attitude was purely accidental, and disappeared with its transitory cause.

The real differences between the two bodies are due to the smaller size of the Senate, and the consequent greater facilities for debate, to the somewhat superior capacity of its members, to the habits which its executive functions form in individual senators, and have formed in the whole body.

In Europe, where the question as to the utility of second chambers is actively canvassed, two objections are made to them, one that they deplete the first or popular chamber of able men, the other that they induce deadlocks and consequent stoppage of the wheels of government. On both arguments light may be expected from American experience.

Although the Senate does draw off from the House many of its ablest men, it is not clear, paradoxical as the observation may appear, that the House would be much the better for retaining those men. The faults of the House are mainly due, not to want of talent among individuals, but to its defective methods, and especially to the absence of leadership. These are faults which the addition of twenty or thirty able men would not cure. Some of the committees would be stronger, and so far the work would be better done. But the House as a whole would not (assuming its rules and usages to remain what they are now) be distinctly a greater power in the country. On the other hand, the merits of the Senate are largely due to the fact that it trains to higher efficiency the ability which it has drawn from the House, and gives that ability a sphere in which it can develop with better results. Were the Senate and the House thrown into one, the country would suffer more, I think much more, by losing the Senate than it would gain by improving the House, for the united body would have the qualities of the House and not those of the Senate.

Collisions between the two Houses are frequent. Each is jealous and combative. Each is prone to alter the bills that come from the other; and the Senate in particular knocks about remorselessly those favourite children of the House, the appropriation bills. The fact that one House has passed a bill goes but a little way in inducing the other to-pass it; the Senate would reject twenty House bills as readily as one. Dead

locks, however, disagreements over serious issues which stop the machinery of administration, are not common. They rarely cause excitement or alarm outside Washington, because the country, remembering previous instances, feels sure they will be adjusted, and knows that either House would yield were it unmistakably condemned by public opinion. The executive government goes on undisturbed, and the worst that can happen is the loss of a bill which may be passed four months later. Even as between the two bodies there is no great bitterness in these conflicts, because the causes of quarrel do not lie deep. Sometimes it is self-esteem that is involved, the sensitive selfesteem of an assembly. Sometimes one or other House is playing for a party advantage. That intensity which in the similar contests of Europe arises from class feeling is absent, because there is no class distinction between the two American chambers. Thus the country seems to be watching a fencing match rather than a combat à outrance.

I dwell upon this substantial identity of character in the Senate and the House because it explains the fact, surprising to a European, that two perfectly co-ordinate authorities, neither of which has any more right than its rival to claim to speak for the whole nation, manage to get along together. Their quarrels are professional and personal rather than conflicts of adverse principles. The two bodies are not hostile elements in the nation, striving for supremacy, but servants of the same master, whose word of rebuke will quiet them.

The United States is the only great country in the world in which the two Houses are really equal and co-ordinate. Such a system could hardly work, and therefore could not last, if the executive were the creature of either or of both, nor unless both were in close touch with the sovereign people.

When each chamber persists in its own view, the regular proceeding is to appoint a committee of conference, consisting of three members of the Senate and three of the House. These six meet in secret, and generally settle matters by a compromise, which enables each side to retire with honour. When appropriations are involved, a sum intermediate between the smaller one which the House proposes to grant and the larger one desired by the Senate is adopted. If no compromise can be arranged, the conflict continues till one

side yields or it ends by an adjournment, which of course involves the failure of the measure disagreed upon.

In a contest the Senate usually, though not invariably, gets the better of the House. It is smaller, and can therefore more easily keep its majority together; its members are more experienced; and it has the great advantage of being permanent, whereas the House is a transient body. The Senate can hold out, because if it does not get its way at once against the House, it may do so when a new House comes up to Washington. The House cannot afford to wait, because the hour of its own dissolution is at hand. Besides, while the House does not know the Senate from inside, the Senate, many of whose members have sat in the House, knows all the "ins and outs" of its rival, can gauge its strength and play upon its weakness.

CHAPTER XVIII

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON CONGRESS

AFTER this inquiry into the composition and working of each branch of Congress, it remains for me to make some observations which apply to both Houses, and which may tend to indicate the features that distinguish them from the representative assemblies of the Old World. The European reader must bear in mind three points which, in following the details of the last few chapters, he may have forgotten. The first is that Congress is not, like the Parliaments of England, France, and Italy, a sovereign assembly, but is subject to the Constitution, which only the people can change. The second is, that it neither appoints nor dismisses the executive government, which springs directly from popular election. The third is, that its sphere of legislative action is limited by the existence of forty-five governments in the several States, whose authority is just as well based as its own, and cannot be curtailed by it.

I. The choice of members of Congress is locally limited by law and by custom. Under the Constitution every representative and every senator must when elected be an inhabitant of the State whence he is elected. Moreover, State law has in many, and custom practically in all States, established that a representative must be resident in the congressional district which elects him. The only exceptions to this practice occur in large cities where occasionally a man is chosen who lives in a different district of the city from that which returns

1 The best legal authorities hold that a provision of this kind is invalid, because State law has no power to narrow the qualifications for a Federal representative prescribed by the Constitution of the United States. And Congress would probably so hold if the question arose in a case brought before it as to a disputed election. So far as I have been able to ascertain, the point has never arisen for determination.

him; but such exceptions are rare. This restriction, inconvenient as it is both to candidates, whose field of choice in seeking a constituency it narrows, and to constituencies, whom it debars from choosing persons, however eminent, who do not reside in their midst, seems to Americans so obviously reasonable that few persons, even in the best educated classes, will admit its policy to be disputable. In what are we to seek the causes of this opinion?

First. In the existence of States, orginally separate political communities, still for many purposes independent, and accustomed to consider the inhabitant of another State as almost a foreigner. A New Yorker, Pennsylvanians would say, owes allegiance to New York; he cannot feel and think as a citizen of Pennsylvania, and cannot therefore properly represent Pennsylvanian interests. This sentiment has spread by a sort of sympathy, this reasoning has been applied by a sort of analogy, to the counties, the cities, the electoral districts of the State itself. State feeling has fostered local feeling; the locality deems no man a fit representative who has not, by residence in its limits, and by making it his political home, the place where he exercises his civic rights, become soaked with its own local sentiment.

Secondly. Much of the interest felt in the proceedings of Congress relates to the raising and spending of money. Changes in the tariff may affect the industries of a locality; or a locality may petition for an appropriation of public funds to some local public work, the making of a harbour, or the improvement of the navigation of a river. In both cases it is thought that no one but an inhabitant can duly comprehend the needs or zealously advocate the demands of a neighbourhood.

Thirdly. Inasmuch as no high qualities of statesmanship are expected from a congressman, a district would think it a slur to be told that it ought to look beyond its own borders for a representative; and as the post is a paid one, the people feel that a good thing ought to be kept for one of themselves rather than thrown away on a stranger. It is by local political work, organizing, canvassing, and haranguing, that a party is kept going: and this work must be rewarded.

So far as the restriction to residents in a State is concerned