This discontinuousness of political life in America, coupled with the conditions under which Congress carries on its work, tends to prevent the growth of a class of great Parliamentarians, such as we have never been without. The "professional politician" abounds, but he is a totally different kind of person. He is never out of politics, but it does not follow that he should ever be in the Legislature, or even in office. His business is to control the elections by which these places are filled. It is unfortunate that he should be the most conspicuous type of perseverance in political pursuits in the United States.

To turn from the structure of the Legislature to its methods, we have to remark, in the first place, the absence of the guidance of an official Ministerial group. With us, both Houses depend absolutely on the lead of the Ministry for the time being, and the chief of the Ministerial group is the leader of the House. In America, the Ministry, in the State as well as in the National Government, is an external body to the Legislature. Its members are not, and cannot be, members of either House. With us, the Ministry are at once the servants and the masters of the House of Commons. Their existence depends on the support of a majority, but while they exist they are charged with the initiative and active control of the operations of the House. In Congress each House is its own master, and organises itself, the House of Representatives under the Speaker, an officer of vast power and importance; the Senate, under the Vice-Presi

dent of the United States, a personage of much inferior influence. The difference in numbers of the two Houses necessitates different modes of doing business. The Senate is a chamber of seventy-six members, and the House at present numbers 325. The Senate is the more leisurely, the more orderly, and the more dignified body, being in these respects as much superior to the House of Representatives as the House of Lords is, with more or less reason, alleged to be to the House of Commons. The House of Representatives, as becomes the more popular branch, is more hurried and tumultuous in its conduct of business, and more under the necessity of subjecting itself to stringent rules of procedure. Thus in the House of Representatives the previous question, which sweeps away all amendments and stops all debate, is in constant operation, but no such closure has been necessary in the Senate.

The methods of legislature are best seen perhaps in the larger body. The House of Representatives, although much larger than the Senate, is yet less than half the size of the House of Commons. The number of 325 members would seem to us admirably adapted for thorough yet not excessive debate; and if the House of Commons were reduced to that number much of the necessity for closure rules would pass away. The most remarkable thing about the American House is that it does not appear to be a debating chamber at all. A recent writer speaks of "the entire absence of the instinct of debate" among its members, and

"their apparent unfamiliarity with the idea of combating a proposition by argument."* One reason for

this state of things is to be found in the physical conditions under which the proceedings of the House are carried on. Members are scattered over a large chamber, where "each member has a roomy desk and an easy revolving 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 outer limits of the wide passages that lie beyond the bar, an immense spacious chamber, disposing its giant dimensions freely beneath the great level lacunar ceiling, through whose glass panels the full light of day pours in." † In such a chamber it must be a matter of extreme difficulty to gain the ear of the House, and the successful and stentorian orator who accomplishes that feat is said to draw about him a crowd of curious listeners from all parts of the House, much as such an orator might collect a knot of hearers at an open-air meeting. "Let the reader," says a writer in the Century,‡ "go and sit for a time in the gallery of the House of Representatives and watch that national bear-garden; let him enjoy the usual scene-one purple-faced representative sawing the air in the progress of what is technically called 'an oration,' a dozen or more highly amused colleagues surrounding him, and the rest of the members talking *Woodrow Wilson's "Congressional Government," p. 79. November 1886.

Wilson, p. 86.

at the top of their voices, clapping their hands for pages, writing, reading, telling funny stories, and laughing uproariously at them, making social calls from desk to desk, doing anything and everything except the business for which they are paid."

This strange Parliamentary habit might doubtless be altered considerably if the representatives were crowded into a chamber like the British House, which is small enough even for conversational discussion; but a more serious difficulty lies in the rules and methods of procedure which govern the course of business, and the most serious of these is the wholesale devolution of power and responsibility on standing committees. There are some forty-seven or forty-eight standing committees in the House of Representatives, to one or other of which all bills are referred. "Besides the great Committee of Ways and Means, and the equally great Committee on Appropriations, there are standing committees on Bank and Currency, on Claims, on Commerce, on the Public Lands, on Post-offices and Railroads, on the Judiciary, on Public Expenditure, on Manufactures, on Agriculture, on Military Affairs, on Mines and Mining, on Education and Labour, on Patents, and on a score of other branches of legislative concern."* The number of these committees is constantly increasing. The first and second readings of a bill are mere formalities; the only occasion for dispute arises on the question to which committee a particular bill is to be

* Wilson, p. 68.

referred, for on that reference the fate of the bill generally depends. The third reading would appear to be, so far as the House is concerned, as purely formal an affair as the first and second. "There is one principle which runs through every stage of the procedure, and which is never disallowed or abrogated -the principle that the committee shall rule without let or hindrance." * The House parts with its power to small groups of its own members.

But the excessive extension given to the principle of devolution is not the most remarkable thing in this remarkable system. The procedure by committees offends our Parliamentary sense by the despotism and the secrecy of their arrangements. These quæstiones are not even elected by the House in its collective capacity; they are nominated by the Speaker. And the committees themselves have not the power of electing their own chairman; they, too, are appointed by the Speaker. Within the committee the chairman appears to be a sort of constitutional despot, for it is he who selects the business to be laid before his committee; on that selection the fate of most bills necessarily depends. The number of legislative proposals is so large that only a small percentage of them can be overtaken, and the chairman of a committee can kill a bill by the simple expedient of keeping it out of the way. The massacre of the innocents," which in England marks the close of a session, is going on all the year round, and it is massacre by * Wilson, p. 74.