speaker are not so distinctly audible as are the ineffectual rappings of his restless gavel. Naturally, therefore, very few members try to speak. They do not covet an opportunity to do so, in a hall which none but the clearest and strongest voice could fill, even if the silence of attention were vouchsafed. However frequent one's visits to the capitol, he will seldom find the House engaged in debate. When some member, more daring, more determined, more hardy, or more confident than the rest, does essay to address the House, he generally finds that it will not listen, and that he must content himself with such audience as is given him by those in his immediate neighborhood, who are so near him that they cannot easily escape listening. His most strenuous efforts will not avail to make members in distant seats conscious that he is on the floor. They are either indifferent to what he is saying, or prefer to read it in the "Record" to

morrow.

This, then, is seemingly a most singular assembly. It seldom engages in lengthy debate, being apparently content to leave that dignified and generally unexciting exercise to the Senate; whose hall is, because of its smaller size, better suited for such employments, and where greater decorum prevails. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the careless manners of the House betoken idleness. Its sessions are, on the contrary, generally quite busy. It has been known to pass thirty-seven pension bills at one sitting. The chief end of its rules is expedition in business, and such wholesale legislation is, accordingly, not only possible but usual; for, be it remembered, the House does not have to digest its schemes of legislation. It has Standing Committees which do its digesting for it. It deliberates in fragments, through small sections of its membership, and when it comes together as a whole, votes upon the bills laid before it by these authoritative Committees, with scant meas

ure of talk.

It is this plan of entrusting itself to the guidance of various small bodies of its members that distinguishes our House of Rep

resentatives from the other great legislative bodies of the world. It is not peculiar in being omnipotent in all national affairs; the Commons of England and the Assembly of France are equally omnipotent; but it is peculiar in being awkward at exercising its omnipotence. Though, as a matter of fact, above the Executive in undisputed supremacy; though the President and his Cabinet are its servants; though they must collect and expend the public revenues as it directs; must observe its will in all dealings with foreign States, are dependent upon it for means to support both army and navy-nay, even for means to maintain the departments themselves; though they are led by it in all the main paths of their policies, and must obey its biddings even in many of the minor concerns of every-day business; though whenever it chooses to interfere, it is powerful to command: it is altogether dissociated from the Executive in its organization, and is often mightily embarrassed in wielding its all-embracing authority. It directs the departments; but it stands outside of them, and can know nothing clearly of their operation.

Its immediate agents in its guidance of executive affairs are its Standing Committees. Constrained to provide for itself leaders of some sort or other, Congress has found them in certain small and select bodies of men, to whom it has entrusted the preparation of legislation. It could not undertake to consider separately each of the numberless bills which might be brought in by its members. If it were to undertake to do so, its docket would become crowded be yond all hope of clearance, and its busines fall appallingly into arrears. It must facil tate its business by an apportionment of la bor, and by dividing make possible the tas of digesting this various matter.

Accordingly, it has set up numerous Stan ing Committees, whose duty it is to prepa legislation and to act as its immediate agen in all its dealings with the executive depa ments. The Secretary of the Treasury mu heed the commands of the Finance Co mittee of the Senate and the Ways

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Means Committee of the House; the Secretary of State must in all things regard the will of the Foreign Affairs Committees of both Houses; the Secretary of the Interior must suffer himself to be bidden, now by the Committees on Indian Affairs, now by those on the Public Lands, and again by those on Patents. The Secretary of War must assiduously do service to the Committees on Military Affairs; to still other committees the Postmaster-General must render homage; the Secretary of the Navy must wear the livery of the Committees on Naval Affairs; and the Attorney-General must not forget that one or more of these eyes of the Houses are upon him. There are Committees on Appropriations, Committees on the Judiciary, Committees on Banking and Currency, Committees on Manufactures, Committees on Railways and Canals, Committees on Pensions and on Claims, Committees on Expenditures in the several Departments, and on the Expenditures on Public Buildings, committees on this and committees on that, committees on every conceivable subject of legislation.

And these Standing Committees are very selfish. Congress, by spoiling them with petting, has made them exacting. It indulges their every whim; for the rules of the House of Representatives provide for the expedition of business by securing beyond a peradventure the supremacy of its committees. Full of puzzling intricacies and complicated checks as these rules seem, this is their very simple purpose. There must be the utmost possible limitation of debate. Every session, of course, a great many bills, sometimes several thousand, are introduced by individual members, and there is not time to discuss or even to vote upon them all. Accordingly, the right of individual representatives to have their proposals separately considered must be sacrificed to the common convenience. The bills which are sent by scores to the clerk's desk every week when the roll of States is called are, therefore, all sent to the Standing Committees. Scarcely a topic can be touched which does not fall within the province of one or anoth

er of these committees, and so no bill escapes commitment.

But a bill committed is a bill doomed. Suppose, for example, that the Appropriations Committee has fifty or a hundred bills referred to it—and that would doubtless be much fewer than usual-how can there be a separate report upon each? Time would not serve for such an undertaking. The committee must simply reject utterly most of the bills, and, having from the remainder culled the provisions they like, frame for submission to the House a comprehensive scheme of their own. As a rule, therefore, the debates of the House of Representatives are confined to the reports of the committees, and even upon these reports the House does not care to spend much time. Consequently, its debates upon their contents can seldom with strict accuracy be called debates of the House. They are in the House, but not of it. The period of debate and the number of speakers are usually limited by rule. So long a time, and so long only, is devoted to each discussion, and during that time the members of the reporting committee are accorded right of precedence for the presentation of their views upon the subject in hand, other members gaining the floor only when committeemen are courteous enough to give way to them.

The House makes its nearest approach to business debate when in Committee of the Whole. Then something like free and effective discussion takes place. Even then, however, members are not given unlimited scope.

They must not talk longer than five minutes at a time. Though the House is no longer the House, and has put on the free habits of committee work, it still retains its predilections, and still binds itself by rules which are stingy of time to those who would speak. Five-minute speeches, moreover, gain little more attention than is vouchsafed to the one-hour speeches of committeemen during a regular session; for the Committee of the Whole is no better listener than its other self, the House. Members are almost quite as noisy and inattentive as when the Speaker is in his chair.

advocates of special measures to present their arguments at length before it. But any committee that pleases may shut its doors against all comers and sit in absolute secrecy.

On what grounds a committee acted is seldom clearly made known to the public. Why this or that bill, which was introduced by some member and referred without debate to the committee, was rejected by it no one can easily tell. The minutes of the committee, if any were kept, are not accessible, and all that appears from the journals of the House is that the committee, when it reported, said nothing of the bill in question. The public, in short, can know little or nothing about the motives or the methods of the Standing Committees: and yet all legislation may be said to originate with them, and to pass through all its stages under their direction.

The feature, therefore, which distinguishes our national legislation from that of other nations is, that it is the fruit of this unique system of Committee government, which we may claim the credit of having invented. In our Federal relations, we are directed by laws issuing from the privacy of irresponsible committees, and promulgated without debate.

These committees are the wheels of the American system: but it is not in them that its motive power resides. We have not seen the whole of our machinery of government until we have visited that caucus where all the fires of legislative action are kindled. There are caucuses and caucuses, separat ing themselves into two principal kinds, nominating and legislative. Of the first sort are those small bodies, too often bands of schemers and office-holders, of idlers and small "bosses," which meet in every election district, however little, to nominate candidates for local officers; those larger bodies, which generally work themselves into a heat of vexation and intrigue in naming insignificant men for State offices; and those great stormy conventions whose frenzy gives birth to a "ticket " for President and Vice-President of the Union. All office-holders, from townclerks through Congressmen to Presidents, are children of caucuses of this pattern. But

these are not the caucuses with which we are now most concerned; these are not the cau cusus which immediately dominate legislation. Of such authority is the caucus legislative, the deliberative party committee. Representatives of the same party, when assembled in Congress or in State Legislature, feel bound to do whatever they do in most inviolate concert: so they whip themselves together into deliberative caucus. If any doubt at any time arise as to the proper course to be taken in regard to any pending measure, there must be secret consultations in supreme party caucus, in order that each partisan's conscience may be relieved of all suspicion of individual responsibility, and the forces of the party concentrated against the time for actual voting. The Congressional caucus rooms are the central chambers of our Constitution.

The caucus was a natural and legitimate, if not healthy off-spring of our peculiar institutions. Legislative caucuses and even nominating caucuses were necessitated by the complete separation of the legislative and executive departments of our government. By reason of that separation Congress is made supreme within the sphere of the Federal authority. There is none to compete with it. To it belongs the hand of power-the power of the purse and of the lawand it has naturally stretched forth that hand to brush away all obstacles to the free exercise of its sovereignty. But, although always master, it was at first, as has been said, embarrassed to find efficient means of exercising its mastery. It was, from the beginning, a rather numerous body, and in order to rule with vigor it was necessary that it should itself be ruled. It was, however, so organized, and so isolated from the other branches of the Federal system, as to render any authoritative personal leadership impracticable. There could scarcely be in either House any man or body of men able from sheer supremacy of genius or influence of will to guide its actions and command its deliberations. Some man of brilliant argumentative gifts and conspicuous sagacity might gain temporary sway by reason of his eloquence or a

but, however transcendent his talents, how ever indisputable his fitness for the post, he could never constitute himself the official leader of the Legislature; nor could his fellow members ever invest him with the rights of command. Manifestly, however, the House must have leadership of some kind. If no one man could receive the office of command, it must be given to sub-committees to bodies small enough to be efficient, and yet so numerous that predominant power would be within the reach of no one of them. In such bodies, accordingly, it was vested; and so birth was given to that gov ernment by committees which now flourish es in such luxuriant vigor.

But that very feature of Committee gov ernment which makes it seem to many persons the best conceivable legislative mechanism, is the principal cause of its clumsiness, and is that which makes the Congressional caucus an absolute necessity. It is because the committees are too numerous to combine for purposes of rule; because they cannot act in concert; because there is and can be no coöperation amongst them; because, instead of acting together, they must frequently work at cross-purposes; because there can be no unity or consistency in their policy; because they are disintegrate particles of an inharmonious whole, that the deliberative party caucus exists and is all-powerful. either of the national parties is to follow any distinct line of action, it must make its determinations independently of its representatives on the committees, who cannot act with that oneness of purpose which is made possible only by prevised combination. The party itself must come together in committee whenever, in critical seasons of doubt, it is necessary to assure itself of its own unity of purpose. It does so come together, and its deliberations are known as the sittings of a caucus. Such, therefore, was the natural and inevitable generation of the caucus legislative.

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How the caucus legislative grew strong and bold, and how finally it has usurped the highest seats of government, or how the

it is not in this place needful to relate. Suffice it to say that, as everybody knows, it has at length come to pass, by reason of the power of caucuses, that we are governed by a narrow oligarchy of party managers, that we have no great harmonious party majorities, that factions are supreme; factions manipulating caucuses and managing conventions; factions sneaking in committee rooms and pulling the wires that move Mr. Speaker; factions in the President's closet and at governors' ears; that cliques scheme and "bosses" manage.

None can doubt, therefore, that we are fallen upon times of grave crisis in our national affairs, and none can wonder that disgust for our present system speaks from the lips of citizens respectable both for numbers and for talents. Every day we hear men speak with bitter despondency of the decadence of our institutions, of the incompetence of our legislators, of the corruption of our public officials, even of the insecurity of our liberties. Nor are these the notes of a tocsin which peals in the ears of only a few panic-struck brains. The whole nation seems at times to be vaguely and inarticulately alarmed, restlessly apprehensive of some impending calamity. Not many years ago it required considerable courage to question publicly the principles of the Constitution; now, whenever the veriest scribbler shoots his small shafts at that great charter, many wise heads are wagged in acquiescent approval. It is too late to laugh at these things. When grave, thoughtful, perspicacious and trusted men all around us agree in deriding those "Fourth of July sentiments" which were once thought to hallow the lips of our greatest orators and to approve the patriotism of our greatest statesmen, it will not do for us, personifying the American eagle, to flap wing and scream out incoherent disapproval. If we are to hold to the old faith, we must be ready with stout reasons wherewith to withstand its assailants. will not suffice to say, “These are the glo rious works of our revered ancestors; let no profane voices be lifted up against them, no

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