system. The Ministry's tenure of office depends upon the success of the
legislation they urge. If any of their proposals are negatived by
parliament, they are bound to accept their defeat as an intimation that
their administration is no longer acceptable to the party they
represent, and are expected to resign, or to appeal, if they prefer, to
the country for its verdict, by exercising their privilege of advising
the sovereign to dissolve parliament and issue writs for a new election.
It is, consequently, inevitable that the Ministry should be subjected to
the most determined attacks and the keenest criticisms of the
Opposition, and should be every day of the session put to the task of
vindicating their course and establishing anew their claim to the
confidence of their party. To shrink from discussion would be to confess
weakness; to suffer themselves to be worsted in discussion would be
seriously to imperil their power. They must look to it, therefore, not
only that their policy be defensible, but that it be valiantly defended
also.
As might be expected, then, the Ministry seldom find the task of leading
the House an easy one. Their plans are kept under an unceasing fire of
criticism from both sides of the House; for there are independent
sharp-shooters behind the ministers as well as heavy batteries in front
of them; and there are many amongst their professed followers who give
aid and comfort to the enemy. There come ever and again showers of
stinging questions, too, from friends and foes alike,--questions great
and small, direct and indirect, pertinent and impertinent, concerning
every detail of administration and every tendency of policy.
But, although the initiative in legislation and the general direction of
the business of parliament are the undisputed prerogatives of "the
government," as the Ministry is called, they have not, of course, all
the time of the House at their disposal. During the session, certain
days of each week are set apart for the introduction and debate of bills
brought in by private members, who, at the opening of the session, draw
lots to decide the precedence of their bills or motions on the orders of
the day. If many draw, those who get last choice of time find the
session near its end, and private members' days being absorbed by
belated government measures, before their opportunity has come, and must
content themselves with hoping for better fortune next year; but time is
generally found for a very fair and full consideration of a large number
of private members' bills, and no member is denied a chance to air his
favorite opinions in the House or to try the patience of his
fellow-members by annual repetitions of the same proposition. Private
members generally find out by long experience, however, that they can
exert a more telling influence upon legislation by pressing amendments
to government schemes, and can effect more immediate and satisfactory
results by keeping the Ministry constantly in mind of certain phases of
public opinion, than they could hope to exert or effect by themselves
introducing measures upon which their party might hesitate to unite.
Living as he does under a system which makes it the minister's wisest
policy to allow the utmost freedom of debate, each member can take as
prominent a part in the proceedings of the House as his abilities give
him title to take. If he have anything which is not merely frivolous to
say, he will have repeated opportunities to say it; for the Commons
cough down only the bores and the talkers for the sake of talk.
The House of Commons, as well as our House of Representatives, has its
committees, even its standing committees, but they are of the
old-fashioned sort which merely investigate and report, not of the new
American type which originate and conduct legislation. Nor are they
appointed by the Speaker. They are chosen with care by a "Committee of
Selection" composed of members of both parties. The Speaker is kept
carefully apart from politics in all his functions, acting as the
impartial, judicial president of the body. "Dignity of presence,
courtliness of manner, great physical endurance, courage and
impartiality of judgment, a consummate tact, and familiarity, 'born of
life-long experience,' with the written and unwritten laws of the
House,"--such are the qualities of the ideal Speaker. When he takes the
chair he turns his back on partisan alliances and serves both parties
alike with even hand. Such are the traditions of the office that its
occupant feels himself as strictly bound to unbiased judgment as is the
chiefest judge of the realm; and it has become no uncommon thing for a
Speaker of tried ability to preside during several successive
Parliaments, whether the party to whose suffrages he originally owed his
elevation remains in power or no. His political principles do not affect
his fitness for judicial functions.
The Commons in session present an interesting picture. Constrained by
their habits of debate to sit in quarters suitable for the purpose, they
crowd together in a hall of somewhat cramped proportions. It seems a
place fit for hand to hand combats. The cushioned benches on which the
members sit rise in close series on either side of a wide central aisle
which they face. At one end of this aisle is raised the Speaker's chair,
below and in front of which, invading the spaces of the aisle, are the
desks of the wigged and gowned clerks. On the front benches nearest the
Speaker and to his right sit the cabinet ministers, the leaders of the
Government; opposite, on the front benches to the Speaker's left, sit
the leaders of the Opposition. Behind and to the right of the ministers
gather the majority; behind and to the left of their leaders, the
minority. Above the rear benches and over the outer aisles of the House,
beyond "the bar," hang deep galleries from which the outside world may
look down upon the eager contests of the two parties which thus sit face
to face with only the aisle between them. From these galleries the
fortunate listen to the words of leaders whose names fill the ear of the
world.
The organization of the French Assembly is in the main similar to that
of the British Commons. Its leaders are the executive officers of the
government, and are chosen from the ranks of the legislative majority by
the President of the Republic, much as English cabinets are chosen by
English sovereigns. They too are responsible for their policy and the
acts of their administration to the Chamber which they lead. They, like
their British prototypes, are the executive committee of the legislative
body, and upon its will their tenure of office depends.
It cannot be said, however, that the proceedings of the French Assembly
very closely resemble those of the British Commons. In the hall of the
Deputies there are no close benches which face each other, and no two
homogeneous parties to strive for the mastery. There are parties and
parties, factions and factions, coteries and coteries. There are
Bonapartists and Legitimatists, Republicans and Clericals, stubborn
reactionists and headlong radicals, stolid conservatives and vindictive
destructionists. One hears of the Centre, the Right Centre and the Left
Centre, the Right, the Left, the Extreme Right and the Extreme Left.
Some of these are, of course, mere factions, mere groups of
irreconcilables; but several of them are, on the other hand, numerous
and powerful parties upon whose mutual attractions and repulsions depend
the formation, the authority, and the duration of cabinets.
Of course, too, there is in a body so made up a great deal of
combustible material which the slightest circumstance suffices to kindle
into a sudden blaze. The Assembly would not be French if it were not
always excitable and sometimes uproarious. Absolute turbulence is so
probable a contingency in its economy that a very simple and quickly
applicable device is provided for its remedy. Should the deputies lose
their heads altogether and become unmanageable, the President may _put
on his hat_, and by that sign, unless calm be immediately restored, the
sitting is adjourned for one hour, at the expiration of which time it is
to be expected that the members may resume the business of the day in a
cooler frame of mind. There are other rules of procedure observed in the
Chamber which seem to foreign eyes at first sight very novel; but which
upon closer examination may be seen to differ from some of the practices
of our own House of Representatives in form rather than in essence. In
France greater freedom of speech is allowed individual members than is
possible under committee government, but recognition is not given to
just any one who first gets the floor and catches the presiding
officer's eye, as it is in the House of Commons, where none but the
ministers are accorded any right of precedence in gaining a hearing.
Those who wish to speak upon any pending question "inscribe" their
names beforehand on a list in the keeping of the President, and the
discussion is usually confined to those members who have "inscribed."
When this list has been exhausted, the President takes the sense of the
Chamber as to whether the debate shall be closed. The Chamber need not
wait, however, to hear all the gentlemen who have put their names upon
the list. If _une portion notable_ of it tires sooner of the discussion
or thinks itself sufficiently informed before all who wish to inform it
have spoken, it may demand that the debate be brought to an end. Of
course such a demand will not be heeded if it come from only a few
isolated members, and even _une portion notable_ may not interrupt a
speaker with this peremptory call for what we should denominate the
previous question, but which the French parliamentarian knows as the
_cloture_. A demand for the _cloture_ is not debatable. One speech may
be made against it, but none in its favor. Unless it meet with very
powerful resistance, it is expected to go through of its own weight.
Even the _cloture_, however, must give way if a member of the Ministry
claims the right to speak; for a minister must always be heard, and
after he has spoken, moreover, there must always be allowed one speech
in reply. Neither can the _cloture_ be pronounced unless a majority of
the deputies are present; and in case of doubt as to the will of the
Chamber in the matter, after two votes have been taken without eliciting
a full-voiced and indubitable assent, the discussion is tacitly suffered
to proceed.
These rules are not quite so compulsive and inexorable as are those
which sustain the government of our Standing Committees, nor do they
seem quite imperative enough for the effectual governance of rampant
deputies in their moments of wildest excitement; but they are somewhat
more rigid than one would expect to find under a system of ministerial
responsibility, the purity of whose atmosphere depends so directly upon
a free circulation of debate. They are meant for a body of peculiar
habits and a fiery temperament,--a body which is often brought screaming
to its feet by the words of a passionate speaker, which is time and
again betrayed into stormy disquiet, and which is ever being blown about
by every passing wind of excitement. Even in its minor points of
observance, the Chamber is essentially un-English. Members do not speak
from their seats, as we are accustomed to see members of our public
assemblies do, but from the "tribune," which is a conspicuous structure
erected near the desks of the President and secretaries,--a box-like
stand, closely resembling those narrow, quaintly-fashioned pulpits which
are still to be seen in some of the oldest of our American churches. And
since deputies must gain its commanding top before they may speak, there
are said to be many exciting races for this place of vantage. Sometimes,
indeed, very unseemly scenes take place, when several deputies, all
equally eager to mount the coveted stand, reach its narrow steps at the
same moment and contest the privilege of precedence,--especially if
their friends rally in numbers to their assistance.
The British House of Commons and the French Chamber, though so unlike in
the elements which compose them, and so dissimilar in their modes of
procedure, are easily seen to be alike in constitutional significance,
being made close kin by the principle of cabinet government, which they
both recognize and both apply in its fullest efficacy. In both England
and France a ministry composed of the chief officers of the executive
departments are constituted at once the leaders of legislation and the
responsible heads of administration,--a binding link between the
legislative and executive branches of the government. In this regard
these two systems present a strong contrast to our own. They recognize
and support simple, straightforward, inartificial party government,
under a standing committee of responsible party leaders, bringing
legislature and executive side by side in intimate but open cooperation;
whilst we, preferring to keep Congress and the departments at arm's
length, permit only a less direct government by party majorities,
checking party action by a complex legislative machinery of two score
and eight composite, semi-ministerial Committees. The English take their
parties straight,--we take ours mixed.
There is another aspect, however, in which all three of these systems
are alike. They are alike in their essential purpose, which is to enable
a mass meeting of representatives to superintend administration and get
good laws made. Congress does not deal so directly with our executive as
do the French and English parliaments with theirs, and cannot,
therefore, control it quite so effectually; there is a great deal of
friction amongst the many wheels of committee government; but, in the
long run, Congress is quite as omnipotent as either the Chamber of
Deputies or the House of Commons; and, whether there be two score
committees with functions mainly legislative, or only one with functions
half legislative, half executive, we have one form or another of
something like Mr. Mill's "legislative commission."
III.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
REVENUE AND SUPPLY.
The highest works of statesmanship require these three things:
Great power in the minister, genius to counsel and support him,
enlightenment in parliament to weigh and decide upon his
plans.--PROFESSOR SEELEY.
When men are not acquainted with each other's principles, nor
experienced in each other's talents, nor at all practiced in their
mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts of business; no
personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest subsisting
among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public
part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy.--BURKE.
"It requires," says Mr. Bagehot, "a great deal of time to have
opinions," and if one is to judge from the legislative experience of
some very enlightened nations, it requires more time to have opinions
about finance than about any other subject. At any rate, very few
nations have found time to have correct opinions about it. Governments
which never consult the governed are usually content with very shabby,
short-sighted methods of taxation,--with any methods, indeed, which can
be made to yield the desired revenues without much trouble; and the
agents of a self-governing people are quite sure to be too busy with
elections and party management to have leisure to improve much upon the
practices of autocrats in regard to this important care of
administration. And yet this subject of finance seems to be interesting
enough in a way. It is one of the commonplaces of our history that, ever
since long before we came westward across the ocean, we have been
readier to fight about taxation than about any other one thing,--than
about a good many other things put together, indeed. There are several
sadly bloody spots in the financial history of our race. It could
probably be shown, however, if one cared to take time to show it, that
it is easy to get vexed about mismanagement of the finances without
knowing how they might be better managed. What we do not like is that we
are taxed,--not that we are stupidly taxed. We do not need to be
political economists to get angry about it; and when we have gotten
angry about it in the past our rulers have not troubled themselves to
study political economy in order to find out the best means of appeasing
us. Generally they have simply shifted the burden from the shoulders of
those who complained, and were able to make things unpleasant, to the
shoulders of those who might complain, but could not give much trouble.
Of course there are some taxes which are much more hateful than others,
and have on that account to be laid more circumspectly. All direct taxes
are heartily disliked by every one who has to pay them, and as heartily
abused, except by those who have never owned an ounce or an inch of
property, and have never seen a tax-bill. The heart of the ordinary
citizen regards them with an inborn aversion. They are so
straightforward and peremptory in their demands. They soften their
exactions with not a grain of consideration. The tax-collector,
consequently, is never esteemed a lovable man. His methods are too
blunt, and his powers too obnoxious. He comes to us, not with a
"please," but with a "must." His requisitions always leave our pockets
lighter and our hearts heavier. We cannot, for the life of us, help
thinking, as we fold up his receipt and put it away, that government is
much too expensive a luxury as nowadays conducted, and that that receipt
is incontestable documentary proof of unendurable extortion. What we do
not realize is, that life would be robbed of one of its chief
satisfactions if this occasion of grumbling were to be taken away.
Indirect taxes, on the other hand, offend scarcely anybody. It is one of
the open secrets of finance that in almost every system of taxation the
indirect overcrow the direct taxes by many millions, and have a knack
for levying on the small resources of insignificant persons which direct
taxes have never learned. They know how to coax pennies out of poor
people whose names have never been on the tax-collector's books. But
they are very sly, and have at command a thousand successful disguises.
High or complicated tariffs afford them their most frequent and abundant
opportunities. Most people have very short thoughts, which do not extend
beyond the immediate phenomena of direct vision, and so do not recognize
the hand of the government in the high prices charged them in the shops.
Very few of us taste the tariff in our sugar; and I suppose that even
very thoughtful topers do not perceive the license-tax in their whiskey.
There is little wonder that financiers have always been nervous in
dealing with direct, but confident and free of hand in laying indirect,
taxes.
It may, therefore, be accounted one of the customary advantages which
our federal government possesses over the governments of the States,
that it has almost always, in ordinary times, derived its entire revenue
from prompt and facile indirect taxes, whilst the States have had to
live upon the tardy and begrudged income derivable from a direct levy.
Since we have had to support two governments it has been wisely
resolved to let us, as long as possible, feel the weight of only one of
them,--and that the one which can get at us most readily, and, at the
same time, be most easily and promptly controlled by our votes. It is a
plain, convenient, and, on the whole, satisfactory division of domain,
though the responsibility which it throws on state legislatures is more
apt to pinch and prove vexatious than is that which it lays upon
Congress. Mr. Gladstone, the greatest of English financiers, once
playfully described direct and indirect taxes as two sisters,--daughters
of Necessity and Invention,--"differing only as sisters may differ, ...
the one being more free and open, the other somewhat more shy, retiring,
and insinuating;" and frankly owned that, whether from "a lax sense of
moral obligation or not," he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, "thought
it not only allowable, but even an act of duty, to pay his addresses to
them both." But our chancellors of the exchequer, the chairmen of the
Committee of Ways and Means, are bound by other traditions of courtship,
and have, besides, usually shown no susceptibility to the charms of the
blunt and forward elder of these two sisters. They have been constant,
even if now and again a little wayward, in their devotion to the
younger.
I suppose that no one ever found the paths of finance less thorny and
arduous than have our national publicists. If their tasks be compared
with those of European and English financiers, it is plain to see that
their lines have fallen in pleasant places. From almost the very first
they have had boundless resources to draw upon, and they have certainly
of late days had free leave to spend limitless revenues in what
extravagances they pleased. It has come to be infinitely more trouble to
spend our enormous national income than to collect it. The chief
embarrassments have arisen, not from deficits, but from surpluses. It is
very fortunate that such has been the case, because for the best
management of the finances of a nation, when revenue is scant and
economy imperative, it is absolutely necessary to have financial
administration in the hands of a few highly-trained and skillful men
acting subject to a very strict responsibility, and this is just what
our committee system does not allow. As in other matters of legislation,
so in finance, we have many masters acting under a very dim and
inoperative accountability. Of course under such ministration our
financial policy has always been unstable, and has often strayed very
far from the paths of wisdom and providence; for even when revenue is
superabundant and extravagance easy, irresponsible, fast and loose
methods of taxation and expenditure must work infinite harm. The only
difference is that during such times the nation is not so sensitive to
the ill effects wrought by careless policy. Mismanagement is not
generally blamed until a great many people have discovered it by being
hurt by it. Meantime, however, it is none the less interesting and
important to study our government, with a view to gauging its qualities
and measuring accurately its capabilities for good or bad service; and
the study can doubtless be much more dispassionately conducted before we
have been seriously hurt by foolish, unsteady administration than
afterwards. The forces of the wind can be reckoned with much more
readily while they are blowing only a gale than after they have thrown a
hurricane upon us.
The national income is controlled by one Committee of the House and one
of the Senate; the expenditures of the government are regulated by
fifteen Committees of the House and five of the Senate; and the currency
is cared for by two Committees of the House and one of the Senate; by
all of which it appears that the financial administration of the country
is in the hands of twenty-four Committees of Congress,--a mechanism of
numerous small and great functions, quite complex enough to be worth
careful study, perhaps too complex to be studied directly without an
aiding knowledge of some simpler system with which it may be compared.
Our own budget may be more readily followed through all the vicissitudes
of committee scrutiny, and all the varied fortunes of committee action,
after one has traced some other budget through the simpler processes of
some other system of government.