-
mittees to ask than for the Secretaries to offer
counsel and suggestion. In the early years of
the government it was apparently not uncom-
mon for the chairman of spending committees
to seek out departmental officials in order to get
necessary enlightenment concerning the mys-
teries of the estimates, though it was often
easier to ask for than to get the information
wanted. An amusing example of the difficulties
which then beset a committee-man in search of
such knowledge is to be found in the private
correspondence of John Randolph of Roanoke.
Until 1865 the House Committee of Ways and
Means, which is one of the oldest of the Stand-
ing Committees, had charge of the appropria-
tions ; it was, therefore, Mr. Randolph's duty,
as chairman of that Committee in 1807, to look
into the estimates, and he thus recounts, in an
interesting and exceedingly characteristic letter
11
162 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
to his intimate friend and correspondent, Nich-
olsoD, this pitiful experience which he had had
in performing that duty: "I called some time
since at the navy office to ask an explanation of
certain items of the estimate for this year. The
Secretary called upon his chief clerk, who knew
very little more of the business than his master.
I propounded a question to the head of the de-
partment ; he turned to the clerk like a boy who
cannot say his lesson, and with imploring coun-
tenance beseeches aid ; the clerk with much as-
surance gabbled out some commonplace jargon,
which I could not take for sterling ; an explana-
tion was required, and both were dumb. This
pantomime was repeated at every item, until, dis-
gusted and ashamed for the degraded situation
of the principal, I took leave without pursuing
the subject, seeing that my object could not be
attained. There was not one single question
relating to the department that the Secretary
could answer." l It is to be hoped that the Sec-
retaries of to-day are somewhat better versed in
the affairs of their departments than was respect-
able Robert Smith, or, at any rate, that they
have chief clerks who can furnish inquiring
chairmen with something better than common-
place jargon which no shrewd man can take for
* Adams's John Randolph. American Statesman Series,
pp. 210, 211.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 163
sterling information ; and it is altogether prob-
able that such a scene as the one just described
would nowadays be quite impossible. The book-
keeping of later years has been very much
stricter and more thorough than it was in the
infancy of the departments ; the estimates are
much more thoroughly differentiated and item-
ized ; and a minute division of labor in each
department amongst a numerous clerical force
makes it comparatively easy for the chief execu-
tive officers to acquaint themselves quickly and
accurately with the details of administration.
They do not wait, therefore, as a general thing,
to be sought out and questioned by the Commit-
tees, but bestir themselves to get at the ears of
the committee-men, and especially to secure, if
possible, the influence of the chairmen in the
interest of adequate appropriations.
These irregular and generally informal com-
munications between the Appropriations Com-
mittees and the heads of the departments, taking
the form sometimes of pleas privately addressed
by the Secretaries to individual members of
the Committees, and again of careful letters
which find their way into the reports laid be-
fore Congress, stand in our system in the place
of the annual financial statements which are
in British practice made by the ministers to
parliament, under circumstances which consti-
164 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
tute very full and satisfactory public explana-
tions and the freest replies to all pertinent ques-
tions invariable features of the supervision of
the finances by the Commons. Our ministers
make their statements to both Houses indirectly
and piecemeal, through the medium of the Com-
mittees. They are mere witnesses, and are in
no definite way responsible for the annual ap-
propriations. Their secure four-year tenure of
office is not at all affected by the treatment the
estimates receive at the hands of Congress. To
see our cabinet officers resign because appropria-
tions had been refused for the full amount asked
for in the Secretary of the Treasury's " Letter "
would be as novel in our eyes as would be, in the
view of our English cousins, the sight of a Min-
istry of the Crown remaining in office under
similar circumstances. Indeed, were our cabi-
nets to stake their positions upon the fortunes
of the estimates submitted to Congress, we
should probably suffer the tiresome inconven-
ience of yearly resignations ; for even when the
heads of the departments tax all their energies
and bring into requisition all their arts of per-
suasion to secure ample grants from the Com-
mittees, the House Committee cuts down the
sums as usual, the Senate Committee adds to
them as before, and the Conference Committee
strikes a deficient compromise balance according
to time-honored custom.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 165
There is in the House another appropriations
committee besides the Committee on Appropria-
tions. This is the Committee on Rivers and Har-
bors, created in December, 1883, by the Forty-
eighth Congress, as a sharer in the too great
prerogatives till then enjoyed by the Committee
on Commerce. The Committee on Rivers and
Harbors represents, of course, the lately-acquired
permanency of the policy of internal improve-
ments. Until 1870 that policy had had a very
precarious existence. Strenuously denied all
tolerance by the severely constitutional Presi-
dents of the earlier days, it could not venture to
declare itself openly in separate appropriations
which offered an easy prey to the watchful veto,
but skulked in the unobtrusive guise of items of
the general grants, safe under the cover of re-
spectable neighbor items. The veto has never
been allowed to seek out single features in the
acts submitted to the executive eye, and even
such men as Madison and Monroe, stiff and
peremptory as they were in the assertion of their
conscientious opinions, and in the performance
of what they conceived to be their constitutional
duty, and much as they disapproved of stretch-
ing the Constitution to such uses as national aid
to local and inland improvements, were fain to
let an occasional gift of money for such purposes
pass unforbiddeu rather than throw out the gen-
166 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
era! appropriation bill to which it was tacked.
Still, Congress did not make very frequent or
very flagrant use of this trick, and schemes of
internal improvement came altogether to a stand-
still when faced by President Jackson's imperi-
ous disfavor. It was for many years the set-
tled practice of Congress to grant the States
upon the sea-board leave to lay duties at their
ports for the improvement of the harbors, and
itself to undertake the expense of no public
works save those upon territory actually owned
by the United States. But in later years the
relaxation of presidential opposition and the ad-
mission of new States lying altogether away from
the sea, and, therefore, quite unwilling to pay
the tariffs which were building up the harbors
of their eastern neighbors without any recom-
pensing advantage to themselves who had no
harbors, revived the plans which the vetoes of
former times had rebuffed, and appropriations
from the national coffers began freely to be
made for the opening of the great water high-
ways and the perfecting of the sea-gates of com-
merce. The inland States were silenced, because
satisfied by a share in the benefits of national
aid, which, being no longer indirect, was not
confined to the sanctioning of state tariffs which
none but the sea-board commonwealths could
benefit by, but which consumers everywhere had
to pay.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 167
The greatest increase in appropriations of this
class took place just after 1870. Since that date
they have occupied a very prominent place in
legislation, running from some twelve millions
in the session of 1873-4 up and down through
various figures to eighteen millions seven hun-
dred thousand in the session of 1882-3, consti-
tuting during that decade the chief business of
the Committee on Commerce, and finally having
a special Standing Committee erected for their
superintendence. They have thus culminated
with the culmination of the protective tariff,
and the so-called " American system " of pro-
tective tariffs and internal improvements has
thus at last attained to its perfect work. The
same prerogatives are accorded this new appro-
priations committee which have been secured to
the greater Committee which deals with the es-
timates. Its reports may be made at any time
when a member is not speaking, and stand in all
respects upon the same footing as the bills pro-
posing the annual grants. It is a special spend-
ing committee, with its own key to the Treasury.
But the Appropriation Committees of the two
Houses, though, strictly speaking, the only com-
mittees of supply, have their work increased
and supplemented by the numerous Committees
which devote time and energy to creating de-
mands upon the Treasury. There is a pension
168 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
list in the estimates for whose payment the Com'
mittee on Appropriations has to provide every
year ; but the Committee on Pensions is con-
stantly manufacturing new claims upon the pub-
lic revenues. 1 There must be money forthcoming
to build the new ships called for by the report
of the Committee on Naval Affairs, and to meet
the charges for the army equipment and reforms
recommended by the Committee on Military
Affairs. There are innumerable fingers in the
budget pie.
It is principally in connection with appropri-
ations that what has come to be known in our
political slang as " log-rolling " takes place. Of
course the chief scene of this sport is the private
room of the Committee on Rivers and Harbors,
and the season of its highest excitement, the
hours spent in the passage of the River and Har-
i On one occasion " the House passed thirty-seven pension
bills at one sitting. The Senate, on its part, by unanimous
consent, took np and passed in about ten minutes seven bills
providing for public buildings in different States, appropriat-
ing an aggregate of $1,200,000 in this short time. A recent
House feat was one in which a bill, allowing 1 ,300 war claims
in a lump, was passed. It contained one hundred and nineteen
pages full of little claims, amounting in all to $291,000; and
a member, in deprecating criticism on this disposition of them,
said that the Committee had received ten huge bags full of
such claims, which had been adjudicated by the Treasury offi-
cials, and it was a physical impossibility to examine them."
N. Y. Sun, 1881.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 169
bor Bill. "Log-rolling" is an exchange of
favors. Representative A. is very anxious to
secure a grant for the clearing of a small water-
course in his district, and representative B. i?
equally solicitous about his plans for bringing
money into the hands of the contractors of his
own constituency, whilst representative C. comes
from a sea-port town whose modest harbor is
neglected because of the treacherous bar across
its mouth, and representative D. has been blamed
for not bestirring himself more in the interest of
schemes of improvement afoot amongst the en-
terprising citizens of his native place ; so it is
perfectly feasible for these gentlemen to put
their heads together and confirm a mutual un-
derstanding that each will vote in Committee of
the Whole for the grants desired by the others,
in consideration of the promise that they will
cry " aye " when his item comes on to be consid-
ered. It is not out of the question to gain the
favoring ear of the reporting Committee, and a
great deal of tinkering can be done with the bill
after it has come into the hands of the House.
Lobbying and log-rolling go hand in hand.
So much for estimates and appropriations.
All questions of revenue are in their first stages
in the hands of the House Committee of Ways
and Means; and in their last, in charge of the
Senate Committee on Finance. The name of
170 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the House Committee is evidently borrowed
from the language of the British Parliament ;
the English. Committee of Ways and Means is,
however, the Commons itself sitting in Commit-
tee of the Whole to consider the statement and
proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
whilst ours is a Standing Committee of the
House composed of eleven members, and charged
with the preparation of all legislation relating to
the raising of the revenue and to providing ways
and means for the support of the government.
We have, in English parliamentary phrase, put
our Chancellorship of the Exchequer into com-
mission. The chairman of the Committee fig-
ures as our minister of finance, but he really, of
course, only represents the commission of eleven
over which he presides.
All reports of the Treasury department are
referred to this Committee of Ways and Means,
which also, like the Committee on Appropria-
tions, from time to time holds other more direct
communications with the officers of revenue bu-
reaux. The annual reports of the Secretary of
the Treasury are generally quite full of minute
information upon the points most immediately
connected with the proper duties of the Commit-
tee. They are explicit with regard to the collec-
tion and disbursement of the revenues, with re-
gard to the condition of the public debt, and
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 171
with regard to the operation of all laws govern-
ing the financial policy of the departments.
They are, in one aspect, the great yearly balance
i sheets, exhibiting the receipts and expenditures
of the government, its liabilities and its credits ;
and, in another aspect, general views of the state
of industry and of the financial machinery of the
country, summarizing the information compiled
by the bureau of statistics with reference to the
condition of the manufactures and of domestic
trade, as well as with regard to the plight of the
currency and of the national banks. They are,
of course, quite distinct from the " Letters " of
the Secretary of the Treasury, which contain the
estimates, and go, not to the Committee of Ways
and Means, but to the Committee on Appropri-
ations.
Though the duties of the Committee of Ways
and Means in supervising the management of
the revenues of the country are quite closely
analogous to those of the British Chancellor of
the Exchequer, the lines of policy in which they
walk are very widely separated from those which
he feels bound to follow. As I have said, the
object which he holds constantly in view is to
keep the annual balances as nearly as possible
at an equilibrium. He plans to raise only just
enough revenue to satisfy the grants made in
Committee of Supply, and leave a modest sur-
172 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
plus to cover possible errors in the estimates and
probable fluctuations in the returns from taxa-
tion. Our Committee of Ways and Means,
on the other hand, follow a very different policy.
The revenues which they control are raised for
a double object. They represent not only the
income of the government, but also a carefully
erected commercial policy to which the income
of the government has for many years been in-
cidental. They are intended to foster the man-
ufactures of the country as well as to defray the
expenses of federal administration. Were the
maintenance of the government and the support
of the public credit the chief objects of our na-
tional policy of taxation, it would undoubtedly
be cast in a very different pattern. During a
greater part of the lifetime of the present gov-
ernment, the principal feature of that policy has
been a complex system of duties on imports,
troublesome and expensive of collection, but
nevertheless yielding, together with the license
taxes of the internal revenue which later years
have seen added to it, immense surpluses which
no extravagances of the spending committees
could exhaust. Duties few, small, and compar-
atively inexpensive of collection would afford
abundant revenues for the efficient conduct of
the government, besides comporting much more
evidently with economy in financial administra*
THE 'HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 173
tion. Of course, if vast revenues pour in over
the barriers of an exacting and exorbitant tariff,
amply sufficient revenues would flow in through
the easy conduits of moderate and simple duties.
The object of our financial policy, however, has
not been to equalize receipts and expenditures,
but to foster the industries of the country. The
Committee of Ways and Means, therefore, do not
concern themselves directly with regulating the
income of the government they know that
that, in every probable event, will be more than
sufficient but with protecting the interests of
the manufacturers as affected by the regulation
of the tariff. The resources of the government
are made incidental to the industrial investments
of private citizens.
This evidently constitutes a very capital dif-
ference between the functions of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer and those of our Committee of
Ways and Means. In the policy of the former
the support of the government is everything ;
with the latter the care of the industries of the
country is the beginning and the end of duty.
In the eyes of parliament enormous balances rep-
resent ignorant or improper management on the
part of the ministers, and a succession of them
is sure to cast a cabinet from office, to the last-
ing disgrace of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ;
but to the mind of Congress vast surpluses are
174 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
indicative of nothing in particular. They indi-
cate of course abundant returns from the duties,
but the chief concern is, not whether the duties
are fruitful, but whether they render the trades
prosperous. Commercial interests are the essen-
tial consideration ; excess of income is a matter
of comparative indifference. The points of view
characteristic of the two systems are thus quite
opposite : the Committee of Ways and Means
subordinates its housekeeping duties to its much
wider extra - governmental business ; the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer subordinates everything
to economical administration.
This is evidently the meaning of the easy sov-
ereignty, in the practice of the House, of ques-
tions of supply over questions of revenue. It is
imperative to grant money for the support of the
government, but questions of revenue revision
may be postponed without inconvenience. The
two things do not necessarily go hand in hand,
as they do in the Commons. The reports of the
Committee of Ways and Means are matters of
quite as high privilege as the reports of the
Committee on Appropriations, but they by no
means stand an equal chance of gaining the con-
sideration of the House and reaching a passage.
They have no inseparable connection with the
annual grants ; the needed supplies will be forth-
coming without any readjustments of taxation
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 175
to meet the anticipated demands, because the
taxes are not laid in the first instance with ref-
erence to the expenses which are to be paid out
of their proceeds. If it were the function of the
Committee of Ways and Means, as it is of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, to adjust the rev-
enue to the expenditures, their reports would be
as essential a part of the business of each session
as are the reports of the Committee on Appro-
priations ; but their proposals, occupying, as
they do, a very different place in legislation,
may go to the wall just as the proposals of the
other Committees do at the demand of the chair-
man of the great spending Committee. The fig-
ures of the annual grants do not run near enough
to the sum of the annual receipts to make them
at all dependent on bills which concern the
latter.
It would seem that the supervision exercised
by Congress over expenditures is more thorough
than that which is exercised by the Commons in
England. Jn 1814 the House created a Stand-
ing Committee on Public Expenditures whose
duty it should be " to examine into the state of
the several public departments, and particularly
into laws making appropriations of money, and
to report whether the moneys have been dis-
bursed conformably with such laws ; and also to
report from time to time such provisions and ar-
176 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
rangements as may be necessary to add to the
economy of the departments and the accounta-
bility of their officers ; " but this Committee
stood as the only committee of audit for but two
years. It was not then abolished, but its juris-
diction was divided amongst six other Commit-
tees on Expenditures in the several departments,
to which was added in 1860 a seventh, and in
1874 an eighth. There is thus a separate Com-
mittee for the audit of the accounts of each of
the executive departments, beside which the orig-
inal single Committee on Public Expenditures
stands charged with such duties as may have
been left it in the general distribution. 1 The
duties of these eight Committees are specified
with great minuteness in the rules. They are
" to examine into the state of the accounts and
expenditures respectively submitted to them, and
1 Congress, though constantly erecting new Committees,
never gives up old ones, no matter how useless they may have
become by subtraction of duties. Thus there is not only the
superseded Committee on Public Expenditures but the Com-
mittee on Manufactures also, which, when a part of the one-
time Committee on Commerce and Manufactures, had plenty
to do, but which, since the creation of a distinct Committee on
Commerce, has had nothing to do, having now, together with
the Committees on Agriculture and Indian Affairs, no duties
assigned to it by the rules. It remains to be seen whether the
Committee on Commerce will suffer a like eclipse because of
the gift of its principal duties to the new Committee on Kivers
and Harbors.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 177
to inquire and report particularly," whether the
expenditures of the respective departments are
warranted by law ; " whether the claims from
time to time satisfied and discharged by the re-
spective departments are supported by sufficient
vouchers, establishing their justness both as to
their character and amount ; whether such claims
have been discharged out of funds appropriated
therefor, and whether all moneys have been dis-
bursed in conformity with appropriation laws ;
and whether any, or what, provisions are neces-
sary to be adopted, to provide more perfectly for
the proper application of the public moneys, and
to secure the government from demands unjust in
their character or extravagant in their amount."
Besides exercising these functions of careful au-
dit, they are, moreover, required to " report
from time to time " any plans for retrenchment
that may appear advisable in the interests of
economy, or any measures that may be necessary
to secure greater efficiency or to insure stricter
accountability to Congress in the management
of the departments ; to ferret out all abuses that
may make their appearance ; and to see to it
that no department has useless offices in its bu-
reaux, or over or under-paid officers on its rolls.
But, though these Committees are so many
and so completely armed with powers, indica-
tions are not wanting that more abuses run at
12
178 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
large in the departments than they, with all their
eyes, are able to detect. The Senate, though it
has no similar permanent committees, has some-
times discovered dishonest dealings that had al-
together escaped the vigilance of the eight House
Committees ; and even these eight occasionally,
by a special effort, bring to light transactions
which would never have been unearthed in the
ordinary routine course of their usual procedure.
It was a select committee of the Senate which,
during the sessions of the Forty-seventh Con-
gress, discovered that the " contingent fund " of
the Treasury department had been spent in re-
pairs on the Secretary's private residence, for
expensive suppers spread before the Secretary's
political friends, for lemonade for the delectation
of the Secretary's private palate, for bouquets for
the gratification of the Secretary's busiest allies,
for carpets never delivered, " ice " never used, and
services never rendered ; l although these were
secrets of which the honest faces of the vouchers
submitted with the accounts gave not a hint.
It is hard to see how there could have been
1 See the report of this Committee, which was under the
chairmanship of Senator Windom.
An illustration of what the House Committees find by spe-
cial effort may be seen in the revelations of the investigation
of the expenses of the notorious " Star Route Trials " mad^e
by the Forty-eighth Congress's Committee on Expenditures in
the department of Justice.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 179
anything satisfactory or conclusive in the annual
supervision of the public accounts during any
but the latest years of this system of committee
audit. Before 1870 our national book-keeping
was much like that still in vogue in France.
Credits once granted ran on without period until
they were exhausted. There were always unex-
pended balances to confuse the accounts ; and
when the figures of the original grants had been
on a too generous scale, as was often the case,
these balances accumulated from year to year
in immense surpluses, sometimes of many mil-
lions, of whose use no account was given, and
which consequently afforded means for all sorts
of extravagance and peculation. In 1870 this
abuse was partially corrected by a law which
limited such accumulations to a period of two
years, and laid hands, on behalf of the Treasury,
on the $174,000,000 of unexpended balances
which had by that time been amassed in the sev-
eral departments ; but it was not till 1874 that
such a rule of expenditure and accounting was
established as would make intelligent audit by
the Committees possible, by a proper circum-
scription of the time during which credits could
be drawn upon without a regrant. 1
Such is a general view, in brief and without
1 See General Garfield's article, already once quoted, North
American Review, vol. cxxviii. p. 533.
180 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
technical detail, of the chief features of our
financial system, of the dealings of Congress
with the questions of revenue, expenditure, and
supply. The contrast which this system offers
to the old-world systems, of which the British
is the most advanced type, is obviously a very
striking one. The one is the very opposite of
the others. On the one hand is a financial pol-
icy regulated by a compact, cooperative ministry
under the direction of a representative chamber,
and on the other hand a financial policy di-
rected by the representative body itself, with
only clerical aid from the executive. In our
practice, in other words, the Committees are the
ministers, and the titular ministers only confi-
dential clerks. There is no concurrence, not
even a nominal alliance, between the several sec-
tions of this committee-ministry, though their
several duties are clearly very nearly akin and
as clearly mutually dependent. This feature of
disintegration in leadership runs, as I have al-
ready pointed out, through all our legislation ;
but it is manifestly of much more serious conse-
quence in financial administration than in the di-
rection of other concerns of government. There
can be no doubt that, if it were not for the fact
that our revenues are not regulated with any
immediate reference to the expenditures of the
government, this method of spending according
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 181
to the suggestions of one body, and taxing in
obedience to the suggestions of another entirely
distinct, would very quickly bring us into dis-
tress ; it would unquestionably break down under
any attempt to treat revenue and expenditure as
mutually adjustable parts of a single, uniform,
self-consistent system. They can be so treated
only when they are under the management of a
single body ; only when all financial arrange-
ments are based upon schemes prepared by a few
men of trained minds and accordant principles,
who can act with easy agreement and with per-
fect confidence in each other. When taxation
is regarded only as a source of revenue and the
chief object of financial management is the grad-
uation of outlays by income, the credit and debit
sides of the account must come under a single
eye to be properly balanced ; or, at the least,
those officers who raise the money must see and
be guided by the books of those who spend it.
It cannot, therefore, be reasonably regarded
as matter of surprise that our financial policy
has been without consistency or coherency, with-
out progressive continuity. The only evidences
of design to be discovered in it appear in those
few elementary features which were impressed
upon it in the first days of the government, when
Congress depended upon such men as Hamil-
ton and Gallatin for guidance in putting the
182 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
finances into shape. As far as it has any invari-
able characteristics, or any traceable heredity, it
is the handiwork of the sagacious men who first
presided over the Treasury department. Since
it has been altogether in the hands of congres-
sional Committees it has so waywardly shifted
from one r61e to another, and has with such er-
ratic facility changed its principles of action and
its modes of speech, to suit the temper and tastes
of the times, that one who studies it hardly be-
comes acquainted with it in one decade before
he finds that that was a season quite apart from
and unlike both those which went before and
those which succeeded. At almost every session
Congress has made some effort, more or less de-
termined, towards changing the revenue system
in some essential portion ; and that system has
never escaped radical alteration for ten years
together. Had revenue been graduated by the
comparatively steady standard of the expendi-
tures, it must have been kept stable and calcu-
lable ; but depending, as it has done, on a
much-debated and constantly fluctuating indus-
trial policy, it has been regulated in accordance
with a scheme which has passed through as many
phases as there have been vicissitudes and vaga-
ries in the fortunes of commerce and the tactics
of parties.
This is the more remarkable because upon
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 183
all fiscal questions Congress acts with considera-
ble deliberation and care. Financial legislation
usually, if not always,, occupies by far the most
prominent place in the business of each session.
Though other questions are often disposed of
at odd moments, in haste and without thought,
questions of revenue and supply are always
given full measure of debate. The House of
Representatives, under authority of the Rule be-
fore referred to, which enables it, as it were,
to project the previous question into Committee
of the Whole, by providing for the discharge of
that Committee from the further consideration
of any bill that is in its hands, or that may be
about to be referred to it, after all amendments
" pending and that may be offered " shall have
been acted upon without debate, seldom hesi-
tates, when any ordinary business is to be con-
sidered, to forbid to the proceedings of Commit-
tee of the Whole all freedom of discussion, and,
consequently, almost all discretion as to the ac-
tion to be taken ; but this muzzle is seldom put
upon the mouth of the Committee when appro-
priation or tariff bills are to be considered, un-
less the discussion in Committee wanders off into
fields, quite apart from the proper matter of the
measure in hand, in which case the House inter-
poses to check the irrelevant talk. Appropria-
tion bills have, however, as I have shown, a
184 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
much higher privilege than have bills affecting
the tariff, and instances are not wanting in which
the chairman of the Committee on Appropria-
tions has managed to engross the time of the
House in the disposal of measures prepared by
his Committee, to the entire exclusion of any ac-
tion whatever on important bills reported by the
Committee of Ways and Means after the most
careful and laborious deliberation. His prerog-
atives are never disputed in such a contest for
consideration between a supply and a revenue
bill, because these two subjects do not, under
our system, necessarily go hand in hand. Ways
and Means bills may and should be acted upon,
but Supply bills must be.
It should be remarked in this connection,
moreover, that much as Congress talks about
fiscal questions, whenever permitted to do so by
the selfish Appropriations Committee, its talk is
very little heeded by the big world outside its
halls. The noteworthy fact, to which I have al-
ready called attention, that even the most thor-
ough debates in Congress fail to awaken any
genuine or active interest in the minds of the
people, has had its most striking illustrations
in the course of our financial legislation ; for,
though the discussions which have taken place
in Congress upon financial questions have been
so frequent, so protracted, and so thorough,
THE BOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 185
engrossing so large a part of the time of the
House on their every recurrence, they seem, in
almost every instance, to have made scarcely any
impression at all upon the public mind. The
Coinage Act of 1873, by which silver was demon-
etized, had been before the country many years,
ere it reached adoption, having been time and
again considered by Committees of Congress, time
and again printed and discussed in one shape or
another, and having finally gained acceptance
apparently by sheer persistence and importunity.
The Resumption Act of 1875, too, had had a like
career of repeated considerations by Committees,
repeated printings, and a full discussion by Con-
gress ; and yet when the " Bland Silver Bill " of
1878 was on its way through the mills of legis-
lation, some of the most prominent newspapers
of the country declared with confidence that the
Resumption Act had been passed inconsiderately
and in haste, almost secretly indeed ; and sev-
eral members of Congress had previously com-
plained that the demonetization scheme of 1873
had been pushed surreptitiously through the
courses of its passage, Congress having been
tricked into accepting it, doing it scarcely knew
what.
This indifference of the country to what is
said in Congress, pointing, as it obviously does,
to the fact that, though th Committees lead in
186 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
legislation, they lead without concert or respon-
sibility, and lead nobody in particular, that is, no
compact and organized party force which can be
made accountable for its policy, has also a fur-
ther significance with regard to the opportunities
and capacities of the constituencies. The doubt
and confusion of thought which must necessarily
exist in the minds of the vast majority of voters
as to the best way of exerting their will in influ-
encing the action of an assembly whose organi-
zation is so complex, whose acts are apparently so
haphazard, and in which responsibility is spread
so thin, throws constituencies into the hands of
local politicians who are more visible and tangi-
ble than are the leaders of Congress, and gener-
ates, the while, a profound distrust of Congress
as a body whose actions cannot be reckoned be-
forehand by any standard of promises made at
elections or any programmes announced by con-
ventions. Constituencies can watch and under-
stand a few banded leaders who display plain
purposes and act upon them with promptness ;
but they cannot watch or understand forty odd
Standing Committees, each of which goes its own
way in doing what it can without any special
regard to the pledges of either of the parties
from which its membership is drawn. In short,
we lack in our political life the conditions most
essential for the formation of an active
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 187
tive public opinion. "The characteristics of a
nation capable of public opinion," says Mr.
Bagehot, most sagacious of political critics, " is
that . . . parties will be organized ; in each
there will be a leader, in each there will be
some looked up to, and many who look up to
them ; the opinion of the party will be formed
and suggested by the few, it will be criticised
and accepted by the many." l And this is just
the sort of party organization which we have not.
Our parties have titular leaders at the polls in
the persons of candidates, and nominal creeds in
the resolutions of conventions, but no select few
in whom to trust for guidance in the general
policy of legislation, or to whom to look for sug-
gestions of opinion. What man, what group of
men, can speak for the Republican party or for
the Democratic party? When our most con-
spicuous and influential politicians say anything
about future legislation, no one supposes that
they are speaking for their party, as those who
have authority ; they are known to speak only
for themselves and their small immediate fol-
lowing of colleagues and friends.
The present relations between Congress and
public opinion remind us of that time, in the
reign of George III., when "the bulk of the
English people found itself powerless to con-
1 Essays on Parliamentary Rsform.
188 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
trol the course of English government," when
the government was divorced from " that general
mass of national sentiment on which a govern-
ment can alone safely ground itself." Then it
was that English public opinion, " robbed as it
was of all practical power, and thus stripped
of the feeling of responsibility which the con-
sciousness of power carries with it," "became
ignorant and indifferent to the general progress
of the age, but at the same time . . . hostile to
Government because it was Government, disloyal
to the Crown, averse from Parliament. For the
first and last time . . Parliament was unpop-
ular, and its opponents secure of popularity." 1
Congress has in our own day become divorced
from the " general mass of national sentiment,"
simply because there is no means by which the
movements of that national sentiment can read-
ily be registered in legislation. Going about as
it does to please all sorts of Committees composed
of all sorts of men, the dull and the acute, the
able and the cunning, the honest and the care-
less, Congress evades judgment by avoiding
all coherency of plan in its action. The constit-
uencies can hardly tell whether the works of anj;
particular Congress have been good or bad ; at
the opening of its sessions there was no deter-
minate policy to look forward to, and at their
1 Green's History of the English People, vol. iv., pp. 202, 20&
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 189
close no accomplished plans to look back upon.
During its brief lifetime both parties may have
vacillated and gone astray, policies may have
shifted and wandered, and untold mischief, to-
gether with some good, may have been done ; but
when all is reviewed, it is next to impossible
oftentimes to distribute justly the blame and the
praise. A few stubborn committee-men may be
at the bottom of much of the harm that has been
wrought, but they do not represent their party,
and it cannot be clear to the voter how his bal-
lot is to change the habits of Congress for the
better. He distrusts Congress because he feels
that he cannot control it.
The voter, moreover, feels that his want of
confidence in Congress is justified by what he
hears of the power of corrupt lobbyists to turn
legislation to their own uses. He hears of enor-
mous subsidies begged and obtained ; of pen-
sions procured on commission by professional
pension solicitors ; of appropriations made in the
interest of dishonest contractors ; and he is not
altogether unwarranted in the conclusion that
these are evils inherent in the very nature of
Congress, for there can be no doubt that the
power of the lobbyist consists in great part, if
not altogether, in the facility afforded him by
the Committee system. He must, in the natural
course of things, have many most favorable
190 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
opportunities for approaching the great money-
dispensing Committees. It would be imprac-
ticable to work up his schemes in the broad
field of the whole House, but in the member-
ship of a Committee he finds manageable num-
bers. If he can gain the ear of the Committee,
or of any influential portion of it, he has prac-
tically gained the ear of the House itself ; if his
plans once get footing in a committee report,
they may escape criticism altogether, and it will,
in any case, be very difficult to dislodge them.
This accessibility of the Committees by outsiders
gives to illegitimate influences easy approach at
all points of legislation, but no Committees are
affected by it so often or so unfortunately as are
the Committees which control the public moneys.
They are naturally the ones whose favor is often-
est and most importunately, as well as most in-
sidiously, sought ; and no description of our sys-
tem of revenue, appropriation, and supply would
be complete without mention of the manufactur-
ers who cultivate the favor of the Committee of
Ways and Means, of the interested persons who
walk attendance upon the Committee on Rivers
and Harbors, and of the mail-contractors and
subsidy-seekers who court the Committee on Ap-
propriations.
My last point of critical comment upon our
system of financial administration I shall bor
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 191
row from a perspicacious critic of congressional
methods who recently wrote thus to one of the
best of American journals : " So long as the
debit side of the national account is managed
by one set of men, and the credit side by an-
other set, both sets working separately and in
secret, without any public responsibility, and
without any intervention on the part of the exec-
utive official who is nominally responsible ; so
long as these sets, being composed largely of new
men every two years, give no attention to busi-
ness except when Congress is in session, and thus
spend in preparing plans the whole time which
ought to be spent in public discussion of plans
already matured, so that an immense budget is
rushed through without discussion in a week or
ten days, just so long the finances will go from
bad to worse, no matter by what name you call
the party in power. No other nation on earth
attempts such a thing, or could attempt it with-
out soon coming to grief, our salvation thus far
consisting in an enormous income, with prac-
tically no drain for military expenditure." 1 Un-
questionably this strikes a very vital point of
criticism. Congress spends its time working, in
sections, at preparing plans, instead of confining
itself to what is for a numerous assembly mani-
festly the much more useful and proper function
1 "G. B." in N. Y. Nation, Nov. 30, 1882.
192 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
of debating and revising plans prepared before-
hand for its consideration by a commission of
skilled men, old in political practice and in legis-
lative habit, whose official life is apart from its
own, though dependent upon its will. Here, in
other words, is another finger pointing to Mr.
Mill's question as to the best " legislative com-
mission." Our Committees fall short of being
the best form of commission, not only in being
too numerous but also in being integral parts of
the body which they lead, having no life apart
from it. Probably the best working commis-
sion would be one which should make plans for
government independently of the representative
body, and in immediate contact with the prac-
tical affairs of administration, but which should
in all cases look to that body for the sanction-
ing of those plans, and should be immediately
responsible to it for their success when put into
operation.
IV.
THE SENATE.
This is a Senate, a Senate of equals, of men of individual honor and
personal character, and of absolute independence. We know no masters,
we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for mutual consultation and
discussion, not an arena for the exhibition of champions. DANIEL WEB-
STER.
THE Senate of the United States has been
both extravagantly praised and unreasonably
disparaged, according to the predisposition and
temper of its various critics. In the eyes of
some it has a stateliness of character, an emi-
nency of prerogative, and, for the most part, a
wisdom of practice such as no other delibera-
tive body possesses ; whilst in the estimation of
others it is now, whatever it may have been for-
merly, but a somewhat select company of lei-
surely " bosses," in whose companionship the
few men of character and high purpose who gain
admission to its membership find little that is
encouraging and nothing that is congenial. Now
of course neither of these extreme opinions so
much as resembles the uncolored truth, nor can
that truth be obtained by a judicious mixture of
18
194 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
their milder ingredients. The truth is, in this
case as in so many others, something quite com-
monplace and practical. The Senate is just
what the mode of its election and the condi-
tions of public life in this country make it. Its
members are chosen from the ranks of active
politicians, in accordance with a law of natural
selection to which the state legislatures are com-
monly obedient ; and it is probable that it con-
tains, consequently, the best men that our sys-
tem calls into politics. If these best men are not
good, it is because our system of government
fails to attract better men by its prizes, not
because the country affords or could afford no
finer material.
It has been usual to suppose that the Senate
was just what the Constitution intended it to be ;
that because its place in the federal system was
exalted the aims and character of its members
would naturally be found to be exalted as well ;
that because its term was long its foresight
would be long also ; or that because its election
was not directly of the people demagogy would
find no life possible in its halls. But the Sen-
ate is in fact, of course, nothing more than a
part, though a considerable part, of the public
service, and if the general conditions of that
service be such as to starve statesmen and foster
demagogues, the Senate itself will be full of the
THE SENATE. 195
latter kind, simply because there are no others
available. There cannot be a separate breed
of public men reared specially for the Senate.
It must be recruited from the lower branches
of the representative system, of which it is only
the topmost part. No stream can be purer than
its sources. The Senate can have in it no bet-
ter men than the best men of the House of Rep-
resentatives ; and if the House of Representa-
tives attract to itself only inferior talent, the
Senate must put up with the same sort. I think
it safe to say, therefore, that, though it may not
be as good as could be wished, the Senate is as
good as it can be under the circumstances. It
contains the most perfect product of our poli-
tics, whatever that product may be.
In order to understand and appreciate the
Senate, therefore, one must know the conditions
of public life in this country. What are those
conditions ? Well, in the first place, they are
not what they were in the early years of the
federal government ; they are not what they were
even twenty years ago ; for in this, as in other
things, the war between the States ends one dis-
tinct period and opens another. Between the
great constructive statesmen of the revolutionary
days and the reconstructing politicians of the
sixties there came into public place and legisla-
tive influence a great race of constitutional law-
196 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
yers. The questions which faced our statesmen
while the Constitution was a-making were in the
broadest sense questions of politics ; but the
questions which dominated our public life after
the federal government had been successfully
set up were questions of legal interpretation such
as only lawyers could grapple with. All matters
of policy, all doubts -of legislation, even all diffi-
culties of diplomacy, were measured by rules of
constitutional construction. There was hardly
a single affair of public concern which was not
hung upon some peg of constitutional dogma in
the testing-rooms of one or another of the con-
tending schools of constitutional interpretation.
Constitutional issues were ever the tides, ques-
tions of administrative policy seldom more than
the eddies, of politics.
The Republicans under Jefferson drew their
nourishment from constitutional belief no less
than did the Federalists ; the Whigs and Dem-
ocrats of a later day lived on what was essentially
the same diet, though it was served in slightly
different forms ; and the parties of to-day are
themselves fain to go to these cooks of the olden
time whenever they desire strong meat to fortify
them against their present debility. The great
questions attending the admission of new States
to the Union and the annexation of foreign ter-
ritory, as well as all the controversies which came
THE SENATE. 197
in the train of the contest over slavery and the
reserved powers of the States, were of the Con-
stitution constitutional ; and what other ques-
tions were then living save those which found
root in the great charter's implied powers, about
which there was such constant noise of debate ?
It will be remembered that very few publicists
opposed internal improvements, for instance, on
the ground that they were unwise or uncalled
for. No one who took a statesmanlike view of
the matter could fail to see that the opening up
of the great water-ways of the country, the con-
struction of roads, the cutting of canals, or any
public work which might facilitate inter -State
commerce by making intercourse between the
various portions of the Union easy and rapid,
was sanctioned by every consideration of wisdom,
as being in conformity with a policy at once
national in its spirit and universal in its benefits.
The doubt was, not as to what it would be best
and most provident to do, but as to what it would
be lawful to do; and the chief opponents of
schemes of internal improvement based their
dissent upon a careful meditation o the lan-
guage of the Constitution. Without its plain
approval they would not move, even if they had
to stand still all their days.
It was, too, with many professions of this
spirit that the tariff was dealt with. It ran
198 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
suddenly to the front as a militant party ques
tion in 1833, not as if a great free-trade move-
ment had been set afoot which was to anticipate
the mission of Cobden and Bright, but as an
issue between federal taxation and the consti-
tutional privileges of the States. The agricul-
tural States were being, as they thought, very
cruelly trodden down under the iron heel of that
protectionist policy to whose enthronement they
had themselves consented, and they fetched their
hope of escape from the Constitution. The fed-
eral government unquestionably possessed, they
admitted, and that by direct grant of the funda-
mental law, the right to impose duties on im-
ports ; but did that right carry with it the priv-
ilege of laying discriminating duties for other
purposes than that of raising legitimate revenue ?
Could the Constitution have meant that South
Carolina might be taxed to maintain the manu-
factures of New England ?
Close upon the heels of the great tariff contro-
versy of that time came the stupendous contest
over the right of secession and the abolition of
slavery ; and again in this contest, as in all that
had gone before, the party which was being hard
driven sought refuge in the Constitution. This
too was, in its first stages at least, a lawyer's
question. It eventually slipped out of all law-
yerly control, and was given over to be settled
TEE SENATE. 199
by the stern and savage processes of war ; but it
stayed with the constitutional lawyers as long as
it could, and would have stayed with them to the
end had it not itself been bigger than the Con-
stitution and mixed with such interests and such
passions as were beyond the control of legislatures
or of law courts.
Such samples of the character which political
questions have hitherto borne in this country are
sufficient to remind all readers of our history of
what have been the chief features of our politics,
and may serve, without further elaboration, to
illustrate the point I wish to emphasize. It is
manifest how such a course of politics would affect
statesmanship and political leadership. While
questions affecting the proper construction of the
Constitution were the chief and most imperative
questions pressing for settlement, great lawyers
were in demand ; and great lawyers were, accord-
ingly, forthcoming in satisfaction of the demand.
In a land like ours, where litigation is facilitated
by the establishment of many open and impartial
courts, great lawyers are a much more plentiful
product than great administrators, unless there
be also some extraordinary means for the encour-
agement of administrative talents. We have,
accordingly, always had plenty of excellent law-
yers, though we have often had to do without
even tolerable administrators, and seem destined
200 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
to endure the inconvenience of hereafter doing
without any constructive statesmen at all. The
constitutional issues of former times were so
big and so urgent that they brought great advo-
cates into the field, despite all the tendencies
there were in our system towards depriving lead-
ership of all place of authority. In the presence
of questions affecting the very structure and
powers of the federal government, parties had to
rally with definite purpose and espouse a distinct
creed ; and when the maintenance or overthrow
of slavery had ceased to be a question of consti-
tutional right, and had become a matter of con-
tention between sentiment and vested rights,
between interest and passionate feeling, there
was of course a hot energy of contest between
two compact hosts and a quick elevation of force-
ful leaders.
The three stages of national growth which
preceded the war between the States were each of
them creative of a distinct class of political lead-
ers. In the period of erection there were great
architects and master-builders ; in the period of
constitutional interpretation there were, at a dis-
tance from the people, great political schoolmen
who pondered and expounded the letter of the
law, and, nearer the people, great constitutional
advocates who cast the doctrines of the school-
men into policy ; and in the period of abolitionist
THE SENATE. 201
agitation there were great masters of feeling and
leaders of public purpose. The publicists of the
second period kept charge of the slavery question,
as I have said, as long as they could, and gave
place with bitter reluctance to the anti-slavery
orators and pro-slavery champions who were to
talk the war-feeling into a flame. But it was of
course inevitable that the new movement should
have new leaders. It was essentially revolution-
ary in its tone and in its designs, and so quite
out of the reach of those principles of action
which had governed the policy of the older school
of politicians. Its aim was to change, not to
vindicate, the Constitution. Its leaders spoke,
not words of counsel, but words of passion and
of command. It was a crusade, not a campaign;
the impetuous movement of a cause, not the can-
vass of a mooted measure. And, like every big,
stirring cause, it had its leaders leaders whose
authority rested upon the affections and sym-
pathies of the people rather than upon any at-
tested wisdom or success of statesmanship. The
war was the work, mediately, of philanthropists ;
and the reconstructions which followed the war
were the hasty strokes of these same unbalanced
knights of the crusade, full of bold feeling, but
not of steady or far-sighted judgment.
The anti-slavery movement called forth leaders
who, from the very nature of their calling, were
202 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
more picturesque than any who had figured on
the national stage since the notable play of the
Revolution had gone off the boards ; but it was
no better cast in leading parts than had been the
drama which immediately preceded it. When
the constitution of a self-governing people is
being consciously moulded by the rapid forma-
tion of precedent during the earliest periods of
its existence, there are sure to be antagonistic
beliefs, distinct and strong and active enough to
take shape in the creeds of energetic parties,
each led by the greatest advocates of its cher-
ished principles. The season of our constitutional
development, consequently, saw as fine a race of
statesmen at the front of national affairs as have
ever directed the civil policy of the country;
and they, in turn, gave place to men brave to
encounter the struggles of changed times, and fit
to solve the doubts of a new set of events.
Since the war, however, we have come into a
fourth period of national life, and are perplexed
at finding ourselves denied a new order of states-
manship to suit the altered conditions of govern-
ment. The period of federal construction is long
passed ; questions of constitutional interpretation
are no longer regarded as of pressing urgency ,
the war has been fought, even the embers of its
issues being now almost extinguished; and we
are left to that unexciting but none the less cap.
THE SENATE. 203
itally important business of every-day peaceful
development and judicious administration to
whose execution every nation in its middle age
has to address itself with what sagacity, energy,
and prudence it can command. It cannot be said
that these new duties have as yet raised up any
men eminently fit for their fulfillment. We have
had no great administrators since the opening of
this newest stage, and there is as yet no visible
sign that any such will soon arise. The forms of
government in this country have always been
unfavorable to the easy elevation of talent to a
station of paramount authority ; and those forms
in their present crystallization are more unfavor-
able than ever to the toleration of the leadership
of the few, whilst the questions now most prom-
inent in politics are not of such a nature as to
compel skilled and trustworthy champions to
come into the field, as did the constitutional is-
sues and revolutionary agitations of other days.
They are matters of a too quiet, business-like sort
to enlist feeling or arouse enthusiasm.
It is, therefore, very unfortunate that only
feeling or enthusiasm can create recognized lead-
ership in our politics. There is no office set
apart for the great party leader in our govern-
ment. The powers of the Speakership of the
House of Representatives are too cramped and
covert ; the privileges of the chairmanships of
204 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the chief Standing Committees are too limited in
scope ; the presidency is too silent and inactive,
too little like a premiership and too much like a
superintendency. If there be any one man to
whom a whole party or a great national majority
looks for guiding counsel, he must lead without
office, as Daniel Webster did, or in spite of his
office, as Jefferson and Jackson did. There must
be something in the times or in the questions
which are abroad to thrust great advocates or
great masters of purpose into a non-official lead-
ership, which is theirs because they represent in
the greatest actions of their lives some principle
at once vital and widely loved or hated, or be-
cause they possess in their unrivaled power of
eloquent speech the ability to give voice to some
such living theme. There must be a cause to be
advanced which is greater than the trammels of
governmental forms, and which, by authority of
its own imperative voice, constitutes its advocates
the leaders of the nation, though without giving
them official title without need of official title.
No one is authorized to lead by reason of any
official station known to our system. We call
our real leaders by no names but their own : Mr.
Webster was always Mr. Webster and never
Prime Minister.
In a country which governs itself by means of
a public meeting, a Congress or a Parliament, a
THE SENATE. 205
country whose political life is representative, the
only real leadership in governmental affairs must
be legislative leadership ascendency in the
public meeting which decides everything. The
leaders, if there be any, must be those who sug-
gest the opinions and rule the actions of the rep-
resentative body. We have in this country,
therefore, no real leadership ; because no man
is allowed to direct the course of Congress, and
there is no way of governing the country save
through Congress, which is supreme. The chair-
man of a great Committee like the Committee of
Ways and Means stands, indeed, at the sources
of a very large and important stream of policy,
and can turn that stream at his pleasure, or mix
what he will with its waters ; but there are whole
provinces of policy in which he can have no au-
thority at all. He neither directs, nor can often
influence, those other chairmen who direct all
the other important affairs of government. He,
though the greatest of chairmen, and as great, it
may be, as any other one man in the whole gov-
ernmental system, is by no means at the head of
the government. He is, as he feels every day,
only a big wheel where there are many other
wheels, some almost as big as he, and all driven,
like himself, by fires which he does not kindle or
tend.
In a word, we have no supreme executive min-
206 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT,
istry, like the great " Ministry of the Crown "
over sea, in whose hands is the general manage-
ment of legislation ; and we have, consequently,
no great prizes of leadership such as are calcu-
lated to stimulate men of strong talents to great
and conspicuous public services. The Committee
system is, as I have already pointed out, the very
opposite of this. It makes all the prizes of lead-
ership small, and nowhere gathers power into a
few hands. It cannot be denied that this is in
ordinary times, and in the absence of stirring
themes, a great drawback, inasmuch as- it makes
legislative service unattractive to minds of the
highest order, to whom the offer of really great
place and power at the head of the governing
assembly, the supreme council of the nation,
would be of all things most attractive. If the
presidency were competitive, if it could be
won by distinguished congressional service,
who can doubt that there would be a notable in-
flux of talents into Congress and a significant
elevation of tone and betterment of method in
its proceedings ; and yet the presidency is very
far from being equal to a first-rate premiership.
There is, I know, one distinctive feature of
legislative leadership which makes it seem to
some not altogether to be desired; though it
scarcely constitutes such an objection as to make
no leadership at all seem preferable. It is the
THE SENATE. 207
leadership of orators ; it is the ascendency of
those who have a genius for talking. In the
eyes of those who do not like it it, seems a leader-
ship of artful dialecticians, the success of tricks
of phrase, the victory of rushing declamation
government, not by the advice of statesman-like
counselors, but by the wagging of ready tongues.
Macaulay pointed out with his accustomed force
of statement just the fact which haunts those who
hold to such objections. The power of speaking,
he said, which is so highly prized by politicians
in a popular government, "may exist in the
highest degree without judgment, without forti-
tude, without skill in reading the characters of
men or the signs of the times, without any knowL
edge of the principles of legislation or of polit-
ical economy, and without any skill in diplomacy
or in the administration of war. Nay, it may
well happen that those very intellectual qualities
which give peculiar charm to the speeches of a
public man may be incompatible with the quali-
ties which would fit him to meet a pressing emer-
gency with promptitude and firmness. It was
thus with Charles Townshend. It was thus with
Windham. It was a privilege to listen to those
accomplished and ingenious orators. But in a
perilous crisis they would be found inferior in
all the qualities of rulers to such a man as Oli-
ver Cromwell, who talked nonsense, or as Wil-
liam the Silent, who did not talk at all."
208 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Nevertheless, it is to be observed that neither
Windham nor Townshend rose to places of
highest confidence in the assembly which they
served, and which they charmed by their attrac-
tive powers of speech ; and that Cromwell would
have been as unfit to rule anything but an auto-
cratic commonwealth as would have been William
the Silent to be anything but a Dutch governor.
The people really had no voice in Cromwell's
government. It was absolute. He would have
been as much out of place in a representative
government as a bull in a china shop. We
would not have a Bismarck if we coidd.
Every species of government has the defects
of its own qualities. Representative government
is government by advocacy, by discussion, by
persuasion, and a great, miscellaneous voting
population is often misled by deceitful pleas and
swayed by unwise counsels. But if one were to
make a somewhat freer choice of examples than
Macaulay permitted himself, it would be easy to
multiply the instances of ruling orators of our
race who have added to their gifts of eloquence
conspicuous sagacity in the administration of
affairs. At any rate, the men who have led pop-
ular assemblies have often been, like Hampden,
rarely endowed with judgment, foresight, and
steadfastness of purpose ; like Walpole, amaz-
ingly quick in " reading the characters of men
THE SENATE. 209
and the signs of the times ; " like Chatham,
masterful in ordering the conquests and the pol-
icies of the world ; like Burke, learned in the pro-
foundest principles of statecraft ; like Canning,
adroit in diplomacy ; like Pitt, safe in times of
revolution ; like Peel, sagacious in finance ; or,
like Gladstone, skilled in every branch of polit-
ical knowledge and equal to any strain of emer-
gency.
It is natural that orators should be the lead-
ers of a self-governing people. Men may be
clever and engaging speakers, such as are to be
found, doubtless, at half the bars of the country,
without being equipped even tolerably for any of
the high duties of the statesman ; but men can
scarcely be orators without that force of char-
acter, that readiness of resource, that clearness
of vision, that grasp of intellect, that courage of
conviction, that earnestness of purpose, and that
instinct and capacity for leadership which are the
eight horses that draw the triumphal chariot of
every leader and ruler of free men. We could
not object to being ruled again by such men as
Henry and Otis and Samuel Adams ; but they
were products of revolution. They were inspired
by the great causes of the time ; and the govern-
ment which they set up has left us without any
ordinary, peaceful means of bringing men like
them into public life. We should like to have
14
210 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
more like them, but the violent exercise of revo-
lution is too big a price to pay for them. Some
less pungent diet is to be desired for the pur-
pose of giving health to our legislative service.
There ought to be some quiet, effective tonic,
some mild stimulant, such as the certain prospect
of winning highest and most honorable office, to
infuse the best talent of the nation into our pub-
lic life.
These, then, are the conditions of public life
which make the House of Representatives what
it is, a disintegrate mass of jarring elements, and
the Senate what it is, a small, select, and leisurely
House of Representatives. Or perhaps it would
be nearer the whole truth to say that these are
the circumstances and this the frame of govern-
ment of which the two Houses form a part. Were
the Senate not supplied principally by promo-
tions from the House, if it had, that is, a
membership made up of men specially trained
for its peculiar duties, it would probably be
much more effective than it is in fulfilling the
great function of instructive and business-like de-
bate of public questions ; for its duties are enough
unlike those of the House to be called peculiar.
Men who have acquired all their habits in the
matter of dealing with legislative measures in the
House of Representatives, where committee work
is everything and public discussion nothing but
THE SENATE. 211
"talking to the country," find themselves still
mere declaimers when they get into the Senate,
where no previous question utters its interrupt-
ing voice from the tongues of tyrannical com-
mittee-men, and where, consequently, talk is free
to all. 1 Only superior talents, such as very few
men possess, could enable a Representative of
long training to change his spots upon entering
the Senate. Most men will not fit more than
one sphere in life ; and after they have been
stretched or compressed to the measure of that
one they will rattle about loosely or stick too tight
in any other into which they may be thrust. Still,
more or less adjustment takes place in every case.
If a new Senator knock about too loosely amidst
the free spaces of the rules of that august body,
he will assuredly have some of his biggest cor-
ners knocked off and his angularities thus made
smoother ; if he stick fast amongst the dignified
courtesies and punctilious observances of the
upper chamber, he will, if he stick long enough,
finally wear down to such a size, by jostling, as
to attain some motion more or less satisfactory.
But it must be said, on the other hand, that
even if the Senate were made up of something
1 An attempt was once made to bring the previous question
into the practices of the Senate, but it failed of success, and so
that imperative form of cutting off all further discussion hag
fortunately never found a place there.
212 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
better than selections from the House, it would
probably be able to do little more than it does in
the way of giving efficiency to our system of legis-
lation. For it has those same radical defects of
organization which weaken the House. Its func-
tions also, like those of the House, are segregated
in the prerogatives of numerous Standing Com-
mittees. 1 In this regard Congress is all of a
piece. There is in the Senate no more oppor-
tunity than exists in the House for gaining such
recognized party leadership as would be likely to
enlarge a man by giving him a sense of power,
and to steady and sober him by filling him with
a grave sense of responsibility. So far as its
organization controls it, the Senate, notwithstand-
ing the one or two special excellences which
make it more temperate and often more rational
than the House, has no virtue which marks it as
of a different nature. Its proceedings bear most
of the characteristic features of committee rule. 2
1 As regards all financial measures indeed committee super-
vision is specially thorough in the Senate. " All .amendments
to general appropriation bills reported from the Committees
of the Senate, proposing new items of appropriation, shall,
one day before they are offered, be referred to the Committee
on Appropriations, and all general appropriation bills shall be
referred to said Committee ; and in like manner amendments
to bills making appropriations for rivers and harbors shall be
again referred to the Committee to which such bills shall be
referred." Senate Rule 30.
8 The twenty-nine Standing Committees of the Senate are.
THE SENATE. 213
Its conclusions are suggested now by one set of
its members, now by another set, and again by a
third ; an arrangement which is of course quite
effective in its case, as in that of the House, in
depriving it of that leadership which is valuable
in more ways than in imparting distinct purpose
to legislative action, because it concentrates party
responsibility, attracts the best talents, and fixes
public interest.
Some Senators are, indeed, seen to be of larger
mental stature and built of stauncher moral stuff
than their fellow-members, and it is not uncom-
mon for individual members to become conspic-
uous figures in every great event in the Senate's
deliberations. The public now and again picks
out here and there a Senator who seems to act
and to speak with true instinct of statesmanship
and who unmistakably merits the confidence of
colleagues and of people. But such a man, how-
ever eminent, is never more than a Senator. No
one is the Senator. No one may speak for his
party as well as for himself ; no one exercises
the special trust of acknowledged leadership.
The Senate is merely a body of individual crit-
ics, representing most of the not very diversified
types of a society substantially homogeneous;
and the weight of every criticism uttered in its
however, chosen by ballot, not appointed by the Vice-Prea*
dent, who is an appendage, not a member, of the Senate.
214 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
chamber depends upon the weight of the critic
who utters it, deriving little if any addition to
its specific gravity from connection with the
designs of a purposeful party organization. I
cannot insist too much upon this defect of con-
gressional government, because it is evidently
radical. Leadership with authority over a great
ruling party is a prize to attract great compet-
itors, and is in a free government the only prize
that will attract great competitors. Its attrac-
tiveness is abundantly illustrated in the opera-
tions of the British system. In England, where
members of the Cabinet, which is merely a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons, are the rulers
of the empire, a career in the Commons is ea-
gerly sought by men of the rarest gifts, because
a career there is the best road, is indeed the only
road, to membership of the great Committee. A
part in the life of Congress, on the contrary,
though the best career opened to men of ambition
by our system, has no prize at its end greater
than membership of some one of numerous Com-
mittees, between which there is some choice, to
be sure, because some of them have great and
others only small jurisdictions, but none of which
has the distinction of supremacy in policy or of
recognized authority to do more than suggest.
And posts upon such Committees are the highest
posts in the Senate just as they are in the House
of Representatives.
THE SENATE. 215
In an address delivered on a recent occasion, 1
in the capacity of President of the Birmingham
and Midland Institute, Mr. Froude, having in
mind, of course, British forms of government,
but looking mediately at all popular systems,
said very pointedly that " In party government
party life becomes like a court of justice. The
people are the judges, the politicians the advo-
cates, who," he adds caustically rather than
justly, " only occasionally and by accident speak
their real opinions." " The truly great political
orators," he exclaims, " are the ornaments of man-
kind, the most finished examples of noble feeling
and perfect expression, but they rarely understand
the circumstances of their time. They feel pas-
sionately, but for that reason they cannot judge
calmly." If we are to accept these judgments
from Mr. Froude in the face of his reputation
for thinking somewhat too independently of evi-
dence, we shoidd congratulate ourselves that we
have in this country hit upon a system which,
now that it has reached its pefection, has left
little or no place for politicians to make false
declarations or for the orator to coin fine expres-
sion for views which are only feelings, except
outside of the legislative halls of the nation, upon
the platform, where talk is all that is expected.
1 In the Birmingham Town Hall, November 3, 1882. I
luote from the report of the London Times.
216 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
It would seem as if the seer had a much more
favorable opportunity in the committee-room than
the orator can have, and with us it is the com-
mittee-room which governs the legislative cham-
ber. The speech-making in the latter neither
makes nor often seriously affects the plans framed
in the former ; because the plans are made before
the speeches are uttered. This is self-evident of
the debates of the House ; but even the speeches
made in the Senate, free, full, and earnest as they
seem, are made, so to speak, after the fact not
to determine the actions but to air the opinions
of the body.
Still, it must be regarded as no inconsiderable
addition to the usefulness of the Senate that it
enjoys a much greater freedom of discussion than
the House can allow itself. It permits itself a
good deal of talk in public about what it is doing, 1
and it commonly talks a great deal of sense. It
is small enough to make it safe to allow individ-
ual freedom to its members, and to have, at the
same time, such order and sense of proportion in
its proceedings as is characteristic of small bodies,
like boards of college trustees or of commercial
directors, who feel that their main object is busi-
ness, not speech-making, and so say all that is
i " No Senator shall speak more than twice, in any one de-
bate, on the same day, without leave of the Senate." Senate
Rule 4.
THE SENATE. 217
necessary without being tedious, and do what
they are called upon to do without need of driv-
ing themselves with hurrying rules. Such rules,
they seem to feel, are meant only for big assem-
blies which have no power of self-control. Of
course the Senate talks more than an average
board of directors would, because the corporations
which it represents are States, made up, politic-
ally speaking, of numerous popular constituencies
to which Senators, no less than Representatives,
must make speeches of a sort which, considering
their fellow-members alone, would be unnecessary
if not impertinent and out of taste, in the Senate
chamber, but which will sound best in the ears
of the people, for whose ears they are intended,
if delivered there. Speeches which, so to say,
run in the name of the Senate's business will gen-
erally be more effectual for campaign uses at home
than any speech could be which should run in the
name of the proper topics of the stump. There
is an air of doing one's duty by one's party in
speaking party platitudes or uttering party defi-
ances on the floor of the Senate or of the House.
Of course, however, there is less temptation to
such speech-making in the Senate than in the
House. The House knows the terrible possibil-
ities of this sort in store for it, were it to give
perfect freedom of debate to its three hundred
and twenty-five members, in these days when f re-
218 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
quent mails and tireless tongues of telegraphy
bring every constituency within easy earshot of
Washington ; and it therefore seeks to confine
what little discussion it indulges in to the few
committee-men specially in charge of the busi-
ness of each moment. But the Senate is small
and of settled habits, and has no such bugbear to
trouble it. It can afford to do without any cld-
ture or previous question. No Senator is likely
to want to speak on all the topics of the session,
or to prepare more speeches than can conven-
iently be spoken before adjournment is impera-
tively at hand. The House can be counted upon
to waste enough time to leave some leisure to
the upper chamber.
And there can be no question that the debates
which take place every session in the Senate are
of a very high order of excellence. The average
of the ability displayed in its discussions not in-
frequently rises quite to the level of those con'
trover sies of the past which we are wont to call
great because they furnished occasion to men like
Webster and Calhoun and Clay, whom we can-
not now quite match in mastery of knowledge
and of eloquence. If the debates of the present
are smothered amongst the innumerable folios of
the " Record," it is not because they do not con-
tain utterances worthy to be heeded and to gain
currency, but because they do not deal with
THE SENATE. 219
questions of passion or of national existence, such
as ran through all the earlier debates, or because
our system so obscures and complicates party
rule in legislation as to leave nothing very inter-
esting to the public eye dependent upon the dis-
cussions of either House or Senate. What that
is picturesque, or what that is vital in the esteem
of the partisan, is there in these wordy contests
about contemplated legislation ? How does any-
body know that either party's prospects will be
much affected by what is said when Senators are
debating, or, for that matter, by what is voted
after their longest flights of controversy ?
Still, though not much heeded, the debates of
the Senate are of great value in scrutinizing and
sifting matters which come up from the House.
The Senate's opportunities for open and unre-
stricted discussion and its simple, comparatively
unencumbered forms of procedure, unquestion-
ably enable it to fulfill with very considerable
success its high functions as a chamber of re-
vision.
When this has been claimed and admitted,
however, it still remains to be considered whether
two chambers of equal power strengthen by
steadying, or weaken by complicating, a system
of representative government like our own. The
utility and excellence of a bicameral system has
never, I believe, been seriously questioned in
220 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
this country ; but M. Turgot smiles with some-
thing like contempt at our affectation in copy-
ing the House of Lords without having any
lords to use for the purpose ; and in our own
day Mr. Bagehot, who is much more competent
to speak on this head than was M. Turgot, has
avowed very grave doubts as to the practical ad-
vantage of a two-headed legislature each head
having its own independent will. He finds
much to recommend the House of Lords in the
fact that it is not, as theory would have it, co-
ordinate and coequal with the House of Com-
mons, but merely " a revising and suspending
House," altering what the Commons have done
hastily or carelessly, and sometimes rejecting
" Bills on which the House of Commons is not
yet thoroughly in earnest, upon which the na-
tion is not yet determined." 1 He points out the
fact that the House of Lords has never in mod-
ern times been, as a House, coequal in power
with the House of Commons. Before the Reform
Bill of 1832 the peers were all-powerful in legis-
lation; not, however, because they were mem-
bers of the House of Lords, but because they
nominated most of the members of the House of
Commons. Since that disturbing reform they
have been thrown back upon the functions in
1 These quotations from Bagehot are taken from variom
parts of the fifth chapter of his English Constitution.
THE SENATE. 221
which they never were strong, the functions of a
deliberative assembly. These are the facts which
seem to Mr. Bagehot to have made it possible
for legislation to make easy and satisfactory
progress under a system whose theory provided
for fatal dead-locks between the two branches of
the supreme legislature.
In his view " the evil of two coequal Houses
of distinct natures is obvious." " Most constitu-
tions," he declares, " have committed this blun-
der. The two most remarkable Republican in-
stitutions in the world commit it. In both the
American and Swiss Constitutions the Upper
House has as much authority as the second ; it
could produce the maximum of impediment a
dead-lock, if it liked ; if it does not do so, it is
owing not to the goodness of the legal constitu-
tion, but to the discreetness of the members of
the Chamber. In both these constitutions this
dangerous division is defended by a peculiar
doctrine. ... It is said that there must be in a
federal government some institution, some au-
thority, some body possessing a veto in which
the separate States comprising the Confedera-
tion are all equal. I confess this doctrine has to
me no self-evidence, and it is assumed, but not
proved. The State of Delaware is not equal in
power or influence to the State of New York,
and you cannot make it so by giving it an equal
222 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
veto in an Upper Chamber. The history of such
an institution is indeed most natural. A little
State will like, and must like, to see some token,
some memorial mark, of its old independence
preserved in the Constitution by which that in-
dependence is extinguished. But it is one thing
for an institution to be natural, and another for
it to be expedient. If indeed it be that a fed-
eral government compels the erection of an Up-
per Chamber of conclusive and coordinate au-
thority, it is one more in addition to the many
other inherent defects of that kind of govern-
ment. It may be necessary to have the blemish,
but it is a blemish just as much."
It would be in the highest degree indiscreet
to differ lightly with any conclusion to which
Mr. Bagehot may have come in viewing that
field of critical exposition in which he was su-
preme, the philosophical analysis, namely, of the
English Constitution ; and it must be apparent
to any one who reads the passage I have just
now quoted that his eye sees very keenly and
truly even when he looks across sea at institu-
tions which were repugnant to his own way of
thinking. But it is safe to say that he did not
see all in this instance, and that he was conse-
quently in error concerning the true nature of
our federal legislative system. His error, nev-
ertheless, appears, not when we look only at the
THE SENATE. 223
facts which he held up to view, but when we
look at other facts which he ignored. It is true
that the existence of two coequal Houses is an
evil when those two Houses are of distinct na-
tures, as was the case under the Victorian Con-
stitution to which Mr. Bagehot refers by way of
illustrative example. Under that Constitution
all legislative business was sometimes to be seen
quite suspended because of irreconcilable differ-
ences of opinion between the Upper House, which
represented the rich wool-growers of the colony,
and the Lower Assembly, which represented the
lesser wool-growers, perhaps, and the people who
were not wool-growers at all. The Upper House,
in other words, was a class chamber, and thus
stood quite apart from anything like the prin-
ciple embodied in our own Senate, which is no
more a class chamber than is the House of Rep-
resentatives.
The prerogatives of the Senate do, indeed,
render our legislative system more complex, and
for that reason possibly more cumbersome, than
the British ; for our Senate can do more than
the House of Lords. It can not only question
and stay the judgment of the Commons, but
may always with perfect safety act upon its own
judgment and gainsay the more popular cham-
ber to the end of the longest chapter of the bit-
terest controversy. It is quite as free to act as
224 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
is any other branch of the government, and quite
as sure to have its acts regarded. But there is
safety and ease in the fact that the Senate never
wishes to carry its resistance to the House to
that point at which resistance must stay all
progress in legislation ; because there is really
a " latent unity " between the Senate and the
House which makes continued antagonism be-
tween them next to impossible certainly in the
highest degree improbable. The Senate and
the House are of different origins, but virtually
of the same nature. The Senate is less demo-
cratic than the House, and consequently less
sensible to transient phases of public opinion ;
but it is no less sensible than the House of its
ultimate accountability to the people, and is con-
sequently quite as obedient to the more perma-
nent and imperative judgments of the public
mind. It cannot be carried so quickly by every
new sentiment, but it can be carried quickly
enough. There is a main chance of election
time for it as well as for the House to think
about.
By the mode of its election and the greater
length of the term by which its seats are held,
the Senate is almost altogether removed from
that temptation to servile obedience to the
whims of popular constituencies to which the
House is constantly subject, without as much
THE SENATE. 225
courage as the Senate has to guard its virtue.
But the men who compose the Senate are of the
same sort as the members of the House of Rep-
resentatives, and represent quite as various
classes. Nowadays many of the Senators are,
indeed, very rich men, and there has come to be
a great deal of talk about their vast wealth and
the supposed aristocratic tendencies which it is
imagined to breed. But even the rich Senators
cannot be said to be representatives of a class,
as if they were all opulent wool-growers or great
land-owners. Their wealth is in all sorts of
stocks, in all sorts of machinery, in all sorts of
buildings, in possessions of all the sorts possible
in a land of bustling commerce and money-mak-
ing industries. They have made their money in
a hundred different ways, or have inherited it
from fathers who amassed it in enterprises too
numerous to imagine ; and they have it invested
here, there, and everywhere, in this, that, and
everything. Their wealth represents no class
interests, but all the interests of the commercial
world. It represents the majority of the nation,
in a word ; and so they can probably be trusted
not to neglect one set of interests for another ;
not to despoil the trader for the sake of the
farmer, or the farmer for the sake of the wool-
grower, or the wool-grower for the behoof of the
herder of short -horned cattle. At least the
15
226 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Senate is quite as trustworthy in this regard as
is the House of Representatives.
Inasmuch as the Senate is thus separated from
class interests and quite as representative of the
nation at large as is the House of Representa-
tives, the fact that it is less quickly sensitive
to the hasty or impulsive movements of public
opinion constitutes its value as a check, a steady-
ing weight, in our very democratic system. Our
English cousins have worked out for themselves
a wonderfully perfect scheme of government by
gradually making their monarchy unmonarch-
ical. They have made of it a republic steadied
by a reverenced aristocracy and pivoted upon a
stable throne. And just as the English system
is a limited monarchy because of Commons and
Cabinet, ours may be said to be a limited de-
mocracy because of the Senate. This has in the
trial of the scheme proved the chief value of
that upper chamber which was instituted princi-
pally as an earnest of the abiding equality and
sovereignty of the States. At any rate, this is
the most conspicuous, and will prove to be the
most lasting, use of the Senate in our system.
It is valuable in our democracy in proportion as
it is undemocratic. I think that a philosophical
analysis of any successful and beneficent system
of self-government will disclose the fact that its
only effectual checks consist in a mixture of
THE SENATE. 227
elements, in a combination of seemingly contra-
dictory political principles ; that the British gov-
ernment is perfect in proportion as it is unmo-
narchical, and ours safe in proportion as it is
undemocratic ; that the Senate saves us often
from headlong popular tyranny.
" The value, spirit, and essence of the House
of Commons," said Burke, " consists in its being
the express image of the feelings of the nation ; "
but the image of the nation's feelings should
not be the only thing reflected by the constitu-
tion of a free government. It is indispensable
that, besides the House of Representatives which
runs on all fours with popular, sentiment, we
should have a body like the Senate which may
refuse to run with it at all when it seems to be
wrong a body which has time and security
enough to keep its head, if only now and then
and but for a little while, till other people have
had time to think. The Senate is fitted to do
deliberately and well the revising which is its
properest function, because its position as a rep-
resentative of state sovereignty is one of emi-
nent dignity, securing for it ready and sincere
respect, and because popular demands, ere they
reach it with definite a,nd authoritative sugges-
tion, are diluted by passage through the feelings
and conclusions of the state legislatures, which
are the Senate's only immediate constituents.
228 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
The Senate commonly feels with the House, but
it does not, so to say, feel so fast. It at least
has a chance to be the express image of those
judgments of the nation which are slower and
more temperate than its feelings.
This it is which makes the Senate " the most
powerful and efficient second chamber that ex^
ists," 1 and this it is which constitutes its func-
tions one of the effectual checks, one of the real
balances, of our system ; though it is made to
seem very insignificant in the literary theory of
the Constitution, where the checks of state upon
federal authorities, of executive prerogatives
upon legislative powers, and of Judiciary upon
President and Congress, though some of them
in reality inoperative from the first and all of
them weakened by many " ifs " and " buts,"
are made to figure in the leading roles, as the
characteristic Virtues, triumphing over the char-
acteristic Vices, of our new and original political
Morality-play.
It should, however, be accounted a deduction
from the Senate's usefulness that it is seldom
sure of more than two thirds of itself for more
than four years at a time. In order that its life
may be perpetual, one third of its membership is
renewed or changed every two years, each third
1 These are the words of Lord Rosebery testimony from
the oldest and most celebrated second chamber that exists.
THE SENATE. 229
taking its turn at change or renewal in regular
succession; and this device has, of course, an
appreciably weakening effect on the legislative
sinews of the Senate. Because the Senate mixes
the parties in the composition of its Committees
just as the House does, and those Committees
must, consequently, be subjected to modification
whenever the biennial senatorial elections bring
in new men, freshly promoted from tho House
or from gubernatorial chairs. Places must be
found for them at once in the working organiza-
tion which busies itself in the committee-rooms.
Six years is not the term of the Senate, but
only of each Senator. Reckoning from any year
in which one third of the Senate is elected, the
term of the majority, the two thirds not af-
fected by the election, is an average of the four
and the two years which it has to live. There
is never a time at which two thirds of the Sen-
ate have more than four years of appointed ser-
vice before them. And this constant liability to
change must, of course, materially affect the pol-
icy of the body. The time assured it in which to
carry out any enterprise of policy upon which it
may embark is seldom more than two years, the
term of the House. It may be checked no less
effectually than the lower House by the biennial
elections, albeit the changes brought about in
its membership are effected^ not directly by the
230 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
people, but indirectly and more slowly by the
mediate operation of public opinion through the
legislatures of the States.
In estimating the value of the Senate, there-
fore, as a branch of the national legislature, we
should offset the committee organization, with
its denial of leadership which disintegrates the
Senate, and that liability to the biennial infu-
sion of new elements which may at any time in-
terrupt the policy and break the purpose of the
Senate, against those habits of free and open
debate which clear its mind, and to some extent
the mind of the public, with regard to the na-
tion's business, doing much towards making leg-
islation definite and consistent, and against those
great additions to its efficiency which spring
from its observation of " slow and steady forms "
of procedure, from the mediate election which
gives it independence, and from its having a ra-
tional and august cause for existing.
When we turn to consider the Senate in its
relations with the executive, we see it no longer
as a legislative chamber, but as a consultative
executive council. And just here there is to be
noted an interesting difference between the rela-
tions of the Senate with the President and its
relations with the departments, which are in con-
stitutional theory one with the President. It
deals directly with the President in acting upon
THE SENATE. 231
nominations and upon treaties. It goes into
" executive session " to handle without gloves
the acts of the chief magistrate. Its dealings
with the departments, on the other hand, are,
like those of the House, only indirect. Its legis-
lative, not its executive, function is the whip
which coerces the Secretaries. Its will is the
supreme law in the offices of the government ;
and yet it orders policy by no direct word to the
departments. It does not consult and negotiate
with them as it does with the President, their
titular head. Its immediate agents, the Com-
mittees, are not the recognized constitutional
superiors of Secretary A. or Comptroller B. ;
but these officials cannot move a finger or plan
more than a paltry detail without looking to it
that they render strict obedience to the wishes
of these outside, uncommissioned, and irrespon-
sible, but none the less authoritative and imper-
ative masters.
This feature of the Senate's power over the
executive does not, however, call for special em-
phasis here, because it is not a power peculiar to
the Senate, this overlordship of the departments,
but one which it possesses in common with the
House of Representatives, simply an innate
and inseparable part of the absolutism of a su-
preme legislature. It is the Senate's position as
the President's council in some great and many
232 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
small matters which call for particular discus-
sion. Its general tyranny over the departments
belongs rather with what I am to say presently
when looking at congressional government from
the stand-point of the executive.
The greatest consultative privilege of the Sen-
ate, the greatest in dignity, at least, if not in
effect upon the interests of the country, is its
right to a ruling voice in the ratification of trea-
ties with foreign powers. I have already alluded
to this privilege, for the purpose of showing
what weight it has had in many instances in dis-
arranging the ideal balance supposed to exist be-
tween the powers of Congress and the constitu-
tional prerogatives of the President ; but I did
not then stop to discuss the organic reasons
which have made it impossible that there should
be any real consultation between the President
and the Senate upon such business, and which
have, consequently, made disagreement and even
antagonism between them probable outcomes of
the system. I do not consult the auditor who
scrutinizes my accounts when I submit to him
my books, my vouchers, and a written report of
the business I have negotiated. I do not take
Ms advice and seek his consent ; I simply ask his
endorsement or invite his condemnation. I do
not sue for his cooperation, but challenge his crit-
icism. And the analogy between my relations
THE SENATE. 233
with the auditor and the relations of the Presi-
dent with the Senate is by no means remote.
The President really has no voice at all in the
conclusions of the Senate with reference to his
diplomatic transactions, or* with reference to any
of the matters upon which he consults it ; and
yet without a voice in the conclusion there is no
consultation. Argument and an unobstructed
interchange of views upon a ground of absolute
equality are essential parts of the substance of
genuine consultation. The Senate, when it closes
its doors, upon going into " executive session,"
closes them upon the President as much as upon
the rest of the world. He cannot meet their ob-
jections to his courses except through the clogged
and inadequate channels of a written message or
through the friendly but unauthoritative offices
of some Senator who may volunteer his active
support. Nay, in many cases the President may
not even know what the Senate's objections
were. He is made to approach that body as a
servant conferring with his master, and of course
deferring to that master. His only power of
compelling compliance on the part of the Senate
lies in his initiative in negotiation, which af-
fords him a chance to get the country into such
scrapes, so pledged in the view of the world to
certain courses of action, that the Senate hesi-
tates to bring about the appearance of dishonor
234 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
which would follow its refusal to ratify the rash
promises or to support the indiscreet threats of
the Department of State.
The machinery of consultation between the
Senate and the President is of course the com-
mittee machinery. The Senate sends treaties to
its Standing Committee on Foreign Relations,
which ponders the President's messages accom-
panying the treaties and sets itself to understand
the situation in the light of all the information
available. If the President wishes some more
satisfactory mode of communication with the
Senate than formal message - writing, his only
door of approach is this Committee on Foreign
Relations. The Secretary of State may confer
with its chairman or with its more influential
members. But such a mode of conference is
manifestly much less than a voice in the delib-
erations of the Senate itself, much less than
meeting that body face to face in free consulta-
tion and equal debate. It is almost as distinctly
dealing with a foreign power as were the nego-
tiations preceding the proposed treaty. It must
predispose the Senate to the temper of an over-
seer. 1
1 There seems to have been at one time a tendency towards a
better practice. In 1813 the Senate sought to revive the early
custom, in accordance with which the President delivered his
messages in person, by requesting the attendance of the Presi-
dent to consult upon foreign affairs ; but Mr. Madison declined
THE SENATE. 235
Still, treaties are not every-day affairs with
us, and exceptional business may create in Sen-
ators an exceptional sense of responsibility, and
^dispose them to an unwonted desire to be dis-
passionate and fair. The ratification of treaties
is a much more serious matter than the consider-
ation of nominations which every session consti-
tutes so constant a diversion from the more pon-
derous business of legislation. It is in dealing
with nominations, however, that there is the
most friction in the contact between the Presi-
dent and his overlord, the Senate. One of the
most noteworthy instances of the improper tac-
tics which may arise out of these relations was
the case of that Mr. Smythe, at the time Col-
lector for the port of New York, whom, in 1869 S
President Grant nominated Minister to the Court
of St. Petersburg. The nomination, as looking
towards an appointment to diplomatic service,
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Rela-
tions, of which Mr. Charles Sumner was then
chairman. That Committee rejected the nomi-
nation ; but Smythe had great influence at his
back and was himself skilled beyond most men in
the arts of the lobby. He accordingly succeeded
in securing such support in the Senate as to be-
come a very formidable dog in the manger, not
himself gaining the appointment, but for a time
blocking all other appointments and bringing
236 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the business of the Senate altogether to a stand-
still, because he could not. 1 Smythe himself is
forgotten ; but no observer of the actual con-
ditions of senatorial power can fail to see the
grave import of the lesson which his case teaches,
because his case was by no means an isolated
one. There have been scores of others quite as
bad ; and we could have no assurance that there
might not in the future be hundreds more, had
not recent movements in the direction of a rad-
ical reform of the civil service begun to make
nominations represent, not the personal prefer-
ence of the President or the intrigues of other
people, but honest, demonstrated worth, which
the Senate is likely to feel forced to accept with-
out question, when the reform reaches the high-
est grades of the service.
In discussing the Senate's connection with the
civil service and the abuses surrounding that con-
nection, one is, therefore, discussing a phase of
congressional government which promises soon to
become obsolete. A consummation devoutly to
be wished ! and yet sure when it comes to rob
our politics of a feature very conspicuous and
very characteristic, and in a sense very enter-
taining. There are not many things in the pro-
ceedings of Congress which the people care to
observe with any diligence, and it must be con-
1 North American Review, vol. 108, p. 625.
THE SENATE. 237
fessed that scandalous transactions in the Senate
with reference to nominations were among the
few things that the country watched and talked
about with keen relish and interest. This was
the personal element which always had spice in
it. When Senator Conkling resigned in a huff
because he could not have whom he liked in the
collectorship of the port of New York, the coun-
try rubbed its hands ; and when the same impe-
rious politician sought reelection as a vindication
of that unconstitutional control of nominations
which masqueraded as " the courtesy of the Sen-
ate," the country discussed his chances with real
zest and chuckled over the whole affair in genu-
ine glee. It was a big fight worth seeing. It
would have been too bad to miss it.
Before the sentiment of reform had become
strong enough to check it, this abuse of the con-
sultative privileges of the Senate in the matter
of nominations had assumed such proportions as
to seem to some the ugliest deformity in our pol-
itics. It looked as if it were becoming at once
the weakest and the most tried and strained
joint of our federal system. If there was to be
a break, would it not be there, where was the
severest wear and tear? The evil practices
seemed the more ineradicable because they had
arisen in the most natural manner. The Presi
dent was compelled, as in the case of treaties, to
238 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
obtain the sanction of the Senate without being
allowed any chance of consultation with it ; and
there soon grew up within the privacy of " ex-
ecutive session " an understanding that the
wishes and opinions of each Senator who was
of the President's own party should have more
weight than even the inclinations of the major-
ity in deciding upon the fitness or desirability
of persons proposed to be appointed to offices in
that Senator's State. There was the requisite
privacy to shield from public condemnation the
practice arising out of such an understanding ;
and the President himself was always quite out
of earshot, hearing only of results, of final votes.
All through the direct dealings of the Senate
with the President there runs this characteristic
spirit of irresponsible dictation. The President
may tire the Senate by dogged persistence, but
he can never deal with it upon a ground of real
equality. He has no real presence in the Sen-
ate. His power does not extend beyond the
most general suggestion. The Senate always
has the last word. No one would desire to see
the President possessed of authority to over-
rule the decisions of the Senate, to treat with
foreign powers, and appoint thousands of public
officers, without any other than that shadowy
responsibility which he owes to the people that
sleeted him ; but it is certainly an unfortunate
THE SENATE. 289
feature of our government that Congress governs
without being put into confidential relations with
the agents through whom it governs. It dictates
to another branch of the government which was
intended to be coordinate and coequal with it,
and over which it has no legalized authority as
of a master, but only the authority of a bigger
stockholder, of a monopolist indeed, of all the
energetic prerogatives of the government. It is
as if the Army and Navy Departments were to
be made coordinate and coequal, but the abso-
lute possession and control of all ammunition
and other stores of war given to the one and
denied the other. The executive is taken into
partnership with the legislature upon a salary
which may be withheld, and is allowed no voice
in the management of the business. It is simply
charged with the superintendence of the em-
ployees.
It was not essentially different in the early
days when the President in person read his mes-
sage to the Senate and the House together as
an address, and the Senate in a body carried its
reply to the executive mansion. The address
was the formal communication of an outsider
just as much as the message of to-day is, and
the reply of the Senate was no less a formal
document which it turned aside from its regular
business to prepare. That meeting face to face
240 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
was not consultation. The English Parliament
does not consult with the sovereign when it as-
sembles to hear the address from the throne.
It would, doubtless, be considered quite im-
proper to omit from an essay on the Senate all
mention of the Senate's President ; and yet
there is very little to be said about the Vice-
President of the United States. His position
is one of anomalous insignificance and curious
uncertainty. Apparently he is not, strictly
speaking, a part of the legislature, he is
clearly not a member, yet neither is he an
officer of the executive. It is one of the re-
markable things about him, that it is hard to
find in sketching the government any proper
place to discuss him. He comes in most natu-
rally along with the Senate to which he is tacked ;
but he does not come in there for any great con-
sideration. He is simply a judicial officer set
to moderate the proceedings of an assembly
whose rules he has had no voice in framing and
can have no voice in changing. His official
Btature is not to be compared with that of the
Speaker of the House of Representatives. So
long as he is Vice-Presidsnt, he is inseparable
officially from the Senate ; his importance con-
sists in the fact that he may cease to be Vice-
President. His chief dignity, next to presiding
over the Senate, lies in the circumstance that he
THE SENATE. 241
is awaiting the death or disability of the Pres-
ident. And the chief embarrassment in discuss-
ing his office is, that in explaining how little
there is to be said about it one has evidently
said all there is to say.
V.
THE EXECUTIVE.
Every political constitution in which different bodies share the supreme
power is only enabled to exist by the forbearance of those among whom this
power is distributed. LORD JOHN RUSSELL.
Simplicity and logical neatness are not the good to be aimed at in pol-
itics, but freedom and order, with props against the pressure of time, and
arbitrary will, and sudden crises. THEO. WOOLSBY.
Nothing, indeed, will appear more certain, on any tolerable considera-
tion of this matter, than that every sort of government ought to have its
administration correspondent to its legislature. BUBKK.
IT is at once curious and instructive to note how
we have been forced into practically amending
the Constitution without constitutionally amend-
ing it. The legal processes of constitutional
change are so slow and cumbersome that we
have been constrained to adopt a serviceable
framework of fictions which enables us easily to
preserve the forms without laboriously obeying
the spirit of the Constitution, which will stretch
as the nation grows. It would seem that no
impulse short of the impulse of self-preservation,
no force less than the force of revolution, can
nowadays be expected to move the cumbrous
machinery of formal amendment erected in Ar-
ticle Five. That must be a tremendous move*
THE EXECUTIVE. 243
ment of opinion which can sway two thirds of
each House of Congress and the people of three
fourths of the States. Mr. Bagehot has pointed
out that one consequence of the existence of this
next to immovable machinery " is that the most
obvious evils cannot be quickly remedied," and
" that a clumsy working and a curious techni-
cality mark the politics of a rough-and-ready
people. The practical arguments and legal dis-
quisitions in America," continues he, " are often
like those of trustees carrying out a misdrawn
will, the sense of what they mean is good, but
it can never be worked out fully or defended
simply, so hampered is it by the old words of an
old testament." 1 But much the greater conse-
quence is that we have resorted, almost uncon-
scious of the political significance of what we
did, to extra-constitutional means of modifying
the federal system where it has proved to be too
refined by balances of divided authority to suit
practical uses, to be out of square with the
main principle of its foundation, namely, govern-
ment by the people through their representatives
in Congress.
Our method of choosing Presidents is a nota-
ble illustration of these remarks. The differ-
ence between the actual and the constitutional
modes is the difference between an ideal non-
1 English Constitution, chap, viii., p. 293.
244 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
partisan choice and a choice made under party
whips ; the difference between a choice made by
independent, unpledged electors acting apart in
the States and a choice made by a national party
convention. Our Executive, no less than the
English and French Executives, is selected by a
representative, deliberative body, though in Eng-
land and France the election is controlled by a
permanent legislative chamber, and here by a
transient assembly chosen for the purpose and
dying with the execution of that purpose. In
England the whole cabinet is practically elective.
The French Chambers formally elect the Presi-
dent, the titular head of the government, and the
President regards only the will of the Assembly
in appointing the Prime Minister, who is the
energetic head of the government, and who, in
his turn, surrounds himself with colleagues who
have the confidence of the legislature. And the
French have but copied the English constitution,
which makes the executive Ministry the repre-
sentatives of the party majority in the Commons.
With us, on the other hand, the President is
elected by one representative body, which has
nothing to do with him after his election, and
the cabinet must be approved by another repre-
sentative body, which has nothing directly to do
with them after their appointment.
Of course I do not mean that the choice of a
THE EXECUTIVE. 245
national convention is literally election. The
convention only nominates a candidate. But
that candidate is the only man for whom the
electors of his party can vote; and so the ex-
pression of the preference of the convention of
the dominant party is practically equivalent to
election, and might as well be called election by
any one who is writing of broad facts, and not
of fine distinctions. The sovereign in England
picks out the man who is to be Prime Minister,
but he must pick where the Commons point; and
so it is simpler, as well as perfectly true, to say
that the Commons elect the Prime Minister.
My agent does not select the particular horse
I instruct him to buy. This is just the plain
fact, that the electors are the agents of the
national conventions ; and this fact constitutes
more than an amendment of that original plan
which would have had all the electors to be what
the first electors actually were, trustworthy men
given carte blanche to vote for whom they pleased,
casting their ballots in thirteen state capitals m
the hope that they would happen upon a majority
agreement.
It is worth while, too, to notice another
peculiarity of this elective system. There is a
thorough-going minority representation in the as-
semblies which govern our elections. Across tho
ocean a Liberal Prime Minister is selected by
246 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the representatives only of those Liberals who
live in Liberal constituencies ; those who live else-
where in a helpless minority, in a Conservativ*
district, having of course no voice in the selec
tion. A Conservative Premier, in like manner,
owes nothing to those Conservatives who were
unable to return a member to Parliament. So
far as he is concerned, they count for Liberals,
since their representative in the Commons is a
Liberal. The parliaments which select our Pres-
idents, on the contrary, are, each of them, all of
a kind. No state district can have so few Repub-
licans in it as not to be entitled to a representa-
tive in the national Republican convention equal
to that of the most unanimously Republican dis-
trict in the country ; and a Republican State is
accorded as full a representation in a Democratic
convention as is the most Democratic of her sister
States.
We had to pass through several stages of
development before the present system of elec-
tion by convention was reached. At the first
two presidential elections the electors were left
free to vote as their consciences and the Constitu-
tion bade them ; for the Constitution bade them
vote as they deemed best, and it did not require
much discretion to vote for General Washington,
But when General Washington was out of the
race, and new parties began to dispute the field
THE EXECUTIVE. 247
with the Federalists, party managers could not
help feeling anxious about the votes of the
electors, and some of those named to choose the
second President were, accordingly, pledged be-
forehand to vote thus and so. After the third
presidential election there began to be congres-
sional oversight of the matter. From 1800 to
1824 there was an unbroken succession of cau-
cuses of the Republican members of Congress to
direct the action of the party electors ; and nom-
ination by caucus died only when the Republican
party became virtually the only party worth reck-
oning with, the only party for whom nomina-
tion was worth while, and then public opinion
began to cry out against such secret direction of
the monopoly. In 1796 the Federalist congress-
men had held an informal caucus to ascertain
their minds as to the approaching election ; but
after that they refrained from further experi-
ment in the same direction, and contented them-
selves with now and then a sort of convention
until they had no party to convene. In 1828
there was a sort of dropping fire of nominations
from state legislatures ; and in 1832 sat the first
of the great national nominating conventions.
There was, therefore, one form of congres-
sional government which did not succeed. It was
a very logical mode of party government, that of
nominating the chief magistrate by congressional
248 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
caucus, but it was not an open enough way. The
French chamber does not select premiers by shut-
ting up the members of its majority in caucus.
Neither does the House of Commons. Their
selection is made by long and open trial, in de-
bate and in business management, of the men in
whom they discover most tact for leading and
most skill for planning, as well as most power
for ruling. They do not say, by vote, give us
M. Ferry, give us Mr. Gladstone; but Her
Majesty knows as well as her subjects know that
Mr. Gladstone is the only man whom the Liberal
majority will obey ; and President Grdvy per-
ceives that M. Ferry is the only man whom the
Chambers can be made to follow. Each has
elected himself by winning the first place in his
party. The election has openly progressed for
years, and is quite different from the private
vote of a caucus about an outsider who is to sit,
not in Congress, but in the executive mansion ;
who is not their man, but the people's.
Nor would nominations by state legislatures
answer any rational purpose. Of course every
State had, or thought she had, which is much
the same thing, some citizen worthy to become
President; and it would have been confusion
worse confounded to have had as many candi-
dates as there might be States. So universal a
Competition between "favorite sons" would have
THE EXECUTIVE. 249
thrown the election into the House of Represen-
tatives so regularly as to replace the nominating
caucus by an electing caucus.
The virtual election of the cabinet, the real
executive, or at least the Prime Minister, the
real head of the executive, by the Commons in
England, furnishes us with a contrast rather than
with a parallel to the election of our premier,
the head of our executive, by a deliberative, rep-
resentative body, because of the difference of
function and of tenure between our Presidents
and English Prime Ministers. William Pitt
was elected to rule the House of Commons, John
Adams to hold a constitutional balance against
the Houses of Congress. The one was the leader
of the legislature ; the other, so to say, the col-
league of the legislature. Besides, the Commons
can not only make but also unmake Ministries ;
whilst conventions can do nothing but bind their
parties by nomination, and nothing short of a
well-nigh impossible impeachment can unmake
a President, except four successions of the sea-
sons. As has been very happily said by a shrewd
critic, our system is essentially astronomical. A
President's usefulness is measured, not by effi-
ciency, but by calendar months. It is reckoned
that if he be good at all he will be good for
four years. A Prime Minister must keep him-
self in favor with the majority, a President need
only keep alive.
250 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Once the functions of a presidential elector
were very august. He was to speak for the
people ; they were to accept his judgment as
theirs. He was to be as eminent in the qualities
which win trust as was the greatest of the Impe-
rial Electors in the power which inspires fear.
But now he is merely a registering machine, a
sort of bell-punch to the hand of his party con-
vention. It gives the pressure, and he rings.
It is, therefore, patent to every one that that
portion of the Constitution which prescribes his
functions is as though it were not. A very sim-
ple and natural process of party organization,
taking form first in congressional caucuses and
later in nominating conventions, has radically
altered a Constitution which declares that it can
be amended only by the concurrence of two
thirds of Congress and three fourths of the
States. The sagacious men of the constitu-
tional convention of 1787 certainly expected
their work to be altered, but can hardly have
expected it to be changed in so informal a
manner.
The conditions which determine the choice of
a nominating convention which names a Presi-
dent are radically different from the conditions
which facilitate the choice of a representative
chamber which selects for itself a Prime Minis-
ter. " Among the great purposes of a national
THE EXECUTIVE.
parliament are these two," says Mr. Parton : 1
" first, to train men for practical statesmanship ;
and secondly, to exhibit them to the country, so
that, when men of ability are wanted, they can
be found without anxious search and perilous
trial." In those governments which are admin-
istered by an executive committee of the legis-
lative body, not only this training but also this
exhibition is constant and complete. The career
which leads to cabinet office is a career of self-
exhibition. The self-revelation is made in de
bate, and so is made to the nation at large as
well as to the Ministry of the day, who are look-
ing out for able recruits, and to the Commons,
whose ear is quick to tell a voice which it will
consent to hear, a knowledge which it will pause
to heed. But in governments like our own, in
which legislative and executive services are alto-
gether dissociated, this training is incomplete,
and this exhibition almost entirely wanting. A
nominating convention does not look over the
rolls of Congress to pick a man to suit its pur-
pose ; and if it did it could not find him, because
Congress is not a school for the preparation of
administrators, and the convention is supposed
to be searching not for an experienced commit-
teeman, but for a tried statesman. The proper
test for its application is not the test by which
1 Atlantic Monthly, vol. xxv., p. 148.
252 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
congressmen are assayed. They make laws, but
they do not have to order the execution of the
laws they make. They have a great deal of ex-
perience in directing, but none at all in being
directed. Their care is to pass bills, not to
keep them in running order after they have be-
come statutes. They spend their lives without
having anything to do directly with administra-
tion, though administration is dependent uppn
the measures which they enact.
A Presidential convention, therefore, when it
nominates a man who is, or has been, a member
of Congress, does not nominate him because of
his congressional experience, but because it is
thought that he has other abilities which were
not called out in Congress. Andrew Jackson
had been a member of Congress, but he was
chosen President because he had won the battle
of New Orleans and had driven the Indians from
Florida. It was thought that his military genius
evinced executive genius. The men whose fame
rests altogether upon laurels won in Congress
have seldom been more successful than Webster
and Henry Clay in their candidacy for the chief
magistracy. Washington was a soldier ; Jeffer-
son cut but a sorry figure in debate ; Monroe
was a diplomatist ; it required diligent inquiry
to find out what many of our Presidents had
been before they became candidates ; and emi
THE EXECUTIVE. 253
nency in legislative service has always been at
best but an uncertain road to official preferment.
Of late years a tendency is observable which
seems to be making the gubernatorial chairs of
the greater States the nearest offices to the Pres-
idency ; and it cannot but be allowed that there
is much that is rational in the tendency. The
governorship of a State is very like a smaller
Presidency ; or, rather, the Presidency is very
like a big governorship. Training in the duties
of the one fits for the duties of the other. This
is the only avenue of subordinate place through
which the highest place can be naturally reached.
Under the cabinet governments abroad a still
more natural line of promotion is arranged. The
Ministry is a legislative Ministry, and draws its
life from the legislature, where strong talents
always secure executive place. A long career in
Parliament is at least a long contact with prac-
tical statesmanship, and at best a long schooling
in the duties of the practical statesman. But
with us there is no such intimate relationship
between legislative and executive service. From
experience in state administration to trial in the
larger sphere of federal administration is the
only natural order of promotion. We ought,
therefore, to hail the recognition of this fact as
in keeping with the general plan of the federal
Constitution. The business of the President,
254 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
occasionally great, is usually not much above
routine. Most of the time it is mere adminis-
tration, mere obedience of directions from the
masters of policy, the Standing Committees.
Except in so far as his power of veto consti-
tutes him a part of the legislature, the Presi-
dent might, not inconveniently, be a permanent
officer ; the first official of a carefully-graded
and impartially regulated civil service system,
through whose sure series of merit-promotions
the youngest clerk might rise even to the chief
magistracy. 1 He is part of the official rather
than of the political machinery of the govern-
ment, and his duties call rather for training
than for constructive genius. If there can be
found in the official systems of the States a
lower grade of service in which men may be ad-
vantageously drilled for Presidential functions,
so much the better. The States will have bet-
ter governors, the Union better Presidents, and
there will have been supplied one of the most
serious needs left unsupplied by the Constitu-
tion, the need for a proper school in which to
rear federal administrators.
Administration is something that men must
learn, not something to skill in which they are
1 Something like this has heen actually proposed by Mr.
Albert Stickney, in his interesting and incisive essay, A True.
Republic.
THE EXECUTIVE. 255
born. Americans take to business of all kinds
more naturally than any other nation ever did,
and the executive duties of government consti-
tute just an exalted kind of business ; but even
Americans are not Presidents in their cradles.
One cannot have too much preparatory train-
ing and experience who is to fill so high a mag-
istracy. It is difficult to perceive, therefore,
upon what safe ground of reason are built the
opinions of those persons who regard short terms
of service as sacredly and peculiarly republican
in principle. If republicanism is founded upon
good sense, nothing so far removed from good
sense can be part and parcel of it. Efficiency
is the only just foundation for confidence in a
public officer, under republican institutions no
less than under monarchs ; and short terms which
cut off the efficient as surely and inexorably as
the inefficient are quite as repugnant to republi-
can as to monarchical rules of wisdom. Unhap-
pily, however, this is not American doctrine.
A President is dismissed almost as soon as he
has learned the duties of his office, and a man
who has served a dozen terms in Congress is a
cariosity. We are too apt to think both the
work of legislation and the work of administra-
tion easy enough to be done readily, with or
without preparation, by any man of discretion
and character. No one imagines that the dry-
256 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
goods or the hardware trade, or even the cob-
bler's craft, can be successfully conducted except
by those who have worked through a laborious
and unremunerative apprenticeship, and who
have devoted their lives to perfecting themselves
as tradesmen or as menders of shoes. But legis-
lation is esteemed a thing which may be taken
up with success by any shrewd man of middle
age, which a lawyer may now and again advan-
tageously combine with his practice, or of which
any intelligent youth may easily catch the knack ;
and administration is regarded as something
which an old soldier, an ex-diplomatist, or a pop-
ular politician may be trusted to take to by in-
stinct. No man of tolerable talents need despair
of having been born a Presidential candidate.
These must be pronounced very extraordinary
conclusions for an eminently practical people to
have accepted ; and it must be received as an
awakening of good sense that there is nowadays
a decided inclination manifested on the part of
the nation to supply training-schools for the
Presidency in like minor offices, such as the gov-
ernorships of the greater States. For the sort
of Presidents needed under the present arrange-
ment of our federal government, it is best to
choose amongst the ablest and most experienced
state governors.
So much for nomination and election. But,
THE EXECUTIVE. 257
after election, what then ? The President is not
all of the Executive. He cannot get along with-
out the men whom he appoints, with and by the
consent and advice of the Senate ; and they are
really integral parts of that branch of the gov-
ernment which he titularly contains in his one
single person. The characters and training of
the Secretaries are of almost as much importance
as his own gifts and antecedents ; so that his
appointment and the Senate's confirmation must
be added to the machinery of nomination by
convention and election by automatic electors
before the whole process of making up a work-
ing executive has been noted. The early Con-
gresses seem to have regarded the Attorney-Gen-
eral and the four Secretaries l who constituted
the first Cabinets as something more than the
President's lieutenants. Before the republican
reaction which followed the supremacy of the
Federalists, the heads of the departments ap-
peared in person before the Houses to impart
desired information, and to make what sugges-
tions they might have to venture, just as the
President attended in person to read his " ad-
dress." They were always recognized units in
the system, never mere ciphers to the Presiden-
tial figure which led them. Their wills counted
as independent wills.
i State, Treasury, War, Navy.
17
258 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
The limits of this independence would seem,
however, never to have been very clearly defined.
Whether or not the President was to take the
advice of his appointees and colleagues appears
to have depended always upon the character and
temper of the President. Here, for example, is
what was reported in 1862. " We pretend to
no state secrets," said the New York " Evening
Post," 1 " but we have been told, upon what we
deem good authority, that no such thing as a
combined, unitary, deliberative administration
exists ; that the President's brave willingness to
take all responsibility has quite neutralized the
idea of a joint responsibility ; and that orders
of the highest importance are issued, and move-
ments commanded, which cabinet officers learn
of as other people do, or, what is worse, which
the cabinet officers disapprove and protest
against. Each cabinet officer, again, controls
his own department pretty much as he pleases,
without consultation with the President or with
his coadjutors, and often in the face of determi-
nations which have been reached by the others."
A picture this which forcibly reminds one of a
certain imperious Prime Minister, in his last
days created Earl of Chatham. These reports
may have been true or they may have been mere
rumors; but they depict a perfectly possible
1 As quoted in Macmillan's Magazine, vol. vii., p. 67. _,
THE EXECUTIVE. 259
state of affairs. There is no influence except the
ascendency or tact of the President himself to
keep a Cabinet in harmony and to dispose it
to cooperation ; so that it would be very difficult
to lay down any rules as to what elements really
constitute an Executive. Those elements can be
determined exactly of only one administration
at a time, and of that only after it has closed,
and some one who knows its secrets has come
forward to tell them. We think of Mr. Lincoln
rather than of his Secretaries when we look back
to the policy of the war-time ; but we think of
Mr. Hamilton rather than of President Wash-
ington when we look back to the policy of the
first administration. Daniel Webster was bigger
than President Fillmore, and President Jackson
was bigger than Mr. Secretary Van Buren. It
depends for the most part upon the character
and training, the previous station, of the cabinet
officers, whether or not they act as governing
factors in administration, just as it depends upon
the President's talents and preparatory school-
ing whether or not he is a mere figure-head. A
weak President may prove himself wiser than
the convention which nominated him, by over-
shadowing himself with a Cabinet of notables.
From the necessity of the case, however, the
President cannot often be really supreme in mat-
ters of administration, except as the Speaker of
260 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT,
the House of Representatives is supreme in leg-
islation, as appointer of those who are supreme
in its several departments. The President is no
greater than his prerogative of veto makes him ;
he is, in other words, powerful rather as a branch
of the legislature than as the titular head of the
Executive. Almost all distinctively executive
functions are specifically bestowed upon the
heads of the departments. No President, how-
ever earnest and industrious, can keep the Navy
in a state of creditable efficiency if he have a
corrupt or incapable Secretary in the Navy De-
partment ; he cannot prevent the army from suf-
fering the damage of demoralization if the Secre-
tary of War is without either ability, experience,
or conscience ; there will be corrupt jobs in the
Department of Justice, do what he will to correct
the methods of a deceived or deceitful Attorney-
General ; he cannot secure even-handed equity
for the Indian tribes if the Secretary of the In-
terior chooses to thwart him ; and the Secretary
of State may do as much mischief behind his
back as can the Secretary of the Treasury. He
might master the details and so control the ad-
ministration of some one of the departments, but
he can scarcely oversee them all with any degree
of strictness. His knowledge of what they have
done or are doing comes, of course, from the Sec-
retaries themselves, and his annual messages to
THE EXECUTIVE. 261
Congress are in large part but a recapitulation
of the chief contents of the detailed reports
which the heads of the departments themselves
submit at the same time to the Houses.
It is easy, however, to exaggerate the power
of the Cabinet. After all has been said, it is
evident that they differ from the permanent offi-
cials only in not being permanent. Their tenure
of office is made to depend upon the supposition
that their functions are political rather than sim-
ply ministerial, independent rather than merely
instrumental. They are made party represen-
tatives because of the fiction that they direct
policy. In reality the First Comptroller of
the Treasury has almost, if not quite, as much
weight in directing departmental business as has
the Secretary of the Treasury himself, and it
would practically be quite as useful to have his
office, which is in intention permanent, vacated
by every change of administration as to have
that rule with regard to the office of his official
chief. The permanent organization, the clerical
forces of the departments, have in the Secreta-
ries a sort of sliding top ; though it would prob-
ably be just as convenient in practice to have
this lid permanent as to have it movable. That
the Secretaries are not in fact the directors of
the executive policy of the government, I have
shown in pointing out the thorough-going super-
262 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
vision of even the details of administration which
it is the disposition of the Standing Committees
of Congress to exercise. In the actual control
of affairs no one can do very much without gain-
ing the ears of the Committees. The heads of
the departments could, of course, act much more
wisely in many matters than the Committees
can, because they have an intimacy with the
workings and the wants of those departments
which no Committee can possibly possess. But
Committees prefer to govern in the dark rather
than not to govern at all, and the Secretaries, as
a matter of fact, find themselves bound in all
things larger than routine details by laws which
have been made for them and which they have
no legitimate means of modifying.
Of course the Secretaries are in the leading-
strings of statutes, and all their duties look to-
wards a strict obedience to Congress. Congress
made them and can unmake them. It is to Con-
gress that they must render account for the con-
duct of administration. The head of each de-
partment must every year make a detailed report
of the expenditures of the department, and a
minute account of the facilities of work and the
division of functions in the department, naming
each clerk of its force. The chief duties of one
cabinet officer will serve to illustrate the chief
duties of his colleagues. It is the duty of the
THE EXECUTIVE. 263
Secretary of the Treasury l " to prepare plans
for the improvement and management of the
revenue and for the support of the public credit ;
to prescribe forms of keeping and rendering all
public accounts ; to grant all warrants for mon-
eys to be issued from the Treasury in pursuance
of appropriations made by Congress ; to report
to the Senate or House, in person or in writ-
ing, information required by them pertaining to
his office ; and to perform all duties relating to
finance that he shall be directed to perform."
"He is required to report to Congress annually,
on the first Monday in June, the results of the
information compiled by the Bureau of Statis-
tics, showing the condition of manufactures, do-
mestic trade, currency, and banks in the sev-
eral States and Territories." " He prescribes
regulations for the killing in Alaska Territory
and adjacent waters of minks, martens, sable,
and other fur-bearing animals." " And he must
lay before Congress each session the reports of
the Auditors, showing the applications of the
appropriations made for the War and Navy
Departments, and also abstracts and tabulated
forms showing separate accounts of the moneys
received from internal duties."
Of course it is of the utmost importance that
1 I quote from an excellent handbook, The United Statei
government, by Lamphere.
264 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
a Secretary who has within his choice some of
the minor plans for the management of the rev-
enue and for the maintenance of the public
credit should be carefully chosen from amongst
men skilled in financial administration and expe-
rienced in business regulation ; but it is no more
necessary that the man selected for such respon-
sible duties should be an active politician, called
to preside over his department only so long as
the President who appointed him continues to
hold office and to like him, than it is to have a
strictly political officer to fulfill his other duty
of prescribing game laws for Alaska and Alaskan
waters. Fur-bearing animals can have no con-
nection with political parties, except, perhaps,
as " spoils." Indeed, it is a positive disadvan-
tage that Mr. Secretary should be chosen upon
such a principle. He cannot have the knowl-
edge, and must therefore lack the efficiency, of
a permanent official separated from the partisan
conflicts of politics and advanced to the highest
office of his department by a regular series of
promotions won by long service. The general
policy of the government in matters of finance,
everything that affects the greater operations of
the Treasury, depends upon legislation, and is
altogether in the hands of the Committees of
Ways and Means and of Finance ; so that it is
entirely apart from good sense to make an es-
THE EXECUTIVE. 265
sentially political office out of the post of that
officer who controls only administrative details.
And this remark would seem to apply with
still greater force to the offices of the other Sec-
retaries. They have even less energetic scope
than the Secretary of the Treasury has. There
must under any system be considerable power in
the hands of the officer who handles and dis-
penses vast revenues, even though he handle and
dispense them as directed by his employers.
Money in its goings to and fro makes various
mares go by the way, so to speak. It cannot
move in great quantities without moving a large
part of the commercial world with it. Manage-
ment even of financial details may be made in-
strumental in turning the money-markets upside
down. The Secretary of the Treasury is, there-
fore, less a mere chief clerk than are his coadju-
tors ; and if his duties are not properly political,
theirs certainly are not.
In view of this peculiarity of the Secretaries,
in being appointed as partisans and endowed as
mere officials, it is interesting to inquire what
and whom they represent. They are clearly
meant to represent the political party to which
they belong ; but it very often happens that it is
impossible for them to do so. They must some-
times obey the opposite party. It is our habit
to speak of the party to which the President is
266 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
known to adhere and which has control of ap-
pointments to the offices of the civil service as
" the party in power ; " but it is very evident
that control of the executive machinery is not
all or even a very large- part of power in a coun-
try ruled as ours is. In so far as the President
is an executive officer he is tho servant of Con-
gress ; and the members of the Cabinet, being
confined to executive functions, are altogether
the servants of Congress. The President, how-
ever, besides being titular head of the executive
service, is to the extent of his veto a third branch
of the legislature, and the party which he rep-
resents is in power in the same sense that it
would be in power if it had on its side a major-
ity of the members of either of the other two
branches of Congress. If the House and Sen-
ate are of one party and the President and his
ministers of the opposite, the President's party
can hardly be said to be in power beyond the
hindering and thwarting faculty of the veto.
The Democrats were in power during the ses-
sions of the Twenty-fifth Congress because they
had a majority in the Senate as well as Andrew
Jackson in the White House ; but later Presi-
dents have had both House and Senate against
them. 1
1 " In America the President cannot prevent any law from
being passed, nor can he evade the obligation of enforcing it
THE EXECUTIVE. 267
It is this constant possibility of party diver-
sity between the Executive and Congress which
so much complicates our system of party govern-
ment. The history of administrations is not
necessarily the history of parties. Presidential
elections may turn the scale of party ascendency
one way, and the intermediate congressional
elections may quite reverse the balance. A
strong party administration, by which the en-
ergy of the State is concentrated in the hands
of a single well-recognized political organization,
which is by reason of its power saddled with all
responsibility, may sometimes be possible, but it
must often be impossible. We are thus shut
out in part from real party government such as
we desire, and such as it is unquestionably de-
sirable to set up in every system like ours.
Party government can exist only when the ab-
solute control of administration, the appoint-
ment of its officers as well as the direction of
His sincere and zealous cooperation is no doubt useful, but it
is not indispensable, in the carrying on of public affairs. All
his important acts are directly or indirectly submitted to the
legislature, and of his own free authority he can do but little.
I*, is, therefore, his weakness, and not his power, which ena-
bles him to remain in opposition to Congress. In Europe,
harmony mast reign between the Crown and the other branches
of the legislature, because a collision between them may prove
serious ; in America, this harmony is not indispensable, be-
cause such a collision is impossible." De Tocqueville, i. p.
124.
268 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
its means and policy, is given immediately into
the hands of that branch of the government
whose power is paramount, the representative
body. Roger Sherman, whose perception was
amongst the keenest and whose sagacity was
amongst the surest in the great Convention of
1787, was very bold and outspoken in declaring
this fact and in proposing to give it candid rec-
ognition. Perceiving very clearly the omnipo-
tence which must inevitably belong to a national
Congress such as the convention was about to
create, he avowed that " he considered the execu-
tive magistracy as nothing more than an institu-
tion for carrying the will of the legislature into
effect ; that the person or persons [who should
constitute the executive] ought to be appointed
by, and accountable to, the legislature only,
which was the depository of the supreme will of
the society." Indeed, the executive was in his
view so entirely the servant of the legislative
will that he saw good reason to think that the
legislature should judge of the number of per-
eons of which the executive should be composed ;
and there seem to have been others in the con-
vention who went along with him in substantial
agreement as to these matters. It would seem
to have been only a desire for the creation of as
many as possible of those balances of power
which now decorate the " literary theory " of the
THE EXECUTIVE. 269
Constitution which they made that prevented a
universal acquiescence in these views.
The anomaly which has resulted is seen most
clearly in the party relations of the President
and his Cabinet. The President is a partisan,
is elected because he is a partisan, and yet he
not infrequently negatives the legislation passed
by the party whom he represents ; and it may
be said to be nowadays a very rare thing to find
a Cabinet made up of truly representative party
men. They are the men of his party whom the
President likes, but not necessarily or always
the men whom that party relishes. So low, in-
deed, has the reputation of some of our later
Cabinets fallen, even in the eyes of men of their
own political connection, that writers in the best
of our public prints feel at full liberty to speak
of their members with open contempt. " When
Mr. was made Secretary of the Navy,"
laughs the New York "Nation," "no one doubted
that he would treat the Department as ' spoils,'
and consequently nobody has been disappointed.
He is one of the statesmen who can hardly con-
ceive of a branch of the public Administration
having no spoils in it." And that this separa-
tion of the Cabinet from real party influence,
and from the party leadership which would seem
properly to belong to its official station, is a nat-
ural result of our constitutional scheme is made
270 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
patent in the fact that the Cabinet has advanced
in party insignificance as the system has grown
older. The connection between the early Cabi-
nets and the early Congresses was very like the
relations between leaders and their party. Both
Hamilton and Gallatin led rather than obeyed
the Houses ; and it was many years before the
suggestions of heads of departments ceased to be
sure of respectful and acquiescent consideration
from the legislative Committees. But as the
Committees gained facility and power the lead-
ership of the Cabinet lost ground. Congress
took command of the government so soon as
ever it got command of itself, and no Secretary
of to-day can claim by virtue of his office recog-
nition as a party authority. Congress looks
upon advice offered to it by anybody but its own
members as gratuitous impertinence.
At the same time it is quite evident that the
means which Congress has of controlling the de-
partments and of exercising the searching over-
sight at which it aims are limited and defective.
Its intercourse with the President is restricted
to the executive messages, and its intercourse
with the departments has no easier channels
than private consultations between executive offi-
cials and the Committees, informal interviews of
the ministers with individual members of Con-
gress, and the written correspondence which the
THE EXECUTIVE. 271
cabinet officers from time to time address to the
presiding officers of the two Houses, at stated
intervals, or in response to formal resolutions of
inquiry. Congress stands almost helplessly out-
side of the departments. Even the special, irk-
some, ungracious investigations which it from
time to time institutes in its spasmodic endeav-
ors to dispel or confirm suspicions of malfea-
sance or of wanton corruption do not afford it
more than a glimpse of the inside of a small
province of federal administration. Hostile or
designing officials can always hold it at arm's
length by dexterous evasions and concealments.
It can violently disturb, but it cannot often
fathom, the waters of the sea in which the bigger
fish of the civil service swim and feed. Its drag-
net stirs without cleansing the bottom. Unless
it have at the head of the departments capable,
fearless men, altogether in its confidence and en-
tirely in sympathy with its designs, it is clearly
helpless to do more than affright those officials
whose consciences are their accusers.
And it is easy to see how the commands as
well as the questions of Congress may be evaded,
if not directly disobeyed, by the executive agents.
Its Committees may command, but they cannot
superintend the execution of their commands.
The Secretaries, though not free enough to have
any independent policy of their own, are free
272 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
enough to be very poor, because very unmanage-
able, servants. Once installed, their hold upon
their offices does not depend upon the will of
Congress. If they please the President, and
keep upon living terms with their colleagues, they
need not seriously regard the displeasure of the
Houses, unless, indeed, by actual crime, they
rashly put themselves in the way of its judicial
wrath. If their folly be not too overt and ex-
travagant, their authority may continue theirs till
the earth has four times made her annual jour-
ney round the sun. They may make daily blun-
ders in administration and repeated mistakes in
business, may thwart the plans of Congress in a
hundred small, vexatious ways, and yet all the
while snap their fingers at its dissatisfaction or
displeasure. They are denied the gratification
of possessing real power, but they have the satis-
faction of being secure in a petty independence
which gives them a chance to be tricky and
scheming. There are ways and ways of obeying ;
and if Congress be not pleased, why need they
care ? Congress did not give them their places,
and cannot easily take them away.
Still it remains true that all the big affairs
of the departments are conducted in obedience
to the direction of the Standing Committees.
The President nominates, and with legislative
approval appoints, to the more important offices
TEE EXECUTIVE. 273
of the government, and the members of the Cab-
inet have the privilege of advising him as to
matters in most of which he has no power of final
action without the concurrence of the Senate ;
but the gist of all policy is decided by legislative,
not by executive, will. It can be no great satis-
faction to any man to possess the barren privi-
lege of suggesting the best means of managing
the every-day routine business of the several
bureaux so long as the larger plans which that
business is meant to advance are made for him
by others who are set over him. If one is com-
manded to go to this place or to that place, and
must go, will he, nill he, it can be but small solace
to him that he is left free to determine whether he
will ride or walk in going the journey. The only
serious questions are whether or not this so great
and real control exerted by Congress can be
exercised efficiently and with sufficient respon-
sibility to those whom Congress represents, and
whether good government is promoted by the
arrangement.
No one, I take it for granted, is disposed to
disallow the principle that the representatives of
the people are the proper ultimate authority in
all matters of government, and that adminis-
tration is merely the clerical part of government.
Legislation is the originating force. It deter-
mines what shall be done ; and the President, if
18
274 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
he cannot or will not stay legislation by the use
of his extraordinary power as a branch of the
legislature, is plainly bound in duty to render
unquestioning obedience to Congress. And if it
be his duty to obey, still more is obedience the
bounden duty of his subordinates. The power
of making laws is in its very nature and essence
the power of directing, and that power is given
to Congress. The principle is without draw-
back, and is inseparably of a piece with all Anglo-
Saxon usage ; the difficulty, if there be any, must
lie in the choice of means whereby to energize
the principle. The natural means would seem to
be the right on the part of the representative
body to have all the executive servants of its will
under its close and constant supervision, and to
hold them to a strict accountability: in other
words, to have the privilege of dismissing them
whenever their service became unsatisfactory.
This is the matter-of-course privilege of every
other master ; and if Congress does not possess
it, its mastery is hampered without being denied.
The executive officials are its servants all the
same ; the only difference is that if they prove
negligent, or incapable, or deceitful servants
Congress must rest content with the best that
can be got out of them until its chief adminis-
trative agent, the President, chooses to appoint
better. It cannot make them docile, though it
THE EXECUTIVE. 275
may compel them to be obedient in all greater
matters. In authority of rule Congress is made
master, but in means of rule it is made mere
magistrate. It commands with absolute lord-
ship, but it can discipline for disobedience only
by slow and formal judicial process.
Upon Machiavelli's declaration that "nothing
is more important to the stability of the state
than that facility should be given by its consti-
tution for the accusation of those who are sup-
posed to have committed any public wrong," a
writer in the " Westminster Review " m#kes this
thoughtful comment : " The benefit of such a
provision is twofold. First, the salutary fear
of the probable coming of a day of account will
restrain the evil practices of some bad men and
self-seekers ; secondly, the legal outlet of accusa-
tion gives vent to peccant humors in the body
politic, which, if checked and driven inward,
would work to the utter ruin of the constitution ;
. . . the distinction is lost between accusation
and calumny." 1 And of course it was these ben-
efits which our federal Constitution was meant to
secure by means of its machinery of impeach-
ment. No servant of the state, not even the
President himself, was to be beyond the reach
of accusation by the House of Representatives
and of trial by the Senate. But the processes
1 Westminster Review, vol. Ixvi., p. 193.
276 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
of impeachment, like those of amendment, are
ponderous and difficult to handle. It requires
something like passion to set them a-going ; and
nothing short of the grossest offenses against the
plain law of the land will suffice to give them
speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as
to overcrow party interest may secure a convic-
tion ; nothing less can. Indeed, judging by our
past experiences, impeachment may be said to be
little more than an empty menace. The House
of Representatives is a tardy grand jury, and the
Senate an uncertain court.
Besides, great crimes such as might speed
even impeachment are not ordinary things in
the loosest public service. An open-eyed public
opinion can generally give them effective check.
That which usually and every day clogs and
hampers good government is folly or incapacity
on the part of the ministers of state. Even
more necessary, therefore, than a power clothed
with authority to accuse, try, and punish for
public crime is some ultimate authority, whose
privilege it shall be to dismiss for inefficiency.
Impeachment is aimed altogether above the head
of business management. A merchant would
not think it fair, even if it were lawful, to shoot
a clerk who could not learn the business. Dis.
missal is quite as effective for his purposes, and
more merciful to the clerk. The crying incon-
THE EXECUTIVE. 277
venience of our system is, therefore, that the
constitutional authority whose prerogative it is
to direct policy and oversee administration has
fewer facilities for getting its work well done
than has the humblest citizen for obtaining satis-
factory aid in his own undertakings. The author-
ity most interested in appointments and dismissals
in the civil service has little to do with the one
and less to do with the other. The President
appoints with the sanction of the Senate, and
cannot dismiss his advisers without legislative
consent ; l yet the ministers in reality serve, not
the President, but Congress, and Congress can
neither appoint nor dismiss. In other words,
the President must in both acts take the in-
itiative, though he is not the real master ; and
Congress, which is the real master, has in these
vital matters only a consultative voice, which it
may utter, through its upper chamber, only when
its opinion is asked. I should regard my business
as a hopeless undertaking if my chief agent had
to be appointed by a third party, and, besides
being himself put beyond my power of control,
were charged with the choice and discipline of
all his subordinates, subject not to my directions,
but simply to my acquiescence !
The relations existing between Congress and
the departments must be fatally demoralizing to
1 Tenure of Office Act, already discussed.
278 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
both. There is and can be between them noth-
ing like confidential and thorough cooperation.
The departments may be excused for that atti-
tude of hostility which they sometimes assume
towards Congress, because it is quite human for
the servant to fear and deceive the master whom
he does not regard as his friend, but suspects of
being a distrustful spy of his movements. Con-
gress cannot control the officers of the executive
without disgracing them. Its only whip is inves-
tigation, semi-judicial examination into corners
suspected to be dirty. It must draw the public
eye by openly avowing a suspicion of malfea-
sance, and must then magnify and intensify tho
scandal by setting its Committees to cross-exam-
ining scared subordinates and sulky ministers.
And after all is over and the murder out, prob-
ably nothing is done. The offenders, if any one
has offended, often remain in office, shamed be-
fore the world, and ruined in the estimation of
all honest people, but still drawing their sala-
ries and comfortably waiting for the short mem-
ory of the public mind to forget them. Why
unearth the carcass if you cannot remove it ?
Then, too, the departments frequently com-
plain of the incessant exactions made upon them
by Congress. They grumble that they are kept
busy in satisfying its curiosity and in meeting
the demands of its uneasy activity. The clerks
THE EXECUTIVE. 279
have ordinarily as much as they can do in keep-
ing afoot the usual routine business of their de-
partments ; but Congress is continually calling
upon them for information which must be labo-
riously collected from all sorts of sources, remote
and accessible. A great speech in the Senate
may cost them hours of anxious toil : for the
Senator who makes it is quite likely beforehand
to introduce a resolution calling upon one of the
Secretaries for full statistics with reference to
this, that, or the other topic upon which he de-
sires to speak. If it be finance, he must have
comparative tables of taxation ; if it be commerce
or the tariff, he cannot dispense with any of the
minutest figures of the Treasury accounts ; what-
ever be his theme, he cannot lay his foundations
more surely than upon official information, and
the Senate is usually unhesitatingly ready with
an easy assent to the resolution which puts the
whole clerical force of the administration at his
service. And of course the House too asks in-
numerable questions, which patient clerks and
protesting Secretaries must answer to the last
and most minute particular. This is what the
departmental officials testily call the tyranny of
Congress, and no impartial third person can rea-
sonably forbid them the use of the word.
I know of few things harder to state clearly
and within reasonable compass than just how the
280 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
nation keeps control of policy in spite of these
hide-and-seek vagaries of authority. Indeed, it
is doubtful if it does keep control through all
the roundabout paths which legislative and ex-
ecutive responsibility are permitted to take. It
must follow Congress somewhat blindly ; Con-
gress is known to obey without altogether under-
standing its Committees : and the Committees
must consign the execution of their plans to offi-
cials who have opportunities not a few to hood-
wink them. At the end of these blind processes
is it probable that the ultimate authority, the
people, is quite clear in its mind as to what has
been done or what may be done another time ?
Take, for example, financial policy, a very fair
example, because, as I have shown, the legislative
stages of financial policy are more talked about
than any other congressional business, though
for that reason an extreme example. If, after
appropriations and adjustments of taxation have
been tardily and in much tribulation of scheming
and argument agreed upon by the House, the im-
perative suggestions and stubborn insistence of
the Senate confuse matters till hardly the Confer-
ence Committees themselves know clearly what
the outcome of the disagreements has been ; and
if, when these compromise measures are launched
as laws, the method of their execution is beyond
the view of the Houses, in the semi-privacy of
THE EXECUTIVE. 281
the departments, how is the comprehension
not to speak of the will of the people to keep
any sort of hold upon the course of affairs?
There are no screws of responsibility which they
can turn upon the consciences or upon the offi-
cial thumbs of the congressional Committees
principally concerned. Congressional Commit-
tees are nothing to the nation : they are only
pieces of the interior mechanism of Congress.
To Congress they stand or fall. And, since
Congress itself can scarcely be sure of having its
own way with them, the constituencies are mani-
festly unlikely to be able to govern them. As
for the departments, the people can hardly do
more in drilling them to unquestioning obedience
and docile efficiency than Congress can. Con-
gress is, and must be, in these matters the na-
tion's eyes and voice. If it cannot see what
goes wrong and cannot get itself heeded when it
commands, the nation likewise is both blind and
dumb.
This, plainly put, is the practical result of the
piecing of authority, the cutting of it up into
small bits, which is contrived in our constitu-
tional system. Each branch of the government
is fitted out with a small section of responsibility,
whose limited opportunities afford to the con-
science of each many easy escapes. Every sus-
pected culprit may shift the responsibility upon
282 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
his fellows. Is Congress rated for corrupt or
imperfect or foolish legislation? It may urge
that it has to follow hastily its Committees or do
nothing at all but talk ; how can it help it if a
stupid Committee leads it unawares into unjust
or fatuous enterprises ? Does administration
blunder and run itself into all sorts of straits ?
The Secretaries hasten to plead the unreasonable
or unwise commands of Congress, and Congress
falls to blaming the Secretaries. The Secreta-
ries aver that the whole mischief might have
been avoided if they had only been allowed to
suggest the proper measures ; and the men who
framed the existing measures in their turn avow
their despair of good government so long as they
must intrust all their plans to the bungling in-
competence of men who are appointed by and
responsible to somebody else. How is the school-
master, the nation, to know which boy needs the
whipping ?
Moreover, it is impossible to deny that this
division of authority and concealment of respon-
sibility are calculated to subject the government
to a very distressing paralysis in moments of
emergency. There are few, if any, important
steps that can be taken by any one branch of
the government without the consent or coopera-
tion of some other branch. Congress must act
through the President and his Cabinet ; the Pres.
THE EXECUTIVE. 283
ident and his Cabinet must wait upon the will
of Congress. There is no one supreme, ultimate
head whether magistrate or representative
body which can decide at once and with con-
clusive authority what shall be done at those
times when some decision there must be, and
that immediately. Of course this lack is of a
sort to be felt at all times, in seasons of tranquil
rounds of business as well as at moments of sharp
crisis ; but in times of sudden exigency it might
prove fatal, fatal either in breaking down the
system or in failing to meet the emergency. 1
Policy cannot be either prompt or straightfor-
ward when it must serve many masters. It must
either equivocate, or hesitate, or fail altogether.
It may set out with clear purpose from Congress,
but get waylaid or maimed by the Executive.
If there be one principle clearer than another,
it is this : that in any business, whether of gov-
ernment or of mere merchandising, somebody
must be trusted, in order that when things go
wrong it may be quite plain who should be pun-
ished. In order to drive trade at the speed and
with the success you desire, you must confide
without suspicion in your chief clerk, giving him
1 These "ifs" are abundantly supported by the executive
acts of the war-time. The Constitution had then to stand
aside that President Lincoln might be as prompt as the seem-
ing necessities of the time.
284 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
the power to ruin you, because you thereby fur-
nish him with a motive for serving you. His
reputation, his own honor or disgrace, all his
own commercial prospects, hang upon your suc-
cess. And human nature is much the same in
government as in the dry-goods trade. Power
and strict accountability for its use are the es-
sential constituents of good government. A
sense of highest responsibility, a dignifying and
elevating sense of being trusted, together with a
consciousness of being in an official station so
conspicuous that no faithful discharge of duty
can go unacknowledged and unrewarded, and
no breach of trust undiscovered and unpunished,
these are the influences, the only influences,
which foster practical, energetic, and trustworthy
statesmanship. The best rulers are always those
to whom great power is intrusted in such a man-
ner as to make them feel that they will surely
be abundantly honored and recompensed for a
just and patriotic use of it, and to make them
know that nothing can shield them from full ret-
ribution for every abuse of it.
It is, therefore, manifestly a radical defect in
our federal system that it parcels out power and
confuses responsibility as it does. The main
purpose of the Convention of 1787 seems to have
been to accomplish this grievous mistake. The
" literary theory " of checks and balances is sim-
THE EXECUTIVE. 285
ply a consistent account of what our constitution-
makers tried to do ; and those checks and bal-
ances have proved mischievous just to the extent
to which they have succeeded in establishing
themselves as realities. It is quite safe to say
that were it possible to call together again the
members of that wonderful Convention to view
the work of their hands in the light of the cen-
tury that has tested it, they would be the first to
admit that the only fruit of dividing power had
been to make it irresponsible. It is just this
that has made civil service reform tarry in this
country and that makes it still almost doubtful
of issue. We are in just the case that England
was in before she achieved the reform for which
we are striving. The date of the reform in Eng-
land is no less significant than the fact. It was
not accomplished until a distinct responsibility
of the Ministers of the Crown to one, and to
only one, master had been established beyond
all uncertainty. This is the most striking and
suggestive lesson to be gathered from Mr. Ea-
ton's interesting and valuable history of Civil
Service in Great Britain. The Reform was
originated in 1853 by the Cabinet of Lord Aber-
deen. It sprang from the suggestion of the ap-
pointing officers, and was carried through in the
face of opposition from the House of Commons,
because, paradoxically enough, the Ministry had
286 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
at last come to feel their responsibility to the
Commons, or rather to the nation whom the
Commons represented.
Those great improvements which have been
made in the public service of the British empire
since the days of Walpole and Newcastle have
gone hand in hand with the perfecting of the
system now known as responsible Cabinet gov-
ernment. That system was slow in coming to
perfection. It was not till long after Walpole's
day that unity of responsibility on the part of
the Cabinet and that singleness of responsibil-
ity which made them look only to the Commons
for authority came to be recognized as an es-
tablished constitutional principle. " As a con-
sequence of the earlier practice of constructing
Cabinets of men of different political views, it
followed that the members of such Cabinets did
not and could not regard their responsibility to
Parliament as one and indivisible. The resigna-
tion of an important member, or even of the
Prime Minister, was not regarded as necessitat-
ing the simultaneous retirement of his colleagues.
Even so late as the fall of Sir Robert Walpole,
fifty years after the Revolution Settlement (and
itself the first instance of resignation in defer-
ence to a hostile parliamentary vote) we find the
King requesting Walpole's successor, Pulteney,
*not to distress the Government by making too
THE EXECUTIVE. 287
many changes in the midst of a session ; ' and
Pulteney replying that he would be satisfied,
provided ' the main forts of the Government,'
or, in other words, the principal offices of state,
were placed in his hands. It was not till the
displacement of Lord North's ministry by that
of Lord Buckingham in 1782 that a whole ad-
ministration, with the exception of the Lord
Chancellor, was changed by a vote of want of
confidence passed in the House of Commons.
Thenceforth, however, the resignation of the
head of a Government in deference to an adverse
vote of the popular chamber has invariably been
accompanied by the resignation of all his col-
leagues." l But, even after the establishment of
that precedent, it was still many years before
Cabinets were free to please none but the Com-
mons, free to follow their own policies with-
out authoritative suggestion from the sovereign.
Until the death of the fourth George they were
made to feel that they owed a double allegiance :
to the Commons and to the King. The compo-
sition of Ministries still depended largely on the
royal whim, and their actions were hampered by
the necessity of steering a careful middle course
between the displeasure of parliament and the
ill-will of His Majesty. The present century
1 Central Government (Eng. Citizen Series), H. D. Trail],
p. 20.
288 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
had run far on towards the reign of Victoria be-
fore they were free to pay undivided obedience
to the representatives of the people. When
once they had become responsible to the Com-
mons alone, however, and almost as soon as they
were assured of their new position as the ser-
vants of the nation, they were prompted to even
hazardous efforts for the reform of the civil ser-
vice. They were conscious that the entire weight
and responsibility of government rested upon
their shoulders, and, as men regardful of the in-
terests of the party which they represented, jeal-
ous for the preservation of their own fair names,
and anxious, consequently, for the promotion of
wise rule, they were naturally and of course the
first to advocate a better system of appointment
to that service whose chiefs they were recognized
to be. They were prompt to declare that it was
the " duty of the executive to provide for the
efficient and harmonious working of the civil ser-
vice," and that they could not "transfer that
duty to any other body far less competent than
themselves without infringing a great and im-
portant constitutional principle, already too often
infringed, to the great detriment of the public
service." They therefore determined themselves
to inaugurate the merit-system without waiting
for the assent of parliament, by simply surren-
dering their power of appointment in the various
THE EXECUTIVE. 289
departments to a non-partisan examining board,
trusting to the power of public opinion to in-
duce parliament, after the thing had been done,
to vote sufficient money to put the scheme into
successful operation. And they did not reckon
without their host. Reluctant as the members
of the House of Commons were to resign that
control of the national patronage which they
had from time immemorial been accustomed to
exercise by means of various crooked indirections,
and which it had been their pleasure and their
power to possess, they had not the face to avow
their suspicious unwillingness in answer to the
honorable call of a trusted Ministry who were
supported in their demand by all that was hon-
est in public sentiment, and the world was af-
forded the gratifying but unwonted spectacle of
party leaders sacrificing to the cause of good
government, freely and altogether of their own
accord, the " spoils " of office so long dear to
the party and to the assembly which they repre-
sented and served.
In this country the course of the reform was
quite the reverse. Neither the Executive nor
Congress began it. The call for it came impera-
tively from the people ; it was a formulated de-
mand of public opinion made upon Congress,
and it had to be made again and again, each
time with more determined emphasis, before
19
290 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Congress heeded. It worked its way up from
the convictions of the many to the purposes of
the few. Amongst the chief difficulties that
have stood in its way, and which still block its
perfect realization, is that peculiarity of struc-
ture which I have just now pointed out as in-
trinsic in the scheme of divided power which
runs through the Constitution. One of the con-
ditions precedent to any real and lasting reform
of the civil service, in a country whose public
service is moulded by the conditions of self-
government, is the drawing of a sharp line of
distinction between those offices which are po-
litical and those which are now-political. The
strictest rules of business discipline, of merit-
tenure and earned promotion, must rule every
office whose incumbent has naught to do with
choosing between policies ; but no rules except
the choice of parties can or should make and
unmake, reward or punish, those officers whose
privilege it is to fix upon the political purposes
which administration shall be made to serve.
These latter are not many under any form of
government. There are said to be but fifty such
at most in the civil service of Great Britain ;
but these fifty go in or out as the balance of
power shifts from party to party. In the case of
our own civil service it would, I take it, be ex-
tremely hard to determine where the line should
THE EXECUTIVE. 291
be drawn. In all the higher grades this partic-
ular distinction is quite obscured. A doubt ex-
ists as to the Cabinet itself. Are the Secretaries
political or non-political officers ? It would seem
that they are exclusively neither. They are at
least serai-political. They are, on the one hand,
merely the servants of Congress, and yet, on the
other hand, they have enough freedom of discre-
tion to mar and color, if not to choose, political
ends. They can wreck plans, if they cannot
make them. Should they be made permanent
officials because they are mere Secretaries, or
should their tenure depend upon the fortunes of
parties because they have many chances to ren-
der party services ? And if the one rule or the
other is to be applied to them, to how many, and
to which of their chief subordinates, is it to be
extended? If they are not properly or neces-
sarily party men, let them pass the examinations
and run the gauntlet of the usual tests of effi-
ciency, let errand-boys work up to Secretary-
ships ; but if not, let their responsibility to their
party be made strict and determinate. That is
the cardinal point of practical civil service re-
form.
This doubt as to the exact status in the sys-
tem of the chief ministers of state is a most
striking commentary on the system itself. Its
complete self is logical and simple. But its
292 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
complete self exists only in theory. Its real self
offers a surprise and presents a mystery at every
change of view. The practical observer who
seeks for facts and actual conditions of organi-
zation is often sorely puzzled to come at the real
methods of government. Pitfalls await him on
every side. If constitutional lawyers of strait-
laced consciences filled Congress and officered
the departments, every clause of the Constitu-
tion would be accorded a formal obedience, and
it would be as easy to know beforehand just
what the government will be like inside to-mor-
row as it is now to know what it was like out-
side yesterday. But neither the knowledge nor
the consciences of politicians keep them very
close to the Constitution ; and it is with politi-
cians that we have to deal nowadays in studying
the government. Every government is largely
what the men are who constitute it. If the
character or opinions of legislators and admin-
istrators change from time to time, the nature of
the government changes with them ; and as both
their characters and their opinions do change
very often it is very hard to make a picture of
the government which can be said to have been
perfectly faithful yesterday, and can be confi-
dently expected to be exactly accurate to-mor-
row. Add to these embarrassments, which may
be called the embarrassments of human nature,
THE EXECUTIVE. 293
other embarrassments such as our system af-
fords, the embarrassments of subtle legal dis-
tinctions, a fine theoretical plan made in delicate
hair-lines, requirements of law which can hardly
be met and can easily and naturally be evaded
or disregarded, and you have in full the concep-
tion of the difficulties which attend a practical
exposition of the real facts of federal adminis-
tration. It is not impossible to point out what
the Executive was intended to be, what it has
sometimes been, or what it might be ; nor is it
forbidden the diligent to discover the main con-
ditions which mould it to the forms of congres-
sional supremacy ; but more than this is not to
be expected.
VI.
CONCLUSION.
Political philosophy must analyze political history ; it must distin-
guish what is due to the excellence of the people, and what to the excel-
lence of the laws ; it must carefully calculate the exact effect of each part
of the constitution, though thus it may destroy many an idol of the mul-
titude, and detect the secret of utility where but few imagined it to lie.
BAGEHOT.
CONGRESS always makes what haste it can to
legislate. It is the prime object of its rules to
expedite law-making. Its customs are fruits
of its characteristic diligence in enactment. Be
the matters small or great, frivolous or grave,
which busy it, its aim is to have laws always
a-making. Its temper is strenuously legislative.
That it cannot regulate all the questions to
which its attention is weekly invited is its mis-
fortune, not its fault ; is due to the human lim-
itation of its faculties, not to any narrow cir-
cumscription of its desires. If its committee
machinery is inadequate to the task of bringing
to action more than one out of every hundred of
the bills introduced, it is not because the quick
clearance of the docket is not the motive of its
CONCLUSION. 295
organic life. If legislation, therefore, were the
only or the chief object for which it should live,
it would not be possible to withhold admiration
from those clever hurrying rules and those in-
exorable customs which seek to facilitate it.
Nothing but a doubt as to whether or not Con-
gress should confine itself to law-making can
challenge with a question the utility of its or-
ganization as a facile statute-devising machine.
The political philosopher of these days of self-
government has, however, something more than
a doubt with which to gainsay the usefulness of
a sovereign representative body which confines
itself to legislation to the exclusion of all other
functions. Buckle declared, indeed, that the
chief use and value of legislation nowadays lay
in its opportunity and power to remedy the mis-
takes of the legislation of the past ; that it was
beneficent only when it carried healing in its
wings ; that repeal was more blessed than enact-
ment. And it is certainly true that the greater
part of the labor of legislation consists in carry-
ing the loads recklessly or bravely shouldered in
times gone by, when the animal which is now a
bull was only a calf, and in completing, if they
may be completed, the tasks once undertaken in
the shape of unambitious schemes which at the
outset looked innocent enough. Having got his
foot into it, the legislator finds it difficult, if not
296 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
impossible, to get it out again. " The modern
industrial organization, including banks, corpo-
rations, joint-stock companies, financial devices,
national debts, paper currency, national systems
of taxation, is largely the creation of legislation
(not in its historical origin, but in the mode of
its existence and in its authority), and is largely
regulated by legislation. Capital is the breath
of life to this organization, and every day, as
the organization becomes more complex and del-
icate, the folly of assailing capital or credit be-
comes greater. At the same time it is evident
that the task of the legislator to embrace in his
view the whole system, to adjust his rules so
that the play of the civil institutions shall not
alter the play of the economic forces, requires
more training and more acumen. Furthermore,
the greater the complication and delicacy of the
industrial system, the greater the chances for
cupidity when backed by craft, and the task of
the legislator to meet and defeat the attempts of
this cupidity is one of constantly increasing diffi-
culty." !
1 Professor Simmer's Andrew Jackson (American States-
men Series), p. 226. " Finally," adds Prof. S., " the methods
and machinery of democratic republican self-government
caucuses, primaries, committees, and conventions lend them-
selves perhaps more easily than any other methods and ma-
chinery to the uses of selfish cliques which seek political inflT
ence for interested purposes."
CONCLUSION. 297
Legislation unquestionably generates legisla-
tion. Every statute may be said to have a long
lineage of statutes behind it ; and whether that
lineage be honorable or of ill repute is as much
a question as to each individual statute as it
can be with regard to the ancestry of each in-
dividual legislator. Every statute in its turn
has a numerous progeny, and only time and op-
portunity can decide whether its offspring will
bring it honor or shame. Once begin the dance
of legislation, and you must struggle through its
mazes as best you can to its breathless end, if
any end there be.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the enact-
ing, revising, tinkering, repealing of laws should
engross the attention and engage the entire
energy of such a body as Congress. It is, how-
ever, easy to see how it might be better em-
ployed ; or, at least, how it might add others
to this overshadowing function, to the infinite
advantage of the government. Quite as impor-
tant as legislation is vigilant oversight of ad-
ministration ; and even more important than
legislation is the instruction and guidance in
political affairs which the people might receive
from a body which kept all national concerns
suffused in a broad daylight of discussion.
There is no similar legislature in existence
which is so shut up to the one business of law-
298 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
making as is our Congress. As I have said, it
in a way superintends administration by the
exercise of semi-judicial powers of investigation,
whose limitations and insufficiency are manifest.
But other national legislatures command ad-
ministration and verify their name of " parlia-
ments" by talking official acts into notoriety.
Our extra-constitutional party conventions, short-
lived and poor in power as they are, constitute
our only machinery for that sort of control of
the executive which consists in the award of
personal rewards and punishments. This is the
cardinal fact which differentiates Congress from
the Chamber of Deputies and from Parliament,
and which puts it beyond the reach of those
eminently useful functions whose exercise would
so raise it in usefulness and in dignity.
An effective representative body, gifted with
the power to rule, ought, it would seem, not
only to speak the will of the nation, which
Congress does, but also to lead it to its conclu-
sions, to utter the voice of its opinions, and to
serve as its eyes in superintending all matters
of government, which Congress does not do.
The discussions which take place in Congress
are aimed at random. They now and again
strike rather sharply the tender spots in this,
that, or the other measure ; but, as I have said,
no two measures consciously join in purpose or
CONCLUSION. 299
agree in character, and so debate must wander
as widely as the subjects of debate. Since there
is little coherency about the legislation agreed
upon, there can be little coherency about the
debates. There is no one policy to be attacked
or defended, but only a score or two of separate
bills. To attend to such discussions is uninter-
esting ; to be instructed by them is impossible.
There is some scandal and discomfort, but infi-
nite advantage, in having every affair of adminis-
tration subjected to the test of constant examina-
tion on the part of the assembly which represents
the nation. The chief use of such inquisition
is, not the direction of those affairs in a way
with which the country will be satisfied (though
that itself is of course all-important), but the
enlightenment of the people, which is always its
sure consequence. Very few men are unequal
to a danger which they see and understand ; all
men quail before a threatening which is dark
and unintelligible, and suspect what is done
behind a screen. If the people could have,
through Congress, daily knowledge of all the
more important transactions of the governmen-
tal offices, an insight into all that now seems
withheld and private, their confidence in the
executive, now so often shaken, would, I think,
be very soon established. Because dishonesty
can lurk under the privacies now vouchsafed
300 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
our administrative agents, much that is upright
and pure suffers unjust suspicion. Discoveries
of guilt in a bureau cloud with doubts the
trustworthiness of a department. As nothing
is open enough for the quick and easy detection
of peculation or fraud, so nothing is open enough
for the due vindication and acknowledgment of
honesty. The isolation and privacy which shield
the one from discovery cheat the other of re-
ward.
Inquisitiveness is never so forward, enterpris-
ing, and irrepressible as in a popular assembly
which is given leave to ask questions and is
afforded ready and abundant means of getting
its questions answered. No cross-examination
is more searching than that to which a minister
of the Crown is subjected by the all-curious
Commons. " Sir Robert Peel once asked to
have a number of questions carefully written
down which they asked him one day in succes-
sion in the House of Commons. They seemed
a list of everything that could occur in the
British empire or to the brain of a member of
parliament." l If one considered only the wear
and tear upon ministers of state, which the
plague of constant interrogation must inflict, he
could wish that their lives, if useful, might be
spared this blight of unending explanation ; but
1 Bagehot : Essay on Sir Robert Peel, p. 24.
CONCLUSION. 301
no one can overestimate the immense advantage
of a facility so unlimited for knowing all that
is going on in the places where authority lives.
The conscience of every member of the represen-
tative body is at the service of the nation. All
that he feels bound to know he can find out ;
and what he finds out goes to the ears of the
country. The question is his, the answer the
nation's. And the inquisitiveness of such bodies
as Congress is the best conceivable source of
information. Congress is the only body which
has the proper motive for inquiry, and it is the
only body which has the power to act effectively
upon the knowledge which its inquiries secure.
The Press is merely curious or merely partisan.
The people are scattered and unorganized. But
Congress is, as it were, the corporate people,
the mouthpiece of its will. It is a sovereign
delegation which could ask questions with dig-
nity, because with authority and with power to
act.
Congress is fast becoming the governing body
of the nation, and yet the only power which it
possesses in perfection is the power which is but
a part of government, the power of legislation.
Legislation is but the oil of government. It is
that which lubricates its channels and speeds its
wheels ; that which lessens the friction and so
eases the movement. Or perhaps I shall be
302 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
admitted to have hit upon a closer and apter
analogy if I say that legislation is like a fore-
man set over the forces of government. It
issues the orders which others obey. It directs,
it admonishes, but it does not do the actual
heavy work of governing. A good foreman
does, it is true, himself take a hand in the work
which he guides ; and so I suppose our legisla-
tion must be likened to a poor foreman, because
it stands altogether apart from that work which
it is set to see well done. Members of Congress
ought not to be censured too severely, however,
when they fail to check evil courses on the part
of the executive. They have been denied the
means of doing so promptly and with effect.
Whatever intention may have controlled the
compromises of constitution - making in 1787,
their result was to give us, not government by
discussion, which is the only tolerable sort of
government for a people which tries to do its
own governing, but only legislation by discus-
sion, which is no more than a small part of
government by discussion. What is quite as
indispensable as the debate of problems of legis-
lation is the debate of all matters of administra-
tion. It is even more important to know how
the house is being built than to know how the
plans of the architect were conceived and how
his specifications were calculated. It is better to
CONCLUSION. 303
have skillful work stout walls, reliable arches,
unbending rafters, and windows sure to " expel
the winter's flaw " than a drawing on paper
which is the admiration of all the practical
artists in the country. The discipline of an
army depends quite as much upon the temper of
the troops as upon the orders of the day.
It is the proper duty of a representative body
to look diligently into every affair of government
and to talk much about what it sees. It is
meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to
embody the wisdom and will of its constituents.
Unless Congress have and use every means of
acquainting itself with the acts and the disposi-
tion of the administrative agents of the govern-
ment, the country must be helpless to learn how
it is being served ; and unless Congress both
scrutinize these things and sift them by every
form of discussion, the country must remain in
embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very
affairs which it is most important that it should,
understand and direct. The informing function
of Congress should be preferred even to its
legislative function. The argument is not only
that discussed and interrogated administration
is the only pure and efficient administration,
but, more than that, that the only really self-
governing people is that people which discusses
and interrogates its administration. The talk
304 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
on the part of Congress which we sometimes
justly condemn is the profitless squabble of
words over frivolous bills or selfish party issues.
It would be hard to conceive of there being too
much talk about the practical concerns and
processes of government. Such talk it is which,
when earnestly and purposefully conducted,
clears the public mind and shapes the demands
of public opinion.
Congress could not be too diligent about such
talking ; whereas it may easily be too diligent in
legislation. It often .overdoes that business. It
already sends to its Committees bills too many
by the thousand to be given even a hasty
thought; but its immense committee facilities
and the absence of all other duties but that of
legislation make it omnivorous in its appetite for
new subjects for consideration. It is greedy to
have a taste of every possible dish that may be
put upon its table, as an "extra" to the con-
stitutional bill of fare. This disposition on its
part is the more notable because there is cer-
tainly less need for it to hurry and overwork
itself at law-making than exists in the case of
most other great national legislatures. It is not
state and national legislature combined, as are
the Commons of England and the Chambers of
France. Like the Reichstag of our cousin
Germans, it is restricted to subjects of imperial
CONCLUSION. 305
scope. Its thoughts are meant to be kept for
national interests. Its time is spared the waste
of attention to local affairs. It is even forbid-
den the vast domain of the laws of property, of
commercial dealing, and of ordinary crime.
And even in the matter of caring for national
interests the way has from the first been made
plain and easy for it. There are no clogging
feudal institutions to embarrass it. There is no
long-continued practice of legal or of royal
tyranny for it to cure, no clearing away of
old debris of any sort to delay it in its exercise
of a common-sense dominion over a thoroughly
modern and progressive nation. It is easy to
believe that its legislative purposes might be
most fortunately clarified and simplified, were it
to square them by a conscientious attention to
the paramount and controlling duty of under-
standing, discussing, and directing administra-
tion.
If the people's authorized representatives do
not take upon themselves this duty, and by
identifying themselves with the actual work of
government stand between it and irresponsible,
half -informed criticism, to what harassments is
the executive not exposed? Led and checked
by Congress, the prurient and fearless, because
anonymous, animadversions of the Press, now so
often premature and inconsiderate, might be dis-
306 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
ciplined into serviceable capacity to interpret and
judge. Its energy and sagacity might be tem-
pered by discretion, and strengthened by knowl-
edge. One of our chief constitutional difficulties
is that, in opportunities for informing and guid-
ing public opinion, the freedom of the Press is
greater than the freedom of Congress. It is as
if newspapers, instead of the board of directors,
were the sources of information for the stock-
holders of a corporation. We look into corre-
spondents' letters instead of into the Congres-
sional Record to find out what is a-doing and
a-planning in the departments. Congress is al-
together excluded from the arrangement by which
the Press declares what the executive is, and
conventions of the national parties decide what
the executive shall be. Editors are self-consti-
tuted our guides, and caucus delegates our gov-
ernment directors.
Since all this curious scattering of functions
and contrivance of frail, extra-constitutional ma-
chinery of government is the result of that en-
tire separation of the legislative and executive
branches of the system which is with us so char-
acteristically and essentially constitutional, it is
exceedingly interesting to inquire and important
to understand how that separation came to be
insisted upon in the making of the Constitution.
Alexander Hamilton has in our own times, as
CONCLUSION. 307
well as before, been " severely reproached with
having said that the British government was the
4 best model in existence.' In 1787 this was a
mere truism. However much the men of that
day differed they were all agreed in despising
and distrusting a priori constitutions and ideally
perfect governments, fresh from the brains of vis-
ionary enthusiasts, such as sprang up rankly in
the soil of the French revolution. The Conven-
tion of 1787 was composed of very able men of
the English-speaking race. They took the system
of government with which they had been famil-
iar, improved it, adapted it to the circumstances
with which they had to deal, and put it into suc-
cessful operation. Hamilton's plan, then, like
the others, was on the British model, and it did
not differ essentially in details from that finally
adopted." * It is needful, however, to remember
in this connection what has already been alluded
to, that when that convention was copying the
English Constitution, that Constitution was in a
stage of transition, and had by no means fully
developed the features which are now recognized
as most characteristic of it. Mr. Lodge is quite
right in saying that the Convention, in adapting,
improved upon the English Constitution with
which its members were familiar, the Consti-
1 H. C. Lodge's A lexander Hamilt on (Am. Statesmen Series),
pp. 60, 61.
308 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
tution of George III. and Lord North, the Con,
stitution which, had failed to crush Bute. It
could hardly be said with equal confidence, how-
ever, that our system as then made was an
improvement upon that scheme of responsible
cabinet government which challenges the admi-
ration of the world to-day, though it was quite
plainly a marked advance upon a parliament
of royal nominees and pensionaries and a secret
cabinet of " king's friends." The English con-
stitution of that day had a great many features
which did not invite republican imitation. It
was suspected, if not known, that the ministers
who sat in parliament were little more than the
tools of a ministry of royal favorites who were
kept out of sight behind the strictest confidences
of the court. It was notorious that the sub-
servient parliaments of the day represented the
estates and the money of the peers and the in-
fluence of the King rather than the intelligence
and purpose of the nation. The whole " form
and pressure" of the time illustrated only too
forcibly Lord Bute's sinister suggestion, that
" the forms of a free and the ends of an arbitrary
government are things not altogether incompat-
ible." It was, therefore, perfectly natural that the
warnings to be so easily drawn from the sight of
a despotic monarch binding the usages and priv-
ileges of self-government to the service of his
CONCLUSION. 309
own intemperate purposes should be given grave
heed by Americans, who were the very persons
who had suffered most from the existing abuses.
It was something more than natural that the
Convention of 1787 should desire to erect a
Congress which would not be subservient and an
executive which could not be despotic. And it
was equally to have been expected that they
should regard an absolute separation of these
two great branches of the system as the only
effectual means for the accomplishment of that
much desired end. It was impossible that they
could believe that executive and legislature could
be brought into close relations of cooperation and
mutual confidence without being tempted, nay,
even bidden, to collude. How could either main-
tain its independence of action unless each were
to have the guaranty of the Constitution that its
own domain should be absolutely safe from in-
vasion, its own prerogatives absolutely free from
challenge ? " They shrank from placing sovereign
power anywhere. They feared that it would
generate tyranny ; George III. had been a tyrant
to them, and come what might they would not
make a George III." l They would conquer, by
dividing, the power they so much feared to see in
any single hand.
" The English Constitution, in a word," says
1 Bagehot, Eng. Const., p. 293.
310 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
our most astute English critic, " is framed on the
principle of choosing a single sovereign author-
ity, and making it good; the American, upon
the principle of having many sovereign author-
ities, and hoping that their multitude may atone
for their inferiority. The Americans now extol
their institutions, and so defraud themselves of
their due praise. But if they had not a genius
for politics, if they had not a moderation in
action singularly curious where superficial speech
is so violent, if they had not a regard for law,
such as no great people have ever evinced, and
infinitely surpassing ours, the multiplicity of
authorities in the American Constitution would
long ago have brought it to a bad end. Sensible
shareholders, I have heard a shrewd attorney
say, can work any deed of settlement; and so
the men of Massachusetts could, I believe, work
any constitution." 1 It is not necessary to assent
to Mr. Bagehot's strictures ; but it is not possible
to deny the clear-sighted justice of this criticism.
In order to be fair to the memory of our great
constitution-makers, however, it is necessary to
remember that when they sat in convention in
Philadelphia the English Constitution, which they
copied, was not the simple system which was be-
fore Mr. Bagehot's eyes when he wrote. Its
single sovereign authority was not then a twice-
1 Bagehot, Eng. Const., p. 296.
CONCLUSION. 311
reformed House of Commons truly representative
of the nation and readily obeyed by a responsible
Ministry. The sovereignty was at see-saw be-
tween the throne and the parliament, and the
throne-end of the beam was generally uppermost.
Our device of separated, individualized powers
was very much better than a nominal sovereignty
of the Commons which was suffered to be over-
ridden by force, fraud, or craft, by the real sov-
ereignty of the King. The English Constitution
was at that time in reality much worse than our
own ; and, if it is now superior, it is so because
its growth has not been hindered or destroyed
by the too tight ligaments of a written funda-
mental law.
The natural, the inevitable tendency of every
system of self-government like our own and the
British is to exalt the representative body, the
people's parliament, to a position of absolute
supremacy. That tendency has, I think, been
quite as marked in our own constitutional his-
tory as in that of any other country, though its
power has been to some extent neutralized, and
its progress in great part stayed, by those denials
of that supremacy which we respect because they
are written in our law. The political law written
in our hearts is here at variance with that which
the Constitution sought to establish. A written
constitution may and often will be violated in
312 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
both letter and spirit by a people of energetic
political talents and a keen instinct for pro-
gressive practical development; but so long as
they adhere to the forms of such a constitution,
so long as the machinery of government supplied
by it is the only machinery which the legal and
moral sense of such a people permits it to use,
its political development must be in many direc-
tions narrowly restricted because of an insuper-
able lack of open or adequate channels. Our
Constitution, like every other constitution which
puts the authority to make laws and the duty
of controlling the public expenditure into the
hands of a popular assembly, practically sets that
assembly to rule the affairs of the nation as
supreme overlord. But, by separating it entirely
from its executive agencies, it deprives it of the
opportunity and means for making its authority
complete and convenient. The constitutional
machinery is left of such a pattern that other
forces less than that of Congress may cross and
compete with Congress, though they are too
small to overcome or long offset it ; and the re-
sult is simply an unpleasant, wearing friction
which, with other adjustments, more felicitous
and equally safe, might readily be avoided.
Congress, consequently, is still lingering and
chafing under just such embarrassments as made
the English Commons a nuisance both to them-
CONCLUSION. 313
selves and to everybody else immediately after
the Revolution Settlement had given them their
first sure promise of supremacy. The parallel is
startlingly exact. " In outer seeming the Revo-
lution of 1688 had only transferred the sover-
eignty over England from James to William
and Mary. In actual fact it had given a power-
ful and decisive impulse to the great constitu-
tional progress which was transferring the sover-
eignty from the King to the House of Commons.
From the moment when its sole right to tax the
nation was established by the Bill of Rights,
and when its own resolve settled the practice of
granting none but annual supplies to the Crown,
the House of Commons became the supreme
power in the State. . . . But though the consti-
tutional change was complete, the machinery of
government was far from having adapted itself
to the new conditions of political life which such
a change brought about. However powerful the
will of the Commons might be, it had no means
of bringing its will directly to bear on the con-
trol of public affairs. The ministers who had
charge of them were not its servants but the
servants of the Crown ; it was from the King
that they looked for direction, and to the King
that they held themselves responsible. By im-
peachment or more indirect means the Commons
could force a king to remove a minister who
314 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
contradicted their will ; but they had no consti-
tutional power to replace the fallen statesman
by a minister who would carry out their will.
" The result was the growth of a temper in
the Lower House which drove William and his
ministers to despair. It became as corrupt, as
jealous of power, as fickle in its resolves and fac-
tious in its spirit as bodies always become whose
consciousness of the possession of power is un-
tempered by a corresponding consciousness of
the practical difficulties or the moral responsibil-
ities of the power which they possess. It grum-
bled . . . and it blamed the Crown and its min-
isters for all at which it grumbled. But it was
hard to find out what policy or measures it would
have preferred. Its mood changed, as William
bitterly complained, with every hour. . . . The
Houses were in fact without the guidance of rec-
ognized leaders, without adequate information,
and destitute of that organization out of which
alone a definite policy can come." 1
The cure for this state of things which Sun-
derland had the sagacity to suggest, and William
the wisdom to apply, was the mediation between
King and Commons of a cabinet representative
of the majority of the popular chamber, a first
but long and decisive step towards responsible
1 Green : Hist, of the English People (Harpers' ed.), iv., pp
58, 59.
CONCLUSION. 315
cabinet government. Whether a similar remedy
would be possible or desirable in our own case it
is altogether aside from my present purpose to
inquire. I am pointing out facts, diagnosing,
not prescribing remedies. My only point just
now is, that no one can help being struck by the
closeness of the likeness between the incipient
distempers of the first parliaments of William
and Mary and the developed disorders now so
plainly discernible in the constitution of Con-
gress. Though honest and diligent, it is meddle-
some and inefficient ; and it is meddlesome and
inefficient for exactly the same reasons that made
it natural that the post-Revolutionary parlia-
ments should exhibit like clumsiness and like
temper : namely, because it is " without the
guidance of recognized leaders, without adequate
information, and destitute of that organization
out of which alone a definite policy can come."
The dangers of this serious imperfection in
our governmental machinery have not been
clearly demonstrated in our experience hitherto ;
but now their delayed fulfillment seems to be
close at hand. The plain tendency is towards a
centralization of all the greater powers of gov-
ernment in the hands of the federal authorities,
and towards the practical confirmation of those
prerogatives of supreme overlordship which Con-
gress has been gradually arrogating to itself.
316 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
The central government is constantly becoming
stronger and more active, and Congress is es-
tablishing itself as the one sovereign authority in
that government. In constitutional theory and
in the broader features of past practice, ours has
been what Mr. Bagehot has called a " compos-
ite " government. Besides state and federal
authorities to dispute as to sovereignty, there
have been within the federal system itself rival
and irreconcilable powers. But gradually the
strong are overcoming the weak. If the signs
of the times are to be credited, we are fast ap-
proaching an adjustment of sovereignty quite as
" simple " as need be. Congress is not only to
retain the authority it already possesses, but is
to be brought again and again face to face with
still greater demands upon its energy, its wis-
dom, and its conscience, is to have ever-widening
duties and responsibilities thrust upon it, with-
out being granted a moment's opportunity to
look back from the plough to which it has set
its hands.
The sphere and influence of national adminis-
tration and national legislation are widening
rapidly. Our populations are growing at such a
rate that one's reckoning staggers at counting
the possible millions that may have a home and
a work on this continent ere fifty more years
shall have filled their short span. The East will
CONCLUSION, 317
not always be the centre of national life. The
South is fast accumulating wealth, and will
faster recover influence. The West has already
achieved a greatness which no man can gainsay,
and has in store a power of future growth which
no man can estimate. Whether these sections
are to be harmonious or dissentient depends
almost entirely upon the methods and policy of
the federal government. If that government be
not careful to koep within its own proper sphere
and prudent to square its policy by rules of na-
tional welfare, sectional lines must and will be
known ; citizens of one part of the country may
look with jealousy and even with hatred upon
their fellow-citizens of another part ; and faction
must tear and dissension distract a country which
Providence would bless, but which man may
curse. The government of a country so vast
and various must be strong, prompt, wieldy, and
efficient. Its strength must consist in the cer-
tainty and uniformity of its purposes, in its ac-
cord with national sentiment, in its unhesitating
* O
action, and in its honest aims. It must be stead-
ied and approved by open administration dili-
gently obedient to the more permanent judg-
ments of public opinion ; and its only active
agency, its representative chambers, must be
equipped with something besides abundant pow-
ers of legislation.
318 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
As at present constituted, the federal govern-
ment lacks strength because its powers are di-
vdded, lacks promptness because its authorities
are multiplied, lacks wieldiness because its proc-
esses are roundabout, lacks efficiency because its
responsibility is indistinct and its action with-
out competent direction. It is a government in
which every officer may talk about every other
officer's duty without having to render strict ac-
count for not doing his own, and in which the
masters are held in check and offered contradic-
tion by the servants. Mr. Lowell has called it
" government by declamation." Talk is not so-
bered by any necessity imposed upon those who
utter it to suit their actions to their words.
There is no day of reckoning for words spoken.
The speakers of a congressional majority may,
without risk of incurring ridicule or discredit,
condemn what their own Committees are doing ;
and the spokesmen of a minority may urge what
contrary courses they please with a well-grounded
assurance that what they say will be forgotten
before they can be called upon to put it into
practice. Nobody stands sponsor for the policy
of the government. A dozen men originate it ;
a dozen compromises twist and alter it ; a dozen
offices whose names are scarcely known outside
of Washington put it into execution.
This is the defect to which, it will be observed,
CONCLUSION. 319
I am constantly recurring; to which I recur
again and again because every examination of
the system, at whatsoever point begun, leads in-
evitably to it as to a central secret. It is the
defect which interprets all the rest, because it is
their common product. It is exemplified in the
extraordinary fact that the utterances of the
Press have greater weight and are accorded
greater credit, though the Press speaks entirely
without authority, than the utterances of Con-
gress, though Congress possesses all authority.
The gossip of the street is listened to rather
than the words of the law-makers. The editor
directs public opinion, the congressman obeys
it. When a presidential election is at hand, in-
deed, the words of the political orator gain tem-
porary heed. He is recognized as an authority
in the arena, as a professional critic competent
to discuss the good and bad points, and to fore-
cast the fortunes of the contestants. There is
something definite in hand, and he is known to
have studied all its bearings. He is one of the
managers, or is thought to be well acquainted
with the management. He speaks " from the
card." But let him talk, not about candidates,
but about measures or about the policy of the
government, and his observations sink at once
to the level of a mere individual expression of
opinion, to which his political occupations seem
320 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
to add very little weight. It is universally rec-
ognized that he speaks without authority, about
things which his vote may help to settle, but
about which several hundred other men have
votes quite as influential as his own. Legisla-
tion is not a thing to be known beforehand. It
depends upon the conclusions of sundry Stand-
ing Committees. It is an aggregate, not a sim-
ple, production. It is impossible to tell how
many persons' opinions and influences have en-
tered into its composition. It is even impracti-
cable to determine from this year's law-making
what next year's will be like.
Speaking, therefore, without authority, the
political orator speaks to little purpose when he
speaks about legislation. The papers do not re-
port him carefully ; and their editorials seldom
take any color from his arguments. The Press,
being anonymous and representing a large force
of inquisitive news-hunters, is much more power-
ful than he chiefly because it is impersonal and
seems to represent a wider and more thorough
range of information. At the worst, it can easily
compete with any ordinary individual. Its indi-
vidual opinion is quite sure to be esteemed as
worthy of attention as any other individual
opinion. And, besides, it is almost everywhere
strong enough to deny currency to the speeches
of individuals whom it does not care to report
CONCLUSION. 321
It goes to its audience ; the orator must depend
upon his audience coming to him. It can be
heard at every fireside ; the orator can be heard
only on the platform or the hustings. There is
no imperative demand on the part of the read-
ing public in this country that the newspapers
should report political speeches in full. On the
contrary, most readers would be disgusted at
finding their favorite columns so filled up. By
giving even a notice of more than an item's
length to such a speech, an editor runs the risk
of being denounced as dull. And I believe that
the position of the American Press is in this re-
gard quite singular. The English newspapers
are so far from being thus independent and self-
sufficient powers, a law unto themselves, in
the politics of the empire that they are con-
strained to do homage to the political orator
whether they will or no. Conservative editors
must spread before their readers verbatim re-
ports not only of the speeches of the leaders of
their own party, but also of the principal
speeches of the leading Liberal orators ; and
Liberal journals have no choice but to print
every syllable of the more important public ut-
terances of the Conservative leaders. The nation
insists upon knowing what its public men have
to say, even when it is not so well said as the
newspapers which report them could have said it.
21
322 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
There are only two things which can give any
man a right to expect that when he speaks the
whole country will listen : namely, genius and
authority. Probably no one will ever contend
that Sir Stafford Northcote was an orator, or
even a good speaker. But by proof of unblem-
ished character, and by assiduous, conscientious,
and able public service he rose to be the recog-
nized leader of his party in the House of Com-
mons ; and it is simply because he speaks as one
having authority, and not as the scribes of
the Press, that he is as sure of a heedful hear-
ing as is Mr. Gladstone, who adds genius and
noble oratory to the authority of established
leadership. The leaders of English public life
have something besides weight of character,
prestige of personal service and experience, and
authority of individual opinion to exalt them
above the anonymous Press. They have definite
authority and power in the actual control of
government. They are directly commissioned to
control the policy of the administration. They
stand before the country, in parliament and out
of it, as the responsible chiefs of their parties.
It is their business to lead those parties, and it
is the matter-of-course custom of the constituen-
cies to visit upon the parties the punishment due
for the mistakes made by these chiefs. They
are at once the servants and scapegoats of their
parties.
CONCLUSION. 323
It is these well-established privileges and
responsibilities of theirs which make their utter-
ances considered worth hearing, nay, neces-
sary to be heard and pondered. Their public
speeches are their parties' platforms. What the
leader promises his party stands ready to do,
should it be intrusted with office. This cer-
tainty of audience and of credit gives spice to
what such leaders have to say, and lends eleva-
tion to the tone of all their public utterances.
They for the most part avoid buncombe, which
would be difficult to translate into Acts of Par-
liament. It is easy to see how great an advan-
tage their station and influence give them over
our own public men. We have no such respon-
sible party leadership on this side the sea ; we
are very shy about conferring much authority
on anybody, and the consequence is that it
requires something very like genius to secure for
any one of our statesmen a universally recog-
nized right to be heard and to create an ever-
active desire to hear him whenever he talks, not
about candidates, but about measures. An ex-
traordinary gift of eloquence, such as not every
generation may hope to see, will always hold,
because it will always captivate, the attention of
the people. But genius and eloquence are too
rare to be depended upon for the instruction
and guidance of the masses ; and since our
824 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
politicians lack the credit of authority and re-
sponsibility, they must give place, except at
election-time, to the Press, which is everywhere,
generally well-informed-, and. always talking. It
is necessarily " government by declamation " and
editorial-writing.
It is probably also this lack of leadership
which gives to our national parties their curious,
conglomerate character. It would seem to be
scarcely an exaggeration to say that they are
homogeneous only in name. Neither of the two
principal parties is of one mind with itself.
Each tolerates all sorts of difference of creed
and variety of aim within its own ranks. Each
pretends to the same purposes and permits
among its partisans the same contradictions to
those purposes. They are grouped around no
legislative leaders whose capacity has been test-
ed and to whose opinions they loyally adhere.
They are like armies without officers, engaged
upon a campaign which has no great cause at its
back. Their names and traditions, not their
hopes and policy, keep them together.
It is to this fact, as well as to short terms
which allow little time for differences to come to
a head, that the easy agreement of congressional
majorities should be attributed. In other like
assemblies the harmony of majorities is con-
stantly liable to disturbance. Ministers lose
CONCLUSION. 325
their following and find their friends falling
away in the midst of a session. But not so in
Congress. There, although the majority is fre-
quently simply conglomerate, made up of fac-
tions not a few, and bearing in its elements
every seed of discord, the harmony of party
voting seldom, if ever, suffers an interruption.
So far as outsiders can see, legislation generally
flows placidly on, and the majority easily has
its own way, acting with a sort of matter-of-
course unanimity, with no suspicion of individual
freedom of action. Whatever revolts may be
threatened or accomplished in the ranks of the
party outside the House at the polls, its power is
never broken inside the House. This is doubt-
less due in part to the fact that there is no
freedom of debate in the House ; but there can
be no question that it is principally due to the
fact that debate is without aim, just because
legislation is without consistency. Legislation
is conglomerate. The absence of any concert of
action amongst the Committees leaves legislation
with scarcely any trace of determinate party
courses. No two schemes pull together. If
there is a coincidence of principle between
several bills of the same session, it is generally
accidental; and the confusion of policy which
prevents intelligent cooperation also, of course,
prevents intelligent differences and divisions.
826 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
There is never a transfer of power from one
party to the other during a session, because such
a transfer would mean almost nothing. The
majority remains of one mind so long as a Con-
gress lives, because its mind is very vaguely
ascertained, and its power of planning a split
consequently very limited. It has no common
mind, and if it had, has not the machinery for
changing it. It is led by a score or two of
Committees whose composition must remain the
same to the end ; and who are too numerous, as
well as too disconnected, to fight against. It
stays on one side because it hardly knows where
the boundaries of that side are or how to cross
them.
Moreover, there is a certain well-known piece
of congressional machinery long ago Invented
and applied for the special purpose of keeping
both majority and minority compact. The legis-
lative caucus has almost as important a part in
our system as have the Standing Committees,
and deserves as close study as they. Its func-
tions are much more easily understood in all
their bearings than those of the Committees,
however, because they are much simpler. The
caucus is meant as an antidote to the Commit-
tees. It is designed to supply the cohesive
principle which the multiplicity and mutual
independence of the Committees so powerfully
CONCLUSION. 327
tend to destroy. Having no Prime Minister to
confer with about the policy of the government,
as they see members of parliament doing, our
congressmen confer with each other in caucus.
Rather than imprudently expose to the world
the differences of opinion threatened or devel-
oped among its members, each party hastens to
remove disrupting debate from the floor of Con-
gress, where the speakers might too hastily
commit themselves to insubordination, to quiet
conferences behind closed doors, where fright-
ened scruples may be reassured and every disa-
greement healed with a salve of compromise or
subdued with the whip of political expediency.
The caucus is the drilling-ground of the party.
There its discipline is renewed and strengthened,
its uniformity of step and gesture regained.
The voting and speaking in the House are gener-
ally merely the movements of a sort of dress
parade, for which the exercises of the caucus
are designed to prepare. It is easy to see how
difficult it would be for the party to keep its
head amidst the confused cross-movements of
the Committees without thus now and again
pulling itself together in caucus, where it can
ask itself its own mind and pledge itself anew
to eternal agreement.
The credit of inventing this device is probably
due to the Democrats. They appear to have
828 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
used it so early as the second session of the
eighth Congress. Speaking of that session, a
reliable authority says: "During this session
of Congress there was far less of free and inde-
pendent discussion on the measures proposed
by the friends of the administration than had
been previously practiced in both branches of
the national legislature. It appeared that on
the most important subjects, the course adopted
by the majority was the effect of caucus arrange-
ment, or, in other words, had been previously
agreed upon at meetings of the Democratic
members held in private. Thus the legislation
of Congress was constantly swayed by a party
following feelings and pledges rather than ac-
cording to sound reason or personal conviction." l
The censure implied in this last sentence may
have seemed righteous at the time when such
caucus pledges were in disfavor as new-fangled
shackles, but it would hardly be accepted as just
by the intensely practical politicians of to-day.
They would probably prefer to put it thus :
That the silvern speech spent in caucus secures
the golden silence maintained on the floor of
Congress, making each party rich in concord
and happy in cooperation.
The fact that makes this defense of the caucus
aot altogether conclusive is that it is shielded
1 Statesman's Manual, i. p. 244.
CONCLUSION. 329
from all responsibility by its sneaking privacy.
It has great power without any balancing weight
of accountability. Probably its debates would
constitute interesting and instructive reading for
the public, were they published ; but they never
get out except in rumors ofter rehearsed and as
often amended. They are, one may take it for
granted, much more candid and go much nearer
the political heart of the questions discussed than
anything that is ever said openly in Congress to
the reporters' gallery. They approach matters
without masks and handle them without gloves.
It might hurt, but it would enlighten us to hear
them. As it is, however, there is unhappily no
ground for denying their power to override
sound reason and personal conviction. The cau-
cus cannot always silence or subdue a large and
influential minority of dissentients, but its whip
seldom fails to reduce individual malcontents
and mutineers into submission. There is no
place in congressional jousts for the free lance.
The man who disobeys his party caucus is under-
stood to disavow his party allegiance altogether,
and to assume that dangerous neutrality which
is so apt to degenerate into mere caprice, and
which is almost sure to destroy his influence by
bringing him under the suspicion of being unre-
liable, a suspicion always conclusively damn*
ing in practical life. Any individual, or any
330 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
minority of weak numbers or small influence,
who has the temerity to neglect the decisions of
the caucus is sure, if the offense be often repeat-
ed, or even once committed upon an important
issue, to be read out of the party, almost with-
out chance of reinstatement. And every one
knows that nothing can be accomplished in
politics by mere disagreement. The only privi-
lege such recalcitrants gain is the privilege of
disagreement ; they are forever shut out from
the privilege of confidential cooperation. They
have chosen the helplessness of a faction.
It must be admitted, however, that, unfortu-
nate as the necessity is for the existence of such
powers as those of the caucus, that necessity
actually exists and cannot be neglected. Against
the fatal action of so many elements of disin-
tegration it would seem to be imperatively need-
ful that some energetic element of cohesion
should be provided. It is doubtful whether in
any other nation, with a shorter inheritance of
political instinct, parties could long successfully
resist the centrifugal forces of the committee
system with only the varying attraction of the
caucus to detain them. The wonder is that,
despite the forcible and unnatural divorcement
of legislation and administration and the conse-
quent distraction of legislation from all atten-
tion to anything like an intelligent planning and
CONCLUSION. 331
superintendence of policy, we are not cursed
with as many factions as now almost hopelessly
confuse French politics. That we have had,
and continue to have, only two national parties
of national importance or real power is fortunate
rather than natural. Their names stand for a
fact, but scarcely for a reason.
An intelligent observer of our politics 1 has
declared that there is in the United States " a
class, including thousands and tens of thousands
of the best men in the country, who think it
possible to enjoy the fruits of good government
without working for them." Every one who has
seen beyond the outside of our American life
must recognize the truth of this ; to explain it is
to state the sum of all the most valid criticisms
of congressional government. Public opinion
has no easy vehicle for its judgments, no quick
channels for its action. Nothing about the sys-
tem is direct and simple. Authority is perplex-
ingly subdivided and distributed, and responsi-
bility has to be hunted down in out-of-the-way
corners. So that the sum of the whole matter
is that the means of working for the fruits of
good government are not readily to be found.
The average citizen may be excused for esteem-
ing government at best but a haphazard affair,
upon which his vote and all of his influence can
1 Mr. Dale, of Birmingham.
332 CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT.
have but little effect. How is his choice of a
representative in Congress to affect the policy of
the country as regards the questions in which he
is most interested, if the man for whom he votes
has no chance of getting on the Standing Com-
mittee which has virtual charge of those ques-
tions ? How is it to make any difference who
is chosen President? Has the President any
very great authority in matters of vital policy ?
It seems almost a thing of despair to get any
assurance that any vote he may cast will even
in an infinitesimal degree affect the essential
courses of administration. There are so many
cooks mixing their ingredients in the national
broth that it seems hopeless, this thing of chang-
ing one cook at a time.
The charm of our constitutional ideal has now
been long enough wound up to enable sober men
who do not believe in political witchcraft to
judge what it has accomplished, and is likely
still to accomplish, without further winding.
The Constitution is not honored by blind wor-
ship. The more open-eyed we become, as a
nation, to its defects, and the prompter we grow
in applying with the unhesitating courage of
conviction all thoroughly-tested or well-consid-
ered expedients necessary to make self-govern-
ment among us a straightforward thing of sim-
CONCLUSION. 333
pie method, single, unstinted power, and clear re-
sponsibility, the nearer will we approach to the
sound sense and practical genius of the great
and honorable statesmen of 1787. And the
first step towards emancipation from the timid-
ity and false pride which have led us to seek to
thrive despite the defects of our national system
rather than seem to deny its perfection is a
fearless criticism of that system. When we
shall have examined all its parts without senti-
ment, and gauged all its functions by the stand-
ards of practical common sense, we shall have
established anew our right to the claim of politi-
cal sagacity ; and it will remain only to act
intelligently upon what our opened eyes Isave
seen in order to prove again the justice of ou?
claim to political genius.
IKDEX.
Aberdeen, Lord, and civil service re-
form, 285.
Accounts, British public, how au-
dited, 144, how kept, 145 ; French
public, how kept, 145 : federal,
how audited, 175-179; how kept
formerly, 179.
Adams, John, on the constitutional
balances, 12, 13 ; influence of, as
President, 41 ; claim of originality
for the Constitution, 55, 249.
Adams, Samuel, 209.
"Address" of early Presidents to
Senate, 289.
Administration, talents for, not en-
couraged in U. S., 199, 200 ; ques-
tions of, now predominant, 203 ;
divorced from legislation in U.S.,
251-253 ; training necessary for,
255, 256 ; contrasted with legisla-
tion, 273, 274 ; not less important
than legislation, 297 ; must be de-
bated, 302 ; tendency towards wi-
dening sphere of national, 316,
317.
Alabama claims, in Senate, 51.
Alien and Sedition Laws, 21.
Amendment, difficulty of constitu-
tional, 242, 243; extra-constitu-
tional, 243.
"American system" of protective
tariffs, 167.
Appointing power of Speaker of
House, 103 ; history of, of Speaker,
104 ; accustomed use of, for party
ends, 108.
Appropriation, bills, " general,"
150 ; former methods of, 151 ;
stinginess of Congress in, 152,
159 ; bills, reported at any time,
153; bills, specially debated, 78,
154, 165, 183, 184; bills, in the
Senate, 165-158.
Appropriations, debate of, 78, 154,
166, 183, 184 ; " white-button man-
darins " of Committee on, 111 ;
Committee on, consider estimates,
149 ; " permanent," 162, 153 ;
Committee on, controls only an-
nual grants, 153; semi-annual,
159 ; Committees on, relations be-
tween, and financial officers of the
govt., 160-164 ; reports of Commit-
tee on, preferred to reports of Com-
mittee of Ways and Means, 174,
183, 184.
Audit of public accounts in Eng-
land, 144; in U. S., 175-179.
Bagehot, Walter, on living reality
and paper description of English
Constitution, 10; description of
Parliament by, applied to Con-
gress, 44 : on time required for
opinions, 130 ; on public opinion,
187; on House of Lords, 220; on
bicameral system, 221, 222; on
technicalities of constitutional in-
terpretation in U. S., 243; on
questions asked in the Commons,
300 ; on influence of Oeo. III. on
Constitution of U. S., 309 ; ou
multiplicity of authorities In
American Constitution, 309, 310.
Balance, between state and federal
powers, See ' Federal and State
governments ; ' between judiciary
and other branches of federal
govt., 34 et srq. ; between state
legislatures and the Senate, 40 ; of
the people against their represen-
tatives, 40 ; of presidential electors
against the people, 40 ; between
Executive and Congres, 41 ; be-
tween Senate and House of Rep-
resentatives, real, 228.
Balances of the Constitution, ideal,
62; present state of, 63 ; at vari-
ance with inevitable tendency to
exalt representative body, (ill.
336
INDEX.
Bank of the U. S., 22.
Bicameral system, utility of a, 219
el *tq.
Bill of Rights, and the Constitution
of the U. S., 7.
Bills, introduced on Mondays, 66:
early course of, in House, 67 ; all
committed, 67 ; doubt in commit-
ting some, 67, 68 ; fate of com-
mitted, 69 ; passed under suspen-
sion of Rules, 111, 112 ; of private
members in House of Commons,
120, 121.
Bismarck, Count, stands for govt. in
Germany, 59, 208.
" Bland Silver Bill," 185.
Bright, John, 198.
British govt. by party, 117 et seq.
Buckle, on use of legislation, 295.
Budget, controlled, not originated,
by British Ilouse of Commons,
137 ; preparation and submission
of, by English Chancellor of Ex-
chequer, 140-142 ; both originated
and controlled by Congress, 148,
191.
Burke, Edmund, 209; on value of
House of Commons, 227.
Cabinet, discords in first, 2 ; change
in character of, 45 et seq. ; real ex-
ecutive equality of, with President,
46, 257 ; diminishing power of,
to control policy, 46, 47, 262, 269 ;
parliamentary position of British,
95 ; British, a single Standing
Committee, 117 ; irresponsibility
of, in U. S., in matters of finance,
164 ; an integral part of the Ex-
ecutive, 257; limits to independ-
ence of, 258 ; relations of, to Presi-
dent, 258, 259 ; ministerial, rather
than political, officers in U. S.,
261, 264 tt seq., 291; duties of,
supervised by Standing Commit-
tees, 262 ; in the leading-strings of
Congress, 262, 266 ; fixed terms of,
261, 264 et seq. ; represent whom?
265, 266 ; party relations of, 269 ;
easily evade many questions and
commands of Congress, 271, 272 ;
indistinct responsibility of, 282 ;
history of responsibility of British,
286 et'se.q. ; status of, in American
constitutional system, 291.
Calhoun, J. C., 89, 218.
Call of States for bills, 66 ; of Stand-
ing Committees for reports, 72, 73.
Canning, George, 209.
Caucus, failure of congressional
nominating, 247 ; legislative, dis-
ciplines parties in Congress, 326,
327 ; invention of, by Democrats,
327, 328 ; privacy and irrespon-
sibility of legislative, 328, 329 ;
methods and constraints of legis-
lative, 329, 330 ; necessity for leg-
islative, 330.
Centralization, present tendency
towards, in federal govt. and
Congress, 53, 315, 316 ; questions
which seem to necessitate, 54.
Chairman of Standing Committees,.
fovt. by, 102 ; elders of Congress,
02 ; relations of, to each other,
102, 103; limits to leadership of
each of the, 205.
Chatham, Earl of, 209, 258.
Civil Rights Act, 33, n.
Civil Service Reform, and usurpa-
tions of Senate, 49, 236 et seq.;
hindered by institutional causes
in U. S., 285, 290 ; history of, in
Great Britain, 285 ft seq. ; history
of, in U. S., 289, 290; conditions
precedent to, 290.
Clay, Henrv, S9, 218, 252.
Cloture in French Assembly, 126.
Cobden, Richard, 198.
Coinage Act of 1873, 185.
Commerce, federal power over, 30,
31 ; former control of appropria-
tions for internal improvements
by Committee on, 167.
Commission, legislative, proposed by
J. S. Mill, 115, 129, 192 ; the most
effective legislative, 192.
Committee, " Executive," proposed
4or House of Representatives, 114.
Committees, select, 67.
Committees, Standing, government
by, 56; chairmen of, leaders of
House, 60 ; chairmen of, do not
consult or cooperate, 61 ; for every
topic of legislation, 61 ; served by
rules of Ilouse, 6'i, 71 ; number
and uses of, 67, 68; consider all
bills, 67 ; overlapping jurisdiction
of, 68 ; cannot reject bills, 69 ;
neglect of, to report, 69, 70 ; en-
tire direction of legislation by, 70,
78 ; hasty consideration of reports
of, by House, 71 ; four specially
licensed, 71, 72 ; average time
given to each of the, to report, 72 ,
call of, for reports, 72, 73 ; hasten-
ing of business by the, 74 ft stq. ;
control of debate by, 75 et srq. ; ar-
guments before the, 81-85 : divis-
ion of power amongst the, 92 ; both
INDEX.
337
parties represented on, 99 ; ap-
pointed in House by Speaker, 103 ;
, history of rules of appointment of,
104 ; aided by Speaker, 108 ; Ro-
man magistrates and the, 109 ;
" little legislatures " made up of
all sorts of men, 113: contrasted
with Mngle Standing Committee of
Parliament, 116, 117 : of House of
Commons, 122 ; which control na-
tional income, 136 ; which create
demands upon the Treasury, 167,
168 : on expenditures, 175-177 ;
multiplication of, by Congress,
17G, n. ; approachability of the,
by lobbyists, 189, 190 ; choice of,
in the Senate, 212, n. : supervision
of the departments by the, 231,
262, 271, 272 ; may command, but
cannot superintend, 271 ; part of
the mechanism of Congress, 281 ;
offset by legislative caucus, 326.
Commons, House of, represented by
Ministers of Crown, 59, 244 ; char-
acter of debate in the, 94, 95;
Cabinet's place and functions in
the, 117 et *eq : private members'
bills in the, 120, 121 ; committees
of, 122 : functions and character
of Speaker of, 122 ; the, in session,
123 ; compared with French Cham-
ber, 123, 128, 129 ; controls, does
not originate, financial measures,
137 : opposition of, to civil service
reform, 285, 2-9 ; cross-examina-
tion of Ministers in, 300.
Conference Committees on appropri-
ation bills, 157, 158, 280.
Congress, the centre and source of
power, 11 ; early awkwardness of,
21, 44; made dominant and irre-
sistible by doctrine of " implied
powers,'' 23 ; check upon, by Ju-
diciary, 35, 36 ; power of, over
federal courts, 38 ; check upon,
by President, 41 ; quick assump-
tion of control by, 44, 45; enlarged
powers of, created by efficiency of
organization, 47 ; prominence of
Senate in contest? with executive,
47 et seq.; proper central object
of constitutional study, 67 ; com-
plex organization of, 58 ; without
authoritative leaders, 69, 92, 205,
212, 815 : embarrassments of new
member in, 61 ft seq. ; work of,
parceled out to Committees, 67;
delays of each new, in getting to
work, 72, 73; uninteresting char-
acter of debate in, 95, 96 ; meant)
22
of financial control by, 147; su-
pervision of expenditures by, 175,
179 ; difficulties of constituencies
in controlling, 186-189 ; cause for
distrust of, 186 et seq. : lobbying
in, 189, 190 ; failure of presidential
nominating caucus of, 247 : does
not breed administrators, 251, 252 ;
and the Executive, party diversity
between, 267 ; defective means of,
for controlling executive action,
270 et seq., 3u2 : and the Execu-
tive, absence of confidential co-
operation between, 278 ; exactions
of, upon the departments, 178,
279 ; diligence of, in legislation,
294, 297 ; necessity for discussion
of administration by, 301 ft ffq. ;
informing function of, to be mag-
nified, 303 ; grasps after new sub-
jects of legislation, 304 ; freedom
of action possible to, 304, 305 : in-
ferior to the Press as a critical au-
thority, 306, 319 ; embarrassments
of, in making its authority opei.
and respectable, 312 et st'j. ; and
Parliament succeeding Revolution
settlement in Eng.,315; without
adequate information, 315 ; ten-
dency towards concentration of
federal powers in h:\ncls of, 315,
316 ; irresponsibility of, 318 : agree-
ment and stability of majorities
in, 324 et seq. ; parties in, disci-
plined by caucus, 326, 327.
Conkling, Roscoe, resignation of,
from Senate, 237.
Constituencies, difficulties of, in con-
trolling Congrei^, 186-189.
Constitution, The, its wayward for-
tunes, 1 ; difficulties attending
adoption of, 2 ; outward conform-
ity to principles of, in former
times, 3; present attitude of criti-
cism toward, 5 ; its change of sub-
stance and persistency of form, 7 ;
growth of, 7 ; elementary struc-
ture of, 8 ; in operation and in
the books, 9, 10 ; " literary the-
ory " of, 12 ; " implied powers "
of, 22 ft seq. ; centre of all early
political contests, 190 et set/. ; ques-
tions of interpretation of, not now
urgent, 202 ; practically amended
without being constitution!! lly
amended, 242 : modeled after tha
English Constitution, 307 et set/. ;
Bagehot on multiplicity of au.
thorities in, 3011, 310; forms of,
hold Congress back, from making
838
INDEX.
its power convenient and honest,
312.
Consultation between President and
Senate, not real, 232 et req. ; means
of, between President and Senate.
234.
Contingent Fund of Treasury Dept.,
fraudulent use of, 178.
Convention, Constitutional, of 1787,
268, 284, 807, 309.
Convention, national nominating,
real functions of a, 245 ** seq. ;
minority representation in compo-
sition of a, 246; conditions sur-
rounding choice of a candidate by
a, 250, 251 ; does not pick from
Congress, 251, 252.
Coo ley, Judge, on balance between
state and federal govts., 17, 18;
on checks upon federal encroach-
ment, 33, 34 : on judicial control
of the Executive, 35 ; on the orig-
inality of the Constitution, 65, 56 :
incompleteness of constitutional
view of, 56, 67.
"Courtesy " of the Senate, 238.
Criticism, necessity for a new, of
constitutional methods, 53 et seq. ;
former methods of constitutional,
57 ; Congress central object of con-
stitutional, 57; of legislation by
Senate, 219.
Cromwell, Oliver, 207, 208.
Cushman, Samuel, 89.
Dale, Mr., on indifference of public
opinion in U. S., 331.
Debate, time for, and conditions of,
in House, 75 et seq. ; importance
of, 78 ; on Ways and Means and
Appropriations, 78 ; absence of in-
stinct of, in House, 79 ; relegated
to Standing Committees, 81, 82 ;
in Standing Committees, 81 ; value
of, in Committees, 82 ; kind of,
necessary, 85 ; physical limitations
of, in House, 86 et seq. ; in early
Houses', 89, 90 ; uninteresting and
uninstructive character of, in Con-
gress, 95, 96, 101, 184, 185, 293;
parliamentary, centres about Min-
istry, 95 : necessity for, under re-
sponsible Cabinet govt., 119 ; in
French Assembly, 125 et seq. ; of
appropriation bills, 154, 155, 183,
184 ; of all financial questions by
Congress, 183 ; in Senate, 211, 216
et seq. ; in Congress, directed at
random, 298 ; chief use of public,
in representative bodies, 299 et
seq. ; of administration, cannot be
too much of, in Congress, BU4.
Deficiency Bills, 159.
Democracy, limited in U. S. by
Senate, 226.
Denmark, treaty with, in regard to
St. Thomas, in Senate, 50, 61.
Departments, communications of,
with Appropriation Committees
concerning estimates, 160-164 ;
present methods of book-keep! ns;
in the, 163 ; heads of, make in-
terest with Appropriation Com-
mittees, 163 ; Senate's share in
control of the, 231 ; and Congress,
defective means of cooperation be-
tween, 270, 271 ; demoralizing re-
lations of, with Congress, 277, 278 ;
exactions of Congress upon, 278,
279 ; objects of suspicion because
of their privacy, 299, 300.
Eaton, D. B., on civil service reform
in Great Britain, 285.
Education, federal aid to, 29.
Election, Senate shielded by the
method of its, 224 : of President,
real method of, 243 et seq. i vir-
tual, by nominating conventions,
245.
Electors, presidential, balanced
against people, 40 ; agents of
nominating conventions, 245, 250 ;
history of action of, 246, 247, 250.
Ellsworth, Oliver, on veto power,
52.
Embargo, the, 21.
English Constitution, likeness be-
tween the, and that of U. S., 7,
307 et feq. ; character of, when
Constitution of U. S. was formed,
307, 308, 310, 311
Estimates, in House of Commons,
137 ; preparation of the federal,
148, 149 ; federal, go to Commit-
tee on Appropriations, 149 ; com-
munications and conferences be-
tween Appropriation Committees
and the departments concerning,
160-164 ; thoroughness of later,
163.
Exchequer, Chancellor of, prepara-
tion and submission to Commons
of budget by, 140-142 ; represented
by House Committee of Ways and
Means, 170 ; financial policy of,
compared with policy of House
Committee of Ways and Means.
171-175.
Executive, 242-293; relations of.
INDEX.
339
with Senate, 230 et seq. ; really
chosen by representative, deliber-
ative body, 244; and legislative
service divorced in U. S., 251-253;
the President not all of the, 257 ;
elements constituting the, in U. S.,
259 ; functions bestowed upon the
Secretaries, 260 ; and Congress,
party diversity between, 267 ;
Roger Sherman upon real char-
acter of, 268 ; and Congress, de-
fective means of cooperation be-
tween, 270 rt seq. ; responsibility
of, and civil service reform, 285
et stq. ; suspected because not
clearly visible through Congress,
299, 300 ; embarrassed by half-
informed criticism, 305.
Expenditure, questions of, discon-
nected from questions of supply,
174, 175 : supervision of, by Con-
gress, 175-179.
Federal govt., the, early weakness
and timidity of, 18, 19 ; growth in
self-confidence and power of, 19,
20 ; first questions that engaged
the attention of, 20 ; brought to
every man's door, 25 : supervision
of elections by, 27 : highest point
of aggression of, 33 ; advantage of
indirect taxation to, 133 ; necessity
for two chambers in, 221. 222 ; pos-
sible paralysis of, in emergencies,
282 ; rapidly widening sphere of,
316, 317 ; weakness of our present,
318.
Federal and state govts., balance
between, 13 ; object of balance be-
tween, 14 ; early conditions of
balance between, 15 ; Hamilton on
balance between, 16, 17 : present
inefficacy of balance between, 17 ;
balance between, destroyed by doc-
trine of "implied powers," 23;
balance between, dependent on
federal judiciary, 24 ; balance be-
tween, prejudiced by internal im-
provements, 28, and by federal
power over commerce, 30, 31 ; bal-
ance between, last pictured in
" reconstruction,'' 32, 33.
Federalist, the, quoted, 16, 17.
Ferry, M. Jules, 248.
Killmore, President, 259.
Finance, loose govt. practices con-
cerning, 130, 131 ; comparatively
unembarrassed character of Amer-
ican, 135 ; necessity for responsi-
bility in direction of, 135 ; shifting
character of federal, 135, 136;
number of Committees control-
ling, in Congress, 136; adminis-
tration of, in England, 137-146:
administration of, in U. 8., 146
el seq. t 280 : Senate Committee on,
169 ; confusion of public opinion
in regard to action of Congress
upon, 2SO.
Financial, officials, accessibility of
English, in the Commons, 146,
147; officials, separation of, from
Congress in the U. S., 147 ; officials,
mere witnesses in U. S., 164; offi-
cials, irresponsibility of, for esti-
mates in U. S., 164 ; system of
U. S. contrasted with that of Eng.,
180 ; system of U. S., incoberency
of, 180, 181 : policy of Congress,
shifting character of, 181, 182 ;
legislation, prominent place of,
in congressional business, 183 ;
questions, control of, by Commit-
tees in Senate, 212, n. ; questions,
confusion of public opinion re-
garding action of Congress upon,
280.
Fish, Secretary, and treaty with
Denmark, 51.
Foreign relations, principal concern
of federal govt. during first quar-
ter century, 43; band of Senate
in, 49 et seq., 232 et seq. ; no real
' consultation between President
and Senate concerning, 232 ; Sen-
ate Committee on, 234.
France, public accounts, how kept
in, 145; Ministry, how chosen in,
244.
French Assembly, organization of,
1'23; parties in, 124; proceedings
of, 125 et seq. ; compared with
House of Representatives and
House of Commons, 127-129.
French Revolution, 20, 43.
Froude, J. A., on political orators,
215.
Gallatin, Albert, 181.
George III., 187, 308, 309.
Gladstone, U'm. E., 59 ; on direct
and indirect taxes, 134 ; 209, 322.
Government, by chairmen of Stand-
ing Committees, 102 ; by Standing
Committees, contrasted with govt.
by responsible Ministry, 116 ft
S'q. ; conditions of perfect par-
ty, 267, 268; "by declamation,' 1
318.
Grant, President, and treaty witl)
340
INDEX.
Denmark, 51 ; nominates Smythe,
235.
Green, J. II.. on Parliament and
public opinion under Geo. III.,
187, 188 ; on temper and embar-
rassments of the Parliament suc-
ceeding the Revolution Settlement
in Kugland, 313, 314.
Grevy, President, 248.
Hall of House of Representatives,
size of, 86 et seg .
Hamilton, Alex., on balance between
state and national govts., 16, 17 :
influence of, upon early policy of
govt., 21; advocacy of protective
duties, 22 ; announces doctrine of
"implied powers,'' 22: 181, 259,
306, 307.
Hampden, John, 208.
Henry, Patrick, 209.
Hoar, G. F., Senator, on time for re-
porting given to Committees, 72 ;
on suspension of the Rules in
HOUSH, 111, 112.
House of Commons, See ' Commons,
House of.'
House of Lords, Bagehot on the,
220.
House of Representatives, See ' Rep-
resentatives, House of.
Impeachment, 275, 276.
" Implied powers," enunciated by
Hamilton, 22; sustained national
bank, 22 ; McCulloch v. Maryland,
23 ; a vigorous principle of con-
stitutional growth, 23 : effect of,
upon status of States, 23, 24 ; prac-
tical issue of doctrine of, 25 et
seg.
Internal Improvements, 28 ; moral
effect of, upon state policy, 29 :
history of policy of, 165-167 ; sums
appropriated for, 167 ; character of
opposition to, 197.
Jackson, President, 166, 204: why
chosen President, 252 ; 259, 266.
James II., 213.
Jefferson, Thos., leads his party as
President, 41, 204, 252.
Johnson, President, contest of, with
Senate, 49.
Judiciary, power of, to control Ex-
ecutive, 34, 35 ; power of, to con-
trol Congress, 35, 36 ; change of
party color in, 37 ; power of Con-
gress over, 33, 39.
Judiciary Act of 1789, 39.
Kentucky, protest of, against Alien
and Sedition Laws, 21.
Leaders, absence of authoritative, in
Congress, 53, 92, 205, 212, 315;
lacking in parties of U. S., 187 ;
raised up by the constitutional
struggles before the war, 199 ft
teq. ; slavery and anti-slavery, 201,
202 ; no offices for political, in
U. S., 203 ; training necessary for,
255, 256 ; political, authority of,
in England, 3^3.
Leadership, conditions of political,
in U. S., 204 et seq., 323 ; charac-
ter of legislative, 206 ft seq. ; lack
of, in Senate, 212, 213 ; the prize
of, 214 ; lack of, in U. S. makes
parties conglomerate, 324.
" Legal tender '' decision, 33, n., 38.
Legislation, characterof, determined
by privileges of Committees and
necessity for haste, 74 ; compro-
mise character of, in Congress,
101 ; conglomerate and heteroge-
neous, 113, 325 ; part of President
in, by virtue of veto power,
260, 2H6 ; and administration con-
trasted, 273, 274 ; Buckle on pres-
ent value of, 295 ; nature of pres-
ent task of, 295, 296 ; generates
legislation, 297 ; not more impor-
tant than administration, 297 ;
general function of, 301, 302 ;
tendency toward widening sphere
of, 316, 317.
Legislative service divorced from
Executive, in U. S., 251-253.
" Letter " of Secretary of Treasury
to Congress, 149, 153.
Lincoln, President, 259, 283, n.
" Literary theory " of the Constitu-
tion, 12, 268, 284; marred by
growth of federal powers, 30.
Lobbying in Congress, 189, 190.
Lodge, 11. C., quoted with regard to
Hamilton, 21, 22.
" Log-rolling,'' 169.
Lords, House of, Bagehot on, 220.
Louisiana, purchase of, 20, 43.
Lowell, J. R., on "government by
declamation, ' : 318.
Macaulay, criticism of legislative
leadership by, 207.
Machiavelli, on responsibility of
ministers, 275.
Maclav, Win., Sketches of First Sen-
ate by, quoted, 24, n.
McMaster, J. B., quoted, 19.
INDEX.
341
Madison, President, 165 , refuses to
meet Senate, 234, n.
Mngna C'arta, and the Constitution
of U. S., 7.
Member, the new, embarrassments
of, in the House, 61 et seq.
Members, suppression of iudepend-
ence and ability amongst, in the
House, by the Rules, 110.
Membership, of Senate, made up by
promotions from House, 210 ; of
Senate, biennially renewed in part,
228, 229.
Mill, J. S., " legislative commis-
sion" proposed by, 115, 129, 192.
Ministry, parliamentary debate cen-
tres around British, 95 ; disinte-
grate, in Congress, 102 ; parlia-
mentary position of British, 95,
244 ; British, a single Standing
Committee of Parliament, 117 ;
necessity of public debate to Brit-
ish, 119 ; British, compared with
French, 123, 124, 129 ; history of
parliamentary responsibility of
British, 286-288.
Monroe, President. 165, 252.
" Morning hours,'' 73.
Nation, the, letter to, on federal
financial system, quoted, 191 ; on
status of Cabinet, quoted, 269.
National sovereignty, growth of sen-
timent of, 31, 32 ; sentiment of,
makes advent and issue of the war
inevitable, 32.
Newcastle, Duke of, 236.
Nominations, the Senate and, 235 ;
popular interest attaching to ac-
tion of Senate on, 236, 237 ; of
Presidents by conventions, virtual
character of, 245.
North, Lord, 287, 308.
Northcote, Sir Stafford, 322.
Offices, political and non-political,
290, 291.
Orators, character of the ruling, of
our race, 208 et seq. ; natural lead-
ers of a self-governing people, 209 ;
Froude on political, 215 ; political,
without authority or responsibil-
ity in U. S., 319 ft seq. ; political
weight of, in England, 321-324.
Otis, James, 209.
Parties, vagueness of responsibility
of, for legislation in U. 8., 96-101 ;
both, represented on Standing
Committees, 99 ; in U. S., absence
of responsible organization in, 187 ;
in U. S., headless, conglomerate
character of, 324 ; in Congress,
discipline of, 32t5, 327 ; in Cou-
gress, kept together by caucus,
330.
Parton, on purposes of a national
parliament, 250, 251.
Party, govt. by, practical necessity
for, 97 et seq. ; organization, out-
side Congress, 98 ; inside Congress,
99 ; choice of Speaker by, 107 ;
govt. by, perfected in British sys-
tem, 117 et seq. ; diversity between
Executive and Congress, 207 : con-
ditions of govt. by, 287, 268; re-
lations of President and Cabinet,
269 ; insignificance of Cabinet,
270 ; leaders in England, weight
and position of, 322.
Peel, Sir Kobt., 209; on questions
asked Prime Minister in the Com-
mons, 300.
Pension Act, in 48th Congress, 79-81.
" Permanent appropriations,'' 152,
153.
Pitt, VVm., 209 ; elected to rule Com-
mons, 249.
Political discretion of President and
Congress, 34, 35.
Power, diffusion of, in Congress,
92, 206 ; irresponsible, 92, 93, 314 ;
and accountability, 283, 284.
Presidency, tendency to raise gov-
ernors of States to the, 253.
President, the, and Supreme Court,
relations between, 35 ; independ-
ence and influence of, 41 ; de-
clining prestige of office of, 43;
belittled by growth of congres-
sional power, 43 ; and Cabinet,
division of labor between, 45, 46 ;
veto power of, 52, 260 ; and Sen-
ate, no real consultation between,
232 et seq. ; irresponsible dictation
of Senate to, 238, 239 ; functional
contrast of, with English Prime
Minister, 249 ; conditions sur-
rounding choice of a, by conven-
tion, 25'), 251 ; character of usual
functions of, 254 ; not all of the
Executive, 257 ; relations of, to
Cabinet, 258, 259 ; De Tocquoville
on position of , 266, n. ; party rela-
tions of, 269 ; party insignificance
of, 270 ; iind Congress, defective
means of cooperation between,
270, 271.
President of French Assembly, fumy
tions and powers of, 125, 126.
342
INDEX.
Presidents, character and influence
of the early, 41 ; decline of char-
acter of, along with crystalliza-
tion of electoral system, 42 ; real
method of electing, 243 et seq.
Press, the, political influence of, in
U. S., 305, 306, 319-321 ; in Eng-
land, subordinate to political lead-
ers, 321.
Previous Question, 75, 90 ; in the
Senate, 211, n., 218.
Prime Minister, method of selecting
a, in England and France, 248 ;
and President, contrast between,
249 ; questions asked the, in House
of Commons, 300.
Printing, prerogatives of Committee
on, 71, 72 ; of unspoken speeches,
" Private bill day,'' 73.
Protective policy of Committee of
Ways and Means, 172-174.
Public life, conditions of, in U. S.,
195 et sec/. ; in England, 214 ; at-
tractiveness of leadership in, 214.
Public opinion, not instructed by
congressional debate, 101 ; diffi-
culties of, in understanding and
controlling Congress, 186-189: not
led in U. S.', 187 ; distrust of Con-
gress by, 188 ; confusion of, with
regard to congressional policy,
280 ; instruction of, important
duty of representative assembly,
297 tt seq. ; information of, by in-
quisitive public body, 300, 301 ;
leaders of English, 322 : paralysis
of, in U. S., 331.
Pulteney, 286, 287.
Randolph, John, 89 ; interview of,
with Treasury officials, 162, 163.
"Reconstruction," reflected altered
condition of balance between state
and federal govts., 32, 33.
"Record," Congressional, unspoken
speeches in, 91 ; little read, 94.
Reform Bill of 1832 in England,
220.
Reichstag, consent of, necessary to
policy in Germany, 59.
Reports, of Standing Committees,
time given to, 72 ; backed by
neither party , 96 ; thoroughly con-
sidered in early Congresses, 106 ;
of Committee on Appropriations,
privileges of, 153, 164 ; of Confer-
ence Committees, extraordinary
privilege of, 168 ; annual, of Treas-
ury, referred to Committee of
Ways and Means, 170, 171 ; ol
Committee on Appropriations pre-
ferred to reports of Committee of
Ways and Means, 174.
Representative assemblies, duties
and means of, in instructing pub-
lic opinion, 298 etseq. ; supremacy
of, in every system of self-govern-
ment, 311.
Representative government, govern-
ment by advocacy, 208.
Representatives, House of, 58-192 ;
position of Speaker in, 59, 103-108 ;
led by chairmen of Standing Com-
mittees, 60 ; multiplicity of leaders
in, 61 ; rules of, restrain individual
activity, 63 ; introduction of bills
in, 64 ; bills in, introduced on
Mondays, 66 ; early course of bills
in, 67, 68 ; daily course of busi-
ness in, 73 ; press of time in busi-
ness of, 74, 90 ; conditions of de-
bate in, 75 ft seq. ; absence of
instinct of debate in, 79 ; best
discussion impossible in, 86 ; hall
of, 86, 87 ; debate in, in former
times, 89 ; compared with Ro-
man assembly, 109 ; concentration
of federal power in, 110 ; suspen-
sion of rules of, to pass bills,
111, 112 ; compared with British
Commons, 116 et sfq. ; with Eng-
lish and French chambers, 129 ;
disintegrate character of, 210 ;
" latent unity " of, with Senate,
224.
Responsibility, of administrators, to
representative chamber for ineffi-
ciency, 274, 276, 277 ; of ministers
Machiavelli on, 275 ; scattering of,
by federal constitutional system,
281 : with power, 283, 284 ; of Ex-
ecutive, and civil service reform,
285 el seq. ; history of ministerial,
in England, 286 et seq.
Resumption Act of 1875, 185.
Revenue, controlled by House Com-
mittee of Ways and Means and
Senate Committee on Finance,
169 ; policy of Committee of Ways
and Means and of English Chan-
cellor of Exchequer, 171-175 ; sub-
ordinate to Supply in Congress,
174, 175.
Revolution, English, of 1688, char-
acter of Parliament succeeding the,
313.
Revolution, French, 20, 43.
Rivers and Harbors, Committee on,
165 ; prerogatives of Committee
INDEX.
343
on, 167 ; Committee on, and " log-
rolling, 1 ' 168.
Rockingham, Lord, 287.
Roman assembly and House of Rep-
resentatives, 109.
Rosebery, Lord, on the Senate, 228.
Rule* of House, restrict individual
activity of members of House, 63 ;
support privileges of Standing
Committees, 66, 71, 74 ; complex-
ity of, 73, 74 ; principle of, 74 ;
readopted biennially, 104 ; repress
independence and ability, 110 ;
oligarchy of Committee on, 111 ;
suspension of, to pass bills, 111,
112.
St Thomas, treaty with Denmark
regarding island of, 50, 51.
Secession, character of contest over,
198, 199.
Senate, the, 193-241 ; overt char-
acter of contests of, with Presi-
dent, 48 ; efforts of, to control
nominations, 49 ; usurpations of,
and civil service reform, 49 ; semi-
executive powers of, in regard to
foreign policy, 49 et seq. ; and
treaty with Denmark, 50 ; and
Alabama claims, 51 : thoroughness
of discussion in, 94 ; amendment
of appropriation bills by, 155, 156 ;
usual estimates of, 193, 194 ; char-
acter and composition of, 194, 195 ;
conditions of public life, shaping
character of, 195 ft seq ; a select
House of Representatives, 210 ;
contrasts of, with the House, 211 ;
organized like the House, 212 ;
choice of Committees in, 212 ; ab-
sence of leadership in, 213 et seq. ;
character of debate in, 216 et aeq. ;
equality of, with House of Repre-
sentatives, 223 ; and House of Rep-
resentatives, " latent unity " be-
tween, 224 ; not a class chamber,
225 ; limits democracy in Consti-
tution, 226 ; dignity and remove
from popular heat of, 227 ; a real
check upon the House, 228 ; lia-
bility of, to biennial change in
membership, 228. 229 ; " slow and
steady' 1 forms of, 230; share of,
in control of executive depart-
ments, 231 ; and President, no real
consultation between, 232 et seq. ;
and President, means of consulta-
tion between, 231 ; and nomina-
tions, 235 et seq. ; " courtesy " of,
238 ; irresponsible dictation of. to
President. 238.
Sherman, Roger, 268.
Silver Bill, the Bland, 185.
Slavery, character of contest over,
198-202, passim.
Smith, Robt., Secretary of Treasury,
162.
Smythe, nominated Minister to St.
Petersburg by Pres. Qrant, 236.
Speaker, of House of Representa-
tives, appoints leaders of House,
60; prerogatives of, 103-108; ap-
points Standing Committees, 103 ;
history of appointing power of,
104 ; power of appointing of, re-
newed with Rules, 105 ; chosen by
party vote, 107 ; personal char-
acter of, 107 ; use of power by,
in constituting and aiding Commit-
tees, 108 ; concentration of power
in hands of, 110, 111 ; of House of
Commons, functions and character
of, 122.
Stages of national political growth,
before civil war, 200 ; since, 202.
" Star Route '' trials, 178, n.
State and federal governments, bal-
ance between, See ' Federal and
state governments. '
States, the, disadvantages of direct
taxation to, 133.
Sumner, Chas., Chairman Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations,
235.
Sumner, Prof. W. G., on task of
legislator, 296.
Sunder land, Karl of, 314.
Supervision of elections by federal
govt., 27.
Supply, Committee of, in House of
Commons, 137-139 ; vital character
of votes of, in House of Commons.
139 ; Committee of, in House of
]!epresentatives, 154 ; questions of,
take precedence of questions of
revenue in Congress, 174.
Surpluses, 173, 174, 179.
Suspension of Rules, bills passed un-
der a, in House, 111, 112.
Swiss Constitution and bicameral
system, 221.
Tariff of 1833, character of contest
over, 198.
Taxation, sensitiveness of people
concerning, 131 ; direct and indi-
rect, 132, J33 ; Mr. Gladstone on
direct and indirect, 134 J direct, by
344
INDEX.
States, indirect, by federal govt.,
133.
Telegraph lines, constitutional in-
terpretation in connection with,
30, 31.
Tenure of Office Act, 49, 277.
Terms of office, short, 256 ; of the
Secretaries, 261, 264 et seq.
Tocqueville, De, on position of Pres-
ident, 266, n.
Townshend, Chas., 207, 208.
Treasury, accessibility of heads of
British, in the Commons, 146, 147 ;
" Letter " from Secretary of, 149 ;
annual reports of, referred to Com-
mittee of Ways and Means, 170 ;
character of annual reports of,
170, 171 ; Secretary of, duties of,
26-3 ; non-political character of
functions of Secretary of, 264.
" Tribune " of French Assembly,
127, 128.
Turgot, M., on bicameral system of
U. S.,220.
Van Buren, Martin, 259.
Veto, power of, 52, 260.
Vice-Presidejit, the, 240, 241.
Victorian Parliament, two chambers
of, 223.
Virginia, protest of, against Alien and
Sedition Laws, 21.
Walpole, Sir Robt., 208, 286.
War, change wrought by the civil,
in constitutional methods and in
constitutional criticism, 5 et seq. ;
the civil, a struggle between na-
tionality and principles of disin-
tegration, 32 ; opened a new period
of public life in U. S., 195.
Washington, antagonisms in first
Cabinet of, 2 ; influence of the
Executive under, 41, 246, 252, 269.
Ways and Means, debate of, 78 ;
" Brahmins " of Committee of,
111 ; chairmen of, federal Chan-
cellors of Exchequer, 134 ; prefer-
ence of Committee of, for indirect
taxation, 134 ; Committee of, in
House of Commons, 139-144 ;
weight of votes of Committee of,
in Commons, 14ii : House Com-
mittee of, formerly controlled ap-
propriations, 161 ; character of
Committee of, 170 ; policy of C m-
mittee of, compared with policy
of English Chancellor of Exche-
quer, 171-175 ; reports of, deferred
to reports of Committee on Appro-
priations, 174, 183, 184.
" Ways and Means-Bills,'' 143. 144.
Webster, Daniel, 89, 204, 218, 252,
259.
William the Silent, 207, 208.
William III., 313, 314.
Windham, Wm., 207, 208.
Year, British financial, 140 ; federal
financial, 148.
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