unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of
its various critics. In the eyes of some it has a stateliness of
character, an eminency of prerogative, and, for the most part, a wisdom
of practice such as no other deliberative body possesses; whilst in the
estimation of others it is now, whatever it may have been formerly, but
a somewhat select company of leisurely "bosses," in whose companionship
the few men of character and high purpose who gain admission to its
membership find little that is encouraging and nothing that is
congenial. Now of course neither of these extreme opinions so much as
resembles the uncolored truth, nor can that truth be obtained by a
judicious mixture of their milder ingredients. The truth is, in this
case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical.
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.
It has been usual to suppose that the Senate was just what the
Constitution intended it to be; that because its place in the federal
system was exalted the aims and character of its members would naturally
be found to be exalted as well; that because its term was long its
foresight would be long also; or that because its election was not
directly of the people demagogy would find no life possible in its
halls. But 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 attract to itself
only inferior talent, the Senate must put up with the same sort. I think
it safe to say, therefore, that, though it may not be as good as could
be wished, the Senate is as good as it can be under the circumstances.
It contains the most perfect product of our politics, whatever that
product may be.
In order to understand and appreciate the Senate, therefore, one must
know the conditions of public life in this country. What are those
conditions? Well, in the first place, they are not what they were in the
early years of the federal government; they are not what they were even
twenty years ago; for in this, as in other things, the war between the
States ends one distinct period and opens another. Between the great
constructive statesmen of the revolutionary days and the reconstructing
politicians of the sixties there came into public place and legislative
influence a great race of constitutional lawyers. The questions which
faced our statesmen while the Constitution was a-making were in the
broadest sense questions of politics; but the questions which dominated
our public life after the federal government had been successfully set
up were questions of legal interpretation such as only lawyers could
grapple with. All matters of policy, all doubts of legislation, even all
difficulties of diplomacy, were measured by rules of constitutional
construction. There was hardly a single affair of public concern which
was not hung upon some peg of constitutional dogma in the testing-rooms
of one or another of the contending schools of constitutional
interpretation. Constitutional issues were ever the tides, questions of
administrative policy seldom more than the eddies, of politics.
The Republicans under Jefferson drew their nourishment from
constitutional belief no less than did the Federalists; the Whigs and
Democrats of a later day lived on what was essentially the same diet,
though it was served in slightly different forms; and the parties of
to-day are themselves fain to go to these cooks of the olden time
whenever they desire strong meat to fortify them against their present
debility. The great questions attending the admission of new States to
the Union and the annexation of foreign territory, as well as all the
controversies which came in the train of the contest over slavery and
the reserved powers of the States, were of the Constitution
constitutional; and what other questions were then living--save those
which found root in the great charter's implied powers, about which
there was such constant noise of debate? It will be remembered that very
few publicists opposed internal improvements, for instance, on the
ground that they were unwise or uncalled for. No one who took a
statesman-like view of the matter could fail to see that the opening up
of the great water-ways of the country, the construction of roads, the
cutting of canals, or any public work which might facilitate inter-State
commerce by making intercourse between the various portions of the Union
easy and rapid, was sanctioned by every consideration of wisdom, as
being in conformity with a policy at once national in its spirit and
universal in its benefits. The doubt was, not as to what it would be
best and most provident to do, but as to what it would be lawful to do;
and the chief opponents of schemes of internal improvement based their
dissent upon a careful meditation of the language of the Constitution.
Without its plain approval they would not move, even if they had to
stand still all their days.
It was, too, with many professions of this spirit that the tariff was
dealt with. It ran suddenly to the front as a militant party question
in 1833, not as if a great free-trade movement had been set afoot which
was to anticipate the mission of Cobden and Bright, but as an issue
between federal taxation and the constitutional privileges of the
States. The agricultural States were being, as they thought, very
cruelly trodden down under the iron heel of that protectionist policy to
whose enthronement they had themselves consented, and they fetched their
hope of escape from the Constitution. The federal government
unquestionably possessed, they admitted, and that by direct grant of the
fundamental law, the right to impose duties on imports; but did that
right carry with it the privilege of laying discriminating duties for
other purposes than that of raising legitimate revenue? Could the
Constitution have meant that South Carolina might be taxed to maintain
the manufactures of New England?
Close upon the heels of the great tariff controversy of that time came
the stupendous contest over the right of secession and the abolition of
slavery; and again in this contest, as in all that had gone before, the
party which was being hard driven sought refuge in the Constitution.
This too was, in its first stages at least, a lawyer's question. It
eventually slipped out of all lawyerly control, and was given over to be
settled by the stern and savage processes of war; but it stayed with
the constitutional lawyers as long as it could, and would have stayed
with them to the end had it not itself been bigger than the Constitution
and mixed with such interests and such passions as were beyond the
control of legislatures or of law courts.
Such samples of the character which political questions have hitherto
borne in this country are sufficient to remind all readers of our
history of what have been the chief features of our politics, and may
serve, without further elaboration, to illustrate the point I wish to
emphasize. It is manifest how such a course of politics would affect
statesmanship and political leadership. While questions affecting the
proper construction of the Constitution were the chief and most
imperative questions pressing for settlement, great lawyers were in
demand; and great lawyers were, accordingly, forthcoming in satisfaction
of the demand. In a land like ours, where litigation is facilitated by
the establishment of many open and impartial courts, great lawyers are a
much more plentiful product than great administrators, unless there be
also some extraordinary means for the encouragement of administrative
talents. We have, accordingly, always had plenty of excellent lawyers,
though we have often had to do without even tolerable administrators,
and seem destined to endure the inconvenience of hereafter doing
without any constructive statesmen at all. The constitutional issues of
former times were so big and so urgent that they brought great advocates
into the field, despite all the tendencies there were in our system
towards depriving leadership of all place of authority. In the presence
of questions affecting the very structure and powers of the federal
government, parties had to rally with definite purpose and espouse a
distinct creed; and when the maintenance or overthrow of slavery had
ceased to be a question of constitutional right, and had become a matter
of contention between sentiment and vested rights,--between interest and
passionate feeling,--there was of course a hot energy of contest between
two compact hosts and a quick elevation of forceful leaders.
The three stages of national growth which preceded the war between the
States were each of them creative of a distinct class of political
leaders. In the period of erection there were great architects and
master-builders; in the period of constitutional interpretation there
were, at a distance from the people, great political schoolmen who
pondered and expounded the letter of the law, and, nearer the people,
great constitutional advocates who cast the doctrines of the schoolmen
into policy; and in the period of abolitionist agitation there were
great masters of feeling and leaders of public purpose. The publicists
of the second period kept charge of the slavery question, as I have
said, as long as they could, and gave place with bitter reluctance to
the anti-slavery orators and pro-slavery champions who were to talk the
war-feeling into a flame. But it was of course inevitable that the new
movement should have new leaders. It was essentially revolutionary in
its tone and in its designs, and so quite out of the reach of those
principles of action which had governed the policy of the older school
of politicians. Its aim was to change, not to vindicate, the
Constitution. Its leaders spoke, not words of counsel, but words of
passion and of command. It was a crusade, not a campaign; the impetuous
movement of a cause, not the canvass of a mooted measure. And, like
every big, stirring cause, it had its leaders--leaders whose authority
rested upon the affections and sympathies of the people rather than upon
any attested wisdom or success of statesmanship. The war was the work,
mediately, of philanthropists; and the reconstructions which followed
the war were the hasty strokes of these same unbalanced knights of the
crusade, full of bold feeling, but not of steady or far-sighted
judgment.
The anti-slavery movement called forth leaders who, from the very nature
of their calling, were more picturesque than any who had figured on the
national stage since the notable play of the Revolution had gone off the
boards; but it was no better cast in leading parts than had been the
drama which immediately preceded it. When the constitution of a
self-governing people is being consciously moulded by the rapid
formation of precedent during the earliest periods of its existence,
there are sure to be antagonistic beliefs, distinct and strong and
active enough to take shape in the creeds of energetic parties, each led
by the greatest advocates of its cherished principles. The season of our
constitutional development, consequently, saw as fine a race of
statesmen at the front of national affairs as have ever directed the
civil policy of the country; and they, in turn, gave place to men brave
to encounter the struggles of changed times, and fit to solve the doubts
of a new set of events.
Since the war, however, we have come into a fourth period of national
life, and are perplexed at finding ourselves denied a new order of
statesmanship to suit the altered conditions of government. The period
of federal construction is long-passed; questions of constitutional
interpretation are no longer regarded as of pressing urgency, the war
has been fought, even the embers of its issues being now almost
extinguished; and we are left to that unexciting but none the less
capitally important business of every-day peaceful development and
judicious administration to whose execution every nation in its middle
age has to address itself with what sagacity, energy, and prudence it
can command. It cannot be said that these new duties have as yet raised
up any men eminently fit for their fulfillment. We have had no great
administrators since the opening of this newest stage, and there is as
yet no visible sign that any such will soon arise. The forms of
government in this country have always been unfavorable to the easy
elevation of talent to a station of paramount authority; and those forms
in their present crystallization are more unfavorable than ever to the
toleration of the leadership of the few, whilst the questions now most
prominent in politics are not of such a nature as to compel skilled and
trustworthy champions to come into the field, as did the constitutional
issues and revolutionary agitations of other days. They are matters of a
too quiet, business-like sort to enlist feeling or arouse enthusiasm.
It is, therefore, very unfortunate that only feeling or enthusiasm can
create recognized leadership in our politics. There is no office set
apart for the great party leader in our government. The powers of the
Speakership of the House of Representatives are too cramped and covert;
the privileges of the chairmanships of the chief Standing Committees
are too limited in scope; the presidency is too silent and inactive, too
little like a premiership and too much like a superintendency. If there
be any one man to whom a whole party or a great national majority looks
for guiding counsel, he must lead without office, as Daniel Webster did,
or in spite of his office, as Jefferson and Jackson did. There must be
something in the times or in the questions which are abroad to thrust
great advocates or great masters of purpose into a non-official
leadership, which is theirs because they represent in the greatest
actions of their lives some principle at once vital and widely loved or
hated, or because they possess in their unrivaled power of eloquent
speech the ability to give voice to some such living theme. There must
be a cause to be advanced which is greater than the trammels of
governmental forms, and which, by authority of its own imperative voice,
constitutes its advocates the leaders of the nation, though without
giving them official title--without need of official title. No one is
authorized to lead by reason of any official station known to our
system. We call our real leaders by no names but their own: Mr. Webster
was always Mr. Webster and never Prime Minister.
In a country which governs itself by means of a public meeting, a
Congress or a Parliament, a country whose political life is
representative, the only real leadership in governmental affairs must be
legislative leadership--ascendency in the public meeting which decides
everything. The leaders, if there be any, must be those who suggest the
opinions and rule the actions of the representative body. We have in
this country, therefore, no real leadership; because no man is allowed
to direct the course of Congress, and there is no way of governing the
country save through Congress, which is supreme. The chairman of a great
Committee like the Committee of Ways and Means stands, indeed, at the
sources of a very large and important stream of policy, and can turn
that stream at his pleasure, or mix what he will with its waters; but
there are whole provinces of policy in which he can have no authority at
all. He neither directs, nor can often influence, those other chairmen
who direct all the other important affairs of government. He, though the
greatest of chairmen, and as great, it may be, as any other one man in
the whole governmental system, is by no means at the head of the
government. He is, as he feels every day, only a big wheel where there
are many other wheels, some almost as big as he, and all driven, like
himself, by fires which he does not kindle or tend.
In a word, we have no supreme executive ministry, like the great
"Ministry of the Crown" over sea, in whose hands is the general
management of legislation; and we have, consequently, no great prizes of
leadership such as are calculated to stimulate men of strong talents to
great and conspicuous public services. The Committee system is, as I
have already pointed out, the very opposite of this. It makes all the
prizes of leadership small, and nowhere gathers power into a few hands.
It cannot be denied that this is in ordinary times, and in the absence
of stirring themes, a great drawback, inasmuch as it makes legislative
service unattractive to minds of the highest order, to whom the offer of
really great place and power at the head of the governing assembly, the
supreme council of the nation, would be of all things most attractive.
If the presidency were competitive,--if it could be won by distinguished
congressional service,--who can doubt that there would be a notable
influx of talents into Congress and a significant elevation of tone and
betterment of method in its proceedings; and yet the presidency is very
far from being equal to a first-rate premiership.
There is, I know, one distinctive feature of legislative leadership
which makes it seem to some not altogether to be desired; though it
scarcely constitutes such an objection as to make no leadership at all
seem preferable. It is the leadership of orators; it is the ascendency
of those who have a genius for talking. In the eyes of those who do not
like it, it seems a leadership of artful dialecticians, the success of
tricks of phrase, the victory of rushing declamation--government, not by
the advice of statesman-like counselors, but by the wagging of ready
tongues. Macaulay pointed out with his accustomed force of statement
just the fact which haunts those who hold to such objections. The power
of speaking, he said, which is so highly prized by politicians in a
popular government, "may exist in the highest degree without judgment,
without fortitude, without skill in reading the characters of men or the
signs of the times, without any knowledge, of the principles of
legislation or of political economy, and without any skill in diplomacy
or in the administration of war. Nay, it may well happen that those very
intellectual qualities which give peculiar charm to the speeches of a
public man may be incompatible with the qualities which would fit him to
meet a pressing emergency with promptitude and firmness. It was thus
with Charles Townshend. It was thus with Windham. It was a privilege to
listen to those accomplished and ingenious orators. But in a perilous
crisis they would be found inferior in all the qualities of rulers to
such a man as Oliver Cromwell, who talked nonsense, or as William the
Silent, who did not talk at all."
Nevertheless, it is to be observed that neither Windham nor Townshend
rose to places of highest confidence in the assembly which they served,
and which they charmed by their attractive powers of speech; and that
Cromwell would have been as unfit to rule anything but an autocratic
commonwealth as would have been William the Silent to be anything but a
Dutch governor. The people really had no voice in Cromwell's government.
It was absolute. He would have been as much out of place in a
representative government as a bull in a china shop. We would not have a
Bismarck if we could.
Every species of government has the defects of its own qualities.
Representative government is government by advocacy, by discussion, by
persuasion, and a great, miscellaneous voting population is often misled
by deceitful pleas and swayed by unwise counsels. But if one were to
make a somewhat freer choice of examples than Macaulay permitted
himself, it would be easy to multiply the instances of ruling orators of
our race who have added to their gifts of eloquence conspicuous sagacity
in the administration of affairs. At any rate, the men who have led
popular assemblies have often been, like Hampden, rarely endowed with
judgment, foresight, and steadfastness of purpose; like Walpole,
amazingly quick in "reading the characters of men and the signs of the
times;" like Chatham, masterful in ordering the conquests and the
policies of the world; like Burke, learned in the profoundest principles
of statecraft; like Canning, adroit in diplomacy; like Pitt, safe in
times of revolution; like Peel, sagacious in finance; or, like
Gladstone, skilled in every branch of political knowledge and equal to
any strain of emergency.
It is natural that orators should be the leaders of a self-governing
people. Men may be clever and engaging speakers, such as are to be
found, doubtless, at half the bars of the country, without being
equipped even tolerably for any of the high duties of the statesman; but
men can scarcely be orators without that force of character, that
readiness of resource, that clearness of vision, that grasp of
intellect, that courage of conviction, that earnestness of purpose, and
that instinct and capacity for leadership which are the eight horses
that draw the triumphal chariot of every leader and ruler of free men.
We could not object to being ruled again by such men as Henry and Otis
and Samuel Adams; but they were products of revolution. They were
inspired by the great causes of the time; and the government which they
set up has left us without any ordinary, peaceful means of bringing men
like them into public life. We should like to have more like them, but
the violent exercise of revolution is too big a price to pay for them.
Some less pungent diet is to be desired for the purpose of giving health
to our legislative service. There ought to be some quiet, effective
tonic, some mild stimulant, such as the certain prospect of winning
highest and most honorable office, to infuse the best talent of the
nation into our public life.