The dignity of this unnecessary and disagreeable body was somewhat
disturbed by a Senator in a wild state of intoxication, who from his
place in the Chamber assailed in unseemly language the presiding
officer.
Great consternation fell upon the British House of Commons when the
discovery was made that an entire session had been gone through
without "that bauble," as Oliver Cromwell called it, being upon the
table. When Doctor Kenealy, friend and attorney of the Tichborne
Claimant, was about being sworn in as a member of Parliament, it was
observed that he had a cotton umbrella under his arm. A horror too
profound for utterance fell upon the House, and all proceedings were
arrested until the obnoxious compound of cotton and whalebone was
removed.
We refer to these events for the purpose of impressing upon our
delegated sovereigns from sovereign States, that unless the
proprieties are preserved their dignity cannot be maintained. What
would be thought of the British House of Lords if Lord Tomnoddy, for
example, were to roll in very drunk, and make personal remarks
touching the integrity of the presiding officer? The thought of such
an event threatens insanity. The British Empire would totter, the
throne shake, and the House of Lords disappear forever.
The inebriated Senator was not arrested, or even rebuked. We all know
why. On his one vote depends the Republican control of the Senate. To
seize upon, arrest, and cart away, under charge of drunken and
disorderly conduct, the Republican majority of the Senate was so
preposterous as not to be entertained.
As force could not be used, strategy was resorted to, and the
inebriate Solon was invited out to take more drinks, in the hope that
a little more liquid insanity would render him _hors de combat_.
This is not the first instance of embarrassment of like sort. When the
men who organized the Star Route dishonesty of the Post-office
Department were indicted, it was found that the head and front of this
offending was a United States Senator. He held the one vote that gave
his party its supremacy in the Senate. To send the Republican majority
vote to the penitentiary was not to be thought of--and so the court
was packed to acquit.
A body that subordinates its dignity to the supremacy of a party
cannot long retain that awe-inspiring respect so necessary to its
existence. Our House of Lords should bear in mind that the only
reason--if such it may be called--for its existence, is in this
dignity. If the Senate is not the holy, embalmed mummy of a dead king
once known as State sovereignty, it is naught; therefore, when a
Senator endangers this title to existence by unseemly conduct, either
as an inebriate or as a bribe-taker, he should be incontinently
expelled. The expulsion should be conducted with great ceremony. He
should be divested of his robes in the presence of the august
body--robes being procured for the occasion. One might be borrowed
from the Supreme Court. Then the culprit should be conducted by two
assistant Sergeants-at-Arms, one having hold of each arm. The
Sergeant-at-Arms should march behind, bearing the mace. We believe the
Senate has that utensil; if not, that of the House of Representatives
could be procured. At the main entrance the Sergeant-at-Arms should
fetch the mace into a charge, and planting the eagle in the small of
the culprit's back, thrust him out. All the while the chaplain, in a
solemn but distinct voice, should read the Service for the Dead.
After, the presiding officer should give three distinct raps of his
ivory gavel, and say in joyous but decorous voice, indicative of
triumphant yet seemly satisfaction: "The expurgated Senate will now
proceed with the business of legislating for the House of
Representatives."
So necessary is dignity to the existence of this august body, that the
presiding officer should have an eye continually to it; and when a
Senator, in debate, makes himself ridiculous, he should at once be
called to order. When, for example, the Hon. Senator from Vermont (Mr.
Edmunds) gave his grotesque picture of a common American laborer being
possessed of a piano, and a wife in silk attire, in his own cottage
home, he should have been promptly called to order. The presiding
officer should have remarked that the picture, being imperfect, was in
a measure untrue, and as such could not be entertained by the Senate.
The Senator, however, has the privilege of amending his sketch by
saying that the laborer has not only the luxury found in a piano and
silk-clad wife, but a mortgage on the premises. This, although
improbable, is not impossible for a common laborer; and if the Hon.
Senator will vouch for the fact that he knows one such, his statement
may go on record for what it is worth.
This would serve to abridge the liberty of speech guaranteed to us by
the Constitution. But we must remember that the same larger freedom
exercised in a bar-room, or upon the streets, or on the floor of the
House of Representatives, is a menace to the dignity of the Senate;
and in view of this, freedom of speech is somewhat circumscribed.
When, therefore, the Hon. Senator from Indiana (Mr. Voorhees) shakes
his senatorial fist at the Hon. Senator from Kansas (Mr. Ingalls), and
calls him an anathematized offspring of a female canine, or words to
that effect, he fractures the dignity of the Senate, and further
adjudication does not turn on the truth of the utterances as in a
court, for we are forced to remember that it is one-half of the
sovereign State of Indiana shaking its fist at one half of the
sovereign State of Kansas. This is very like the old story of the
sheriff of Posey County, Kentucky, who being agitated in a robust
manner by an angry citizen, called on his assailant to desist, as he
was "shaking all Posey County."
How long the practical common-sense citizens of the United States
will submit to this worn-out superstition of a Senate is a question
that strikes every thoughtful mind. The body was born of a narrow
sectional feeling, long before steam navigation and railroads made the
continent more of one body than was a single colony before the
Revolution; and was a concession to State sovereignty, with the new
and accepted principle of home rule found in State rights. It further
confuses and demoralizes the civil rule of the majority under the
Constitution, as it gives to Rhode Island or Delaware the same power
held by New York or Pennsylvania.
It was believed by the framers of our government that it would be a
conservative body, and serve as a restraint upon the popular impulses
to be expected from the House. This has not proved to be the fact. The
tenure of office given a Senator is of such length that it weakens the
only control found in public opinion, and this august body is more
extravagant, corrupt, and impulsive than the more popular body at the
other end of the Capitol. If any one doubts this, let such doubter
follow any appropriation bill, say that highway robbery called the
River and Harbor Appropriation, or pensions, from the House to the
Senate.
The Senate has long since survived its usefulness, if it ever had any;
is to-day an object of contempt; and the sooner we have done with it
the better off we shall be.