attempted (in 1849) by the Senate in tacking a pro-slavery provision to an appropriation bill which it was returning to the House, and it was revived by both Houses against President Andrew Johnson in 1867.

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, 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.

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CHAPTER XIX

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 Europe. The English 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 thirty-eight 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 him; but such exceptions are extremely rare. This restriction surprises a Euro

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.

pean, who thinks it must be found highly inconvenient both to candidates, as restricting their field of choice in looking for a constituency, and to constituencies, as excluding persons, however eminent, who do not reside in their midst. To Americans, however, it seems so obviously reasonable that I found very few persons, even in the best educated classes, who would admit its policy to be disputable. In what are we to seek the causes of this opinion?

Firstly. In the existence of States, originally 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.

A perusal of the chapter of the Federalist, which argues that one representative for 30,000 inhabitants will sufficiently satisfy republican needs, suggests another reflection. The writer refers

to some who held a numerous representation to be a democratic institution, because it enabled every small district to make its voice heard in the national Congress. Such representation then existed in the State legislatures. Evidently the habits of the people were formed by these State legislatures, in which it was a matter of course that the people of each township or city sent one of themselves to the assembly of the State. When they came to return members to Congress, they followed the same practice. A stranger had no means of making himself known to them and would not think of offering himself. That the habits of England are different may be due, so far as the eighteenth century is concerned, to the practice of borough-mongering, under which candidates unconnected with the place were sent down by some influential person, or bought the seat from the corrupt corporation or the limited body of freemen. Thus the notion that a stranger might do well enough for a borough grew up, while in counties it remained, till 1885, a maxim that a candidate ought to own land in the county-the old law required a freehold qualification somewhere-or ought to live in, or ought at the very least (as I once heard a candidate, whose house lay just outside the county for which he was standing, allege on his own behalf) to look into the county from his window while shaving in the morning.2 The English practice might thus seem to be an

1 The old law (9 Anne, c. 5) required all members to possess a freehold qualification somewhere. All property qualifications were abolished by statute in 1858. 2 The English habit of allowing a man to stand for a place with which he is personally unconnected would doubtless be favoured by the fact that many ministers are necessarily members of the House of Commons. The inconvenience of excluding a man from the service of the nation because he could not secure his return in the place of his residence would be unendurable. No such reason exists in America, because ministers cannot be members of Congress. In France, Germany, and Italy the practice seems to resemble that of England, i.e. many members sit for places where they do not reside, though of course a candidate residing in the place he stands for has a certain advantage.

It is remarkable that the original English practice required the member to be a resident of the county or borough which returned him to Parliament. This is said to be a requirement at common law (witness the words "de comitatu tuo" in the writ for the election addressed to the sheriff); and was expressly enacted by the statute 1 Henry V. cap. 1. But already in the time of Elizabeth the requirement was not enforced; and in 1681 Lord Chief-Justice Pemberton ruled that "little regard was to be had to that ancient statute 1 Henry V. forasmuch as common practice hath been ever since to the contrary." The statute was repealed by 14 Geo. III. cap 50.-See Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, vol. i. p. 83; Stubbs, Constit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 424. Dr. Stubbs observes that the object of requiring residence in early times was to secure "that the House of Commons should be a really representative body." Mr. Hearn (Government of

exception due to special causes, and the American practice that which is natural to a free country, where local self-government is fully developed and rooted in the habits of the people. It is from their local government that the political ideas of the American people have been formed: and they have applied to their State assemblies and their national assembly the customs which grew up in the smaller area.1

These are the best explanations I can give of a phenomenon which strikes Europeans all the more because it exists among a population more unsettled and migratory than any in the Old World. But they leave me still surprised at this strength of local feeling, a feeling not less marked in the new regions of the Far West than in the venerable commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia. The most significant fact about the practice in America is that one seldom hears it there commented on as a defect of the political system. Fierce as is the light of criticism which beats upon every part of that system, this point, which at once strikes the European as specially weak, remains uncensured, because assumed to be part of the order of nature.

Its results are unfortunate. So far as the restriction to residents in a State is concerned it is intelligible. The senator was to some extent is still a sort of ambassador from his State. He is chosen by the legislature or collective authority of his State. He cannot well be a citizen of one State and represent another. Even a representative in the House from one State who lived in another might be perplexed by a divided allegiance, though there are groups of States, such as those of the north-west, whose great industrial interests are substantially the same. But what reason can there be for preventing a man resident in one part of a State from representing another part, a England) suggests that the requirement had to be dropped because it was hard to find country gentlemen (or indeed burgesses) possessing the legal knowledge and statesmanship which the constitutional struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries demanded.

1 When President Garfield was one of the leaders of the House of Representatives it happened that his return for the district in which he resided became doubtful, owing to the strength of the Democratic party there. One of his friends (to whom I owe the anecdote), anxious to make sure that he should somehow be returned to the House, went into the adjoining district to sound the Republican voters there as to the propriety of running Mr. Garfield for their constituency. They laughed at the notion, "Why, he don't live in our deestrict." I have heard of a case in which a member of Congress having after his election gone to live in a neighbouring district, was thereupon compelled by the pressure of public opinion to resign his seat.