tion of another bill to the number of the regular annual grants. As regularly as the annual session. opens there is a Deficiency Bill to be considered.” * The restrictions of time have much to answer for in this somewhat tumultuous financial method. The conference must be resorted to, otherwise Congress would have to accept the discomforts of an extra-session, or, in the case of the short session ending on the 4th March, the House, if it failed to come to an agreement with the Senate, would have to leave the appropriations to be made by the next House. In the London newspapers of the 5th March we have the following telegram, describing the close of the last Congress :-" Congress has adjourned after a twenty-six hours' session, during which an enormous amount of business was done in a scandalously confused manner, almost irrespective of the merits of the measures passed. An extra-session will thus probably be obviated, although the failure of several Appropriation Bills will result in an embarrassing increase of surplus in the Treasury."

The last words quoted point to one reason why financial questions bulk so largely in the Federal legislature. They largely involve two great questions of policy-the policy of Protection and the policy of Internal Improvement. The latter is a consequence and a palliative of the former. It is only since 1870, according to Mr. Wilson, that schemes of internal improvement became part of the permanent policy of

* The quotations are from Wilson's "Congressional Governments."

the Federal Government. They were by some regarded as inconsistent with the principles of the Constitution; but "the admission of new States, lying altogether away from the sea, and therefore quite unwilling to pay the tariffs which were building up the harbours of their eastern neighbours, without any recompensating advantage to themselves, who had no harbours, 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-highways and the perfecting of the sea-gates of commerce. The inland States were silenced, because satisfied, by a share in the benefits of the national aid, which, being no longer indirect, was not confined to the sanctioning of the State tariffs, which none but the seaboard commonwealths could benefit by, but which consumers everywhere had to pay." The competition for these grants in aid of local purposes is one of the characteristic features of Congress, and it is here that the combination known as "log-rolling" has full play. No doubt a habit, not unknown among ourselves, has been engendered in the States of looking to the Central Government for pecuniary aid to schemes of local improvement which might better be left to local authorities, or possibly even to private enterprise. In this practice, however, is to be found another of those centripetal forces, undesigned by the framers of the Constitution, which counteract the possible disruptive tendencies of a system of State Governments.

THE STATE LEGISLATURES.—As Congress is the type of all legislative bodies in the United States, it is unnecessary to dwell at any length on the constitutional features of the Home Rule Parliaments of the several States. In character and capacity they must necessarily vary with the intellectual and moral qualities and resources of the States to which they belong. They are, of course, inferior to the Federal Legislature, and approach more nearly to the type of municipalities. Assembling for comparatively short sessions, they do not require in their members a permanent devotion to public life. The State capital, as compared with Washington, is at home, and the ordinary citizen can be freely drawn up to serve in a Legislature without any serious disturbance of his usual avocations. The Home Rule Parliaments may therefore be regarded as assemblies of unprofessional politicians. They are the average men of business, lawyers, farmers, or workmen, who for that occasion have been selected by their neighbours to represent them. A seat in the State Legislature is a position which may naturally come to any man, whether he specially affects an interest in politics or not. A seat in Congress is a vocation, and compels the possessor to become a professional politician, in the good, and not in the bad sense of that term.

No detailed characterisation of so many legislative bodies need be attempted here, and there must be few men competent to speak from actual knowledge of the whole of them. But on many points any

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one Legislature may doubtless be taken as fairly typical of all. A young American politician, who has acquired a unique position for himself as a man of leisure, taking seriously to politics as a career in the English fashion, has written an account of his experiences as a member of the State Legislature of New York.* In the opinion of Mr. Roosevelt, the State Legislature of New York stands "about on a par with those of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Illinois, above that of Louisiana, and below those of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Dakota, as well as below the National Legislature at Washington." This average Parliament is, according to Mr. Roosevelt, neither wholly good nor wholly bad. The writer exhibits with perfect frankness all aspects of the State Legislature. His estimate appears to be that about one-third of the members are corrupt, onethird honest, and the remaining third weak and open to temptation. The worst members were those sent up by the great cities, where politics had fallen under the control of the machine and the "boss." Many members were absolutely owned, either by bosses or by wealthy individuals or firms, who had found it necessary for the protection of their pecuniary interests to have "representatives" of their own in the Legislature. The employer in these cases pays for the election of his men, with little regard to mere political issues. Where these are only concerned, the mem

* Phases of State Legislation, by Theodore Roosevelt, Century Magazine, April 1885.

ber, says Mr. Roosevelt, is free to follow his own inclination; but when the property of his employer is concerned, he must come to heel. Mr. Roosevelt, who is himself a conspicuously honourable public man, is constrained to admit that the feeling against corporations and capital in general is such that these deplorable precautions are scarcely to be condemned. On the other hand, the character of the methods adopted by the corporations for self-protection is such that their success tends to exasperate this hostile feeling. A stranger in the United States, after a careful study of the newspapers during a political campaign, might be excused for thinking that the question of monopolies was the really dividing issue between parties. The term "monopoly" is used with a generous breadth of meaning, extending to all considerable aggregations of capital, whether in the hands of individuals or companies. Hence measures aimed at "monopolies" are among the most popular of platform schemes. Two facts peculiar to American enterprise go far to explain and justify this feeling. The immense accumulation of power and resources in single corporations is one; the other is the extent to which individuals control these corporations. A great railroad company may become the despot of a State or of several States, and the great company may itself be under the absolute dominion of one powerful stockholder. Corporations of all kinds suffer from this hostile feeling, which is really due to the enormous influence acquired by the individuals