Senate." 1 There is, especially when the galleries are empty, a slight echo in the room, which obliges most speakers to strain their voices. Two or three pictures on the walls somewhat relieve the cold tone of the chamber, with its marble platform and sides unpierced by windows, for the light enters through glass compartments in the ceiling.

A senator always addresses the Chair "Mr. President," and refers to other senators by their States, "The senator from Ohio," "The senator from Tennessee." When two senators rise at the same moment, the Chair calls on one, indicating him by his State, "The senator from Minnesota has the floor."2 Senators of the Democratic party sit, and apparently always have sat, on the right of the chair, Republican senators on the left; but, as already explained, the parties do not face one another. The impression which the place makes on a visitor is one of businesslike gravity, a gravity which though plain is dignified. It has the air not so much of a popular assembly as of a diplomatic congress. The English House of Lords, with its fretted roof and windows rich with the figures of departed kings, its majestic throne, its Lord Chancellor in his wig on the woolsack, its benches of lawn-sleeved bishops, its bar where the Commons throng at a great debate, is not only more gorgeous and picturesque in externals, but appeals far more powerfully to the historical imagination, for it seems to carry the middle ages down into the modern world. The Senate is modern, severe, and practical. So, too, few debates in the Senate rise to the level of the better debates in the English chamber. But the Senate seldom wears that air of listless vacuity and superannuated indolence which the House of Lords presents on all but a few nights of every session. The faces are keen and forcible, as of men who have learned to know the world, and have much to do in it; the place seems consecrated to great affairs.

As might be expected from the small number of the audience,

1 A graceful courtesy has extended the privilege to the distinguished historian of the United States, Mr. George Bancroft, who still pursues in extreme old age his patriotic labours.

A late President of the Senate was in the habit of distinguishing the two senators from the State of Arkansas, by calling on one as the senator for "Arkansas" (pronounced as written, with accent on the penult), and the other as the Senator for "Arkansaw," with accent on the last syllable. As Europeans often ask which is the correct pronunciation, I may say that both are in common use. But the legislature of Arkansas has lately by a "joint resolution" declared "Arkansaw" to be right.

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as well as from its character, discussions in the Senate are apt be sensible and practical. Speeches are shorter and less fervid than those made in the House of Representatives, for the larger an assembly the more prone is it to declamation. The least useful debates are those on show-days, when a series of set discourses are delivered on some prominent question, because no one expects such discourses to have any persuasive effect. The question at issue is sure to have been already settled, either in a committee or in a "caucus of the party which commands the majority, so that these long and sonorous harangues are mere rhetorical thunder addressed to the nation outside. The speakers, moreover, on such field days, seldom reply to the arguments of those who have preceded them, as men do in the English Parliament. Each senator brings down and fires off in the air, a carefully-prepared oration, which may have little bearing on what has gone before. In fact the speeches are made not to convince the assembly, for that no one dreams of doing, but to keep a man's opinions before the public and sustain his fame.1

The Senate now contains many men of great wealth. Some, an increasing number, are senators because they are rich; a few are rich because they are senators, while in the remaining cases the same talents which have won success in law or commerce have brought their possessor to the top in politics also. The great majority are or have been lawyers; some regularly practise before the Supreme Court. Complaints are occasionally levelled against the aristocratic tendencies which wealth is supposed to have bred, and sarcastic references are made to the sumptuous residences which senators have built on the new avenues of Washington. While admitting that there is more sympathy for the capitalist class among these rich men than there would be in a Senate of poor men, I must add that the Senate is far from being a class body like the upper houses of England or Prussia or Spain or Denmark. It is substantially representative, by its composition as well as by legal delegation, of all parts of American society; it is far too dependent, and far too sensible that it is dependent, upon public opinion, to dream of legislating in the interest of the rich. The senators, however, indulge some social pretensions. They are the nearest approach to an official

1 One is told in Washington that it is at present thought "bad form" for a senator to listen to a set speech; it implies that he is a freshman.

aristocracy that has yet been seen in America. They and their wives are allowed precedence at private entertainments, as well as on public occasions, over members of the House, and of course over private citizens. Jefferson might turn in his grave if he knew of such an attempt to introduce European distinctions of rank into his democracy; yet as the office is temporary, and the rank vanishes with the office, these pretensions are harmless; it is only the universal social equality of the country that makes them noteworthy. Apart from such petty advantages, the position of a senator, who can count on re-election, is the most desirable in the political world of America. It gives as much power and influence as a man need desire. It secures for him the ear of the public. It is more permanent than the presidency or any great ministerial office, requires less labour, involves less vexation, though still great vexation, by importunate officeseekers.

European writers on America have been too much inclined to idealize the Senate. Admiring its structure and function, they have assumed that the actors must be worthy of their parts. They have been encouraged in this tendency by the language of many Americans. As the Romans were never tired of repeating that the ambassador of Pyrrhus had called the Roman senate an assembly of kings, so Americans of refinement, who are ashamed of the turbulent House of Representatives, are wont to talk of the Senate as a sort of Olympian dwelling-place of statesmen and sages. It is nothing of the kind. It is a company of shrewd and vigorous men who have fought their way to the front by the ordinary methods of American politics, and on many of whom the battle has left its stains. There are abundant opportunities for intrigue in the Senate, because its most important business is done in the secrecy of committee rooms or of executive session; and many senators are intriguers. There are opportunities for misusing senatorial powers. Scandals have sometimes arisen from the practice of employing as counsel before the Supreme Court, senators whose influence has contributed to the appointment or confirmation of the judges.1 There are opportunities for

1 In the session of 1886, an Act was passed forbidding members of either House of Congress to appear in the Federal courts as counsel for any railroad company or other corporation which might, in respect of its having received land grants, be affected by Federal legislation. The Act originated in the Senate, which deserves in this instance the credit of seeking to cure its own faults, and remove temptation from the path of its weaker members.

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corruption and blackmailing, of which unscrupulous men are well known to take advantage. Such men are fortunately few but considering how demoralized are the legislatures of several southern and western States, their presence must be looked for; and the rest of the Senate, however it may blush for them, is obliged to work with them and to treat them as equals.1 The contagion of political vice is nowhere so swiftly potent as in legislative bodies, because you cannot taboo a man who has got a vote. You may loathe him personally, but he is the people's choice. He has a right to share in the government of the country; you are grateful to him when he saves you on a critical division; you discover that "he is not such a bad fellow when one knows him"; people remark that he gives good dinners, or has an agreeable wife; and so it goes on till falsehood and knavery are covered under the cloak of party loyalty.

As respects ability, the Senate cannot be profitably compared with the English House of Lords, because that assembly consists of some twenty eminent and as many ordinary men attending regularly, with a multitude of undistinguished persons who, though members, are only occasional visitors, and take no real share in the deliberations. Setting the Senate beside the House of Commons, one may say that the average natural capacity of its seventy-six members is not above that of the seventy-six best men in the English House. There is more variety of talent in the latter, and a greater breadth of culture. On the other hand, the Senate excels in legal knowledge as well as in practical shrewdness. The House of Commons contains more men who could give a good address on a literary or historical subject, the Senate more who could either deliver a rousing popular harangue or manage the business of a great trading company, these being the forms of capacity coinmonest among congressional politicians.

1 Americans now frequently accuse the Senate of timidity, and ascribe this fault to the fact that many of its members, being persons of great wealth but no great independence, are nervously alive to the fear of being thought deficient in popular sympathies. Recently when a proposal was made to bring the Federal army up to its nominal strength, 25,000 men, no extreme figure, the threat of one member that the working classes would think the army was being increased in order to be used by capital against labour, is said to have caused so much alarm that the plan was hastily dropped. So far as a stranger can judge, there is certainly less respect for the Senate collectively, and for most of the senators individually, now than there was eighteen years ago, though, of course, there are among its members men of an ability and character which would do honour to any assembly.

The fairest judgment I know on the Senate's merits is contained in the following extract from an acute American writer, who says (writing in 1885):

"The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it. Its members are chosen from the ranks of active politicians, in accordance with a law of natural selection to which the State legislatures are commonly obedient; and it is probable that it contains, consequently, the best men that our system calls into politics. If these best men are not good, it is because our system of government fails to attract better men by its prizes, not because the country affords or could afford no finer material. The Senate is in fact, of course, nothing more than a part, though a considerable part, of the public service; and if the general conditions of that service be such as to starve statesmen and foster demagogues, the Senate itself will be full of the latter kind, simply because there are no others available. There cannot be a separate breed of public men reared specially for the Senate. It must be recruited from the lower branches of the representative system, of which it is only the topmost part. No stream can be purer than its sources. The Senate can have in it no better men than the best men of the House of Representatives; and if the House of Representatives attracts to itself only inferior talent, the Senate must put up with the same sort. Thus the Senate, though it may not be as good as could be wished, is as good as it can be under the circumstances. It contains the most

perfect product of our politics, whatever that product may be."1

The place which the Senate holds in the constitutional system of America cannot be fully appreciated till the remaining parts of that system have been described. This much, however, may be claimed for it, that it has been and is, on the whole, a steadying and moderating power. One cannot say in the language of European politics that it has represented aristocratic principles, or anti-popular principles, or even conservative principles. Each of the great historic parties has in turn commanded a majority in it, and the difference between their strength has during the last decade been but slight. On none of the great issues that have divided the nation has the Senate been, for any long period, decidedly opposed to the other House of Congress. It showed no more capacity than the House for

1 Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government, pp. 194, 195.