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a compromise. The system of committees, which is the most remarkable feature of the Senate's legislative procedure, will be considered in a subsequent chapter, while a note to the present chapter 1 presents an abstract of some of the more noteworthy of its rules. Among those rules there is none providing for a closure of debate, or limiting the length either of a debate or of a speech. The Senate is proud of having conducted its business without the aid of such regulations, and this has been due, not merely to the small size of the assembly, but to the sense of its dignity which has usually pervaded its members, and to the power which the opinion of the whole body has exercised on each. Where every man knows his colleagues intimately, each, if he has a character to lose, stands in awe of the others, and has so strong a sense of his own interest in maintaining the moral authority of the Chamber, that he is slow to resort to extreme methods which might lower it in public estimation. recently, systematic obstruction, or, as it is called in America, filibustering," familiar to the House, was almost unknown in the calmer air of the Senate. When it was applied some years ago by the Democratic senators to stop a bill to which they strongly objected, their conduct was not disapproved by the country, because the whole party, a minority very little smaller than the Republican majority, supported it, and people believed that nothing but some strong reason would have induced the whole party so to act. Accordingly the majority yielded. Although the increased size of the body makes the despatch of business more difficult than formerly, it is hardly likely that the Senate will adopt any regulation limiting debate, for it prides itself on its traditions, and likes to mark the contrast between its own good manners and the turbulence of the more numerous House. In the winter session of 1883, the rules of procedure were subjected to a thorough revision, but no proposal of this nature was made.

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Divisions are taken, not by separating the senators into lobbies and counting them, as in the British Parliament, but by calling the names of senators alphabetically. The Constitution provides that one-fifth of those present may demand that the Yeas and Nays be entered in the journal. Every senator answers to his name with Aye or No. He may, however, ask the leave of the Senate to abstain from voting; and if he is 1 This note will be found at the end of this volume.

paired, he states, when his name is called, that he has paired with such and such another senator, and is therefore excused. No one is permitted to speak more than twice to the same question on the same day.

When the Senate goes into executive session, the galleries are cleared and the doors closed, and the obligation of secrecy is supposed to be enforced by the penalty of expulsion to which a senator, disclosing confidential proceedings, makes himself liable. Practically, however, newspaper men find little difficulty in ascertaining what passes in secret session.1 The threatened punishment has never been inflicted, and occasions often arise when senators feel it to be desirable that the public should know what their colleagues have been doing. There has been for some time past a movement within the Senate against maintaining secrecy, particularly with regard to the confirming of nominations to office; and there is also a belief in the country that publicity would make for purity. But while some of the black sheep of the Senate love darkness because their works are evil, other members of undoubted respectability defend the present system because they think it supports the power and dignity of their body.

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Secrecy is said to be better observed in the case of discussions on treaties than where appointments are in question. Some years ago a Western newspaper published an account of what took place in a secret session. A committee appointed to inquire into the matter questioned every senator. Each swore that he had not divulged the proceedings, and the newspaper people also swore that their information did not come from any Senator. Nothing could be ascertained, and nobody was punished.

CHAPTER XI

THE SENATE AS AN EXECUTIVE AND JUDICIAL BODY

THE Senate is not only a legislative but also an executive Chamber; in fact in its early days the executive functions seem to have been thought the more important; and Hamilton went so far as to speak of the national executive authority as divided between two branches, the President and the Senate. These executive functions are two, the power of approving treaties, and that of confirming nominations to office submitted by the President.

To what has already been said regarding the functions of the President and Senate as regards treaties (see above, Chapter VI.) I need only add that the Senate through its right of confirming or rejecting engagements with foreign powers, secures a general control over foreign policy. It is in the discretion of the President whether he will communicate current negotiations to it and take its advice upon them, or will say nothing till he lays a completed treaty before it. One or other course is from time to time followed, according to the nature of the case, or the degree of friendliness existing between the President and the majority of the Senate. But in general, the President's best policy is to keep the leaders of the senatorial majority, and in particular the committee on Foreign Relations, informed of the progress of any pending negotiation. He thus feels the pulse of the Senate, and foresees what kind of arrangement he can induce it to sanction, while at the same time a good understanding between himself and his coadjutors is promoted. It is well worth his while to keep the Senate in good humour, for, like other assemblies, it has a collective self-esteem which makes it seek to gain all the information and power it can draw in. The right of going into secret session enables the whole Senate to consider despatches communicated by the President; and the more important ones,

having first been submitted to the Foreign Relations committee, are thus occasionally discussed without the disadvantage of publicity. Of course no momentous secret can be long kept, even by the committee, according to the proverb in the Elder Edda"Tell one man thy secret, but not two; if three know, the world knows."

This control of foreign policy by the Senate goes far to meet that terrible difficulty which a democracy, or indeed any free government, finds in dealing with foreign Powers. If every step to be taken must be previously submitted to the governing assembly, the nation is forced to show its whole hand, and precious opportunities of winning an ally or striking a bargain may be lost. If on the other hand the executive is permitted to conduct negotiations in secret, there is always the risk, either that the governing assembly may disavow what has been done, a risk which makes foreign states legitimately suspicious and unwilling to negotiate, or that the nation may have to ratify, because it feels bound in honour by the act of its executive agents, arrangements which its judgment condemns. The frequent participation of the Senate in negotiations diminishes these difficulties, because it apprises the executive of what the judgment of the ratifying body is likely to be, and it commits that body by advance. The necessity of ratification by the Senate in order to give effect to a treaty, enables the country to retire from a doubtful bargain, though in a way which other Powers find disagreeable, as England did when the Senate rejected the Reverdy Johnson treaty of 1869. European statesmen may ask what becomes under such a system of the boldness and promptitude so often needed to effect a successful coup in foreign policy, or how a consistent attitude can be maintained if there is in the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee a sort of second foreign secretary. The answer is that America is not Europe. The problems which the Foreign Office of the United States has to deal with are far fewer and usually far simpler than those of the Old World. The republic keeps consistently to her own side of the Atlantic; nor is it the least of the merits of the system of senatorial control that it has tended, by discouraging the executive from schemes which may prove resultless, to diminish the taste for foreign enterprises, and to save the country from being entangled with alliances, protectorates, responsibilities of all sorts beyond its own frontiers. It is the easier for the Americans to,

practise this reserve because they need no alliances, standing unassailable in their own hemisphere. The circumstances of England, with her powerful European neighbours, her Indian Empire, and her colonies scattered over the world, are widely different. Yet different as the circumstances of England are, the day may come when in England the question of limiting the at present all but unlimited discretion of the executive in foreign affairs will have to be dealt with; and the example of the American Senate will then deserve and receive careful study. Yet it must be remembered that many of the most important acts done in the sphere of foreign relations are purely executive acts (as for instance, the movement of troops and ships) which the Senate cannot control.

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The Senate may and occasionally does amend a treaty, and return it amended to the President. There is nothing to prevent it from proposing a draft treaty to him, or asking him to prepare one, but this is not the practice. For ratification a vote of twothirds of the senators present is required. This gives great power to a vexatious minority, and increases the danger, evidenced by several incidents in the history of the Union, that the Senate or a faction in it may deal with foreign policy in a narrow, sectional, electioneering spirit. When the interest of any group of States is, or is supposed to be, opposed to the making of a given treaty, that treaty may be defeated by the senators from those States. They tell the other senators of their own party that the prospects of the party in the district of the country whence they come will be improved if the treaty is rejected and a bold aggressive line is taken in further negotiations. Some of these senators, who care more for the party than for justice or the common interests of the country, rally to the cry, and all the more gladly if their party is opposed to the President in power, because in defeating the treaty they humiliate his administration. Supposing their party to command a majority, the treaty is probably rejected, and the settlement of the question at issue perhaps indefinitely postponed. It may be thought.

1 Parliament may of course interfere, and sometimes does interfere; but the parliamentary majority which supports the ministry of the day usually (and probably wisely) forbears to press the Foreign Office for information which it is declared to be undesirable to furnish.

In 1886 a resolution was all but carried in the House of Commons, desiring all treaties to be laid before Parliament for its approval before being finally concluded.

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