when he speaks the whole country will listen: namely, genius and
authority. Probably no one will ever contend that Sir Stafford Northcote
was an orator, or even a good speaker. But by proof of unblemished
character, and by assiduous, conscientious, and able public service he
rose to be the recognized leader of his party in the House of Commons;
and it is simply because he speaks as one having authority,--and not as
the scribes of the Press,--that he is as sure of a heedful hearing as is
Mr. Gladstone, who adds genius and noble oratory to the authority of
established leadership. The leaders of English public life have
something besides weight of character, prestige of personal service and
experience, and authority of individual opinion to exalt them above the
anonymous Press. They have definite authority and power in the actual
control of government. They are directly commissioned to control the
policy of the administration. They stand before the country, in
parliament and out of it, as the responsible chiefs of their parties. It
is their business to lead those parties, and it is the matter-of-course
custom of the constituencies to visit upon the parties the punishment
due for the mistakes made by these chiefs. They are at once the servants
and scapegoats of their parties.
It is these well-established privileges and responsibilities of theirs
which make their utterances considered worth hearing,--nay, necessary to
be heard and pondered. Their public speeches are their parties'
platforms. What the leader promises his party stands ready to do, should
it be intrusted with office. This certainty of audience and of credit
gives spice to what such leaders have to say, and lends elevation to the
tone of all their public utterances. They for the most part avoid
buncombe, which would be difficult to translate into Acts of Parliament.
It is easy to see how great an advantage their station and influence
give them over our own public men. We have no such responsible party
leadership on this side the sea; we are very shy about conferring much
authority on anybody, and the consequence is that it requires something
very like genius to secure for any one of our statesmen a universally
recognized right to be heard and to create an ever-active desire to hear
him whenever he talks, not about candidates, but about measures. An
extraordinary gift of eloquence, such as not every generation may hope
to see, will always hold, because it will always captivate, the
attention of the people. But genius and eloquence are too rare to be
depended upon for the instruction and guidance of the masses; and since
our politicians lack the credit of authority and responsibility, they
must give place, except at election-time, to the Press, which is
everywhere, generally well-informed, and always talking. It is
necessarily "government by declamation" and editorial-writing.
It is probably also this lack of leadership which gives to our national
parties their curious, conglomerate character. It would seem to be
scarcely an exaggeration to say that they are homogeneous only in name.
Neither of the two principal parties is of one mind with itself. Each
tolerates all sorts of difference of creed and variety of aim within its
own ranks. Each pretends to the same purposes and permits among its
partisans the same contradictions to those purposes. They are grouped
around no legislative leaders whose capacity has been tested and to
whose opinions they loyally adhere. They are like armies without
officers, engaged upon a campaign which has no great cause at its back.
Their names and traditions, not their hopes and policy, keep them
together.
It is to this fact, as well as to short terms which allow little time
for differences to come to a head, that the easy agreement of
congressional majorities should be attributed. In other like assemblies
the harmony of majorities is constantly liable to disturbance. Ministers
lose their following and find their friends falling away in the midst
of a session. But not so in Congress. There, although the majority is
frequently simply conglomerate, made up of factions not a few, and
bearing in its elements every seed of discord, the harmony of party
voting seldom, if ever, suffers an interruption. So far as outsiders can
see, legislation generally flows placidly on, and the majority easily
has its own way, acting with a sort of matter-of-course unanimity, with
no suspicion of individual freedom of action. Whatever revolts may be
threatened or accomplished in the ranks of the party outside the House
at the polls, its power is never broken inside the House. This is
doubtless due in part to the fact that there is no freedom of debate in
the House; but there can be no question that it is principally due to
the fact that debate is without aim, just because legislation is without
consistency. Legislation is conglomerate. The absence of any concert of
action amongst the Committees leaves legislation with scarcely any trace
of determinate party courses. No two schemes pull together. If there is
a coincidence of principle between several bills of the same session, it
is generally accidental; and the confusion of policy which prevents
intelligent cooperation also, of course, prevents intelligent
differences and divisions. There is never a transfer of power from one
party to the other during a session, because such a transfer would mean
almost nothing. The majority remains of one mind so long as a Congress
lives, because its mind is very vaguely ascertained, and its power of
planning a split consequently very limited. It has no common mind, and
if it had, has not the machinery for changing it. It is led by a score
or two of Committees whose composition must remain the same to the end;
and who are too numerous, as well as too disconnected, to fight against.
It stays on one side because it hardly knows where the boundaries of
that side are or how to cross them.
Moreover, there is a certain well-known piece of congressional machinery
long ago invented and applied for the special purpose of keeping both
majority and minority compact. The legislative caucus has almost as
important a part in our system as have the Standing Committees, and
deserves as close study as they. Its functions are much more easily
understood in all their bearings than those of the Committees, however,
because they are much simpler. The caucus is meant as an antidote to the
Committees. It is designed to supply the cohesive principle which the
multiplicity and mutual independence of the Committees so powerfully
tend to destroy. Having no Prime Minister to confer with about the
policy of the government, as they see members of parliament doing, our
congressmen confer with each other in caucus. Rather than imprudently
expose to the world the differences of opinion threatened or developed
among its members, each party hastens to remove disrupting debate from
the floor of Congress, where the speakers might too hastily commit
themselves to insubordination, to quiet conferences behind closed doors,
where frightened scruples may be reassured and every disagreement healed
with a salve of compromise or subdued with the whip of political
expediency. The caucus is the drilling-ground of the party. There its
discipline is renewed and strengthened, its uniformity of step and
gesture regained. The voting and speaking in the House are generally
merely the movements of a sort of dress parade, for which the exercises
of the caucus are designed to prepare. It is easy to see how difficult
it would be for the party to keep its head amidst the confused
cross-movements of the Committees without thus now and again pulling
itself together in caucus, where it can ask itself its own mind and
pledge itself anew to eternal agreement.
The credit of inventing this device is probably due to the Democrats.
They appear to have used it so early as the second session of the
eighth Congress. Speaking of that session, a reliable authority says:
"During this session of Congress there was far less of free and
independent discussion on the measures proposed by the friends of the
administration than had been previously practiced in both branches of
the national legislature. It appeared that on the most important
subjects, the course adopted by the majority was the effect of caucus
arrangement, or, in other words, had been previously agreed upon at
meetings of the Democratic members held in private. Thus the legislation
of Congress was constantly swayed by a party following feelings and
pledges rather than according to sound reason or personal
conviction."[63] The censure implied in this last sentence may have
seemed righteous at the time when such caucus pledges were in disfavor
as new-fangled shackles, but it would hardly be accepted as just by the
intensely practical politicians of to-day. They would probably prefer to
put it thus: That the silvern speech spent in caucus secures the golden
silence maintained on the floor of Congress, making each party rich in
concord and happy in cooperation.
The fact that makes this defense of the caucus not altogether conclusive
is that it is shielded from all responsibility by its sneaking privacy.
It has great power without any balancing weight of accountability.
Probably its debates would constitute interesting and instructive
reading for the public, were they published; but they never get out
except in rumors often rehearsed and as often amended. They are, one may
take it for granted, much more candid and go much nearer the political
heart of the questions discussed than anything that is ever said openly
in Congress to the reporters' gallery. They approach matters without
masks and handle them without gloves. It might hurt, but it would
enlighten us to hear them. As it is, however, there is unhappily no
ground for denying their power to override sound reason and personal
conviction. The caucus cannot always silence or subdue a large and
influential minority of dissentients, but its whip seldom fails to
reduce individual malcontents and mutineers into submission. There is no
place in congressional jousts for the free lance. The man who disobeys
his party caucus is understood to disavow his party allegiance
altogether, and to assume that dangerous neutrality which is so apt to
degenerate into mere caprice, and which is almost sure to destroy his
influence by bringing him under the suspicion of being unreliable,--a
suspicion always conclusively damning in practical life. Any individual,
or any minority of weak numbers or small influence, who has the
temerity to neglect the decisions of the caucus is sure, if the offense
be often repeated, or even once committed upon an important issue, to be
read out of the party, almost without chance of reinstatement. And every
one knows that nothing can be accomplished in politics by mere
disagreement. The only privilege such recalcitrants gain is the
privilege of disagreement; they are forever shut out from the privilege
of confidential cooperation. They have chosen the helplessness of a
faction.
It must be admitted, however, that, unfortunate as the necessity is for
the existence of such powers as those of the caucus, that necessity
actually exists and cannot be neglected. Against the fatal action of so
many elements of disintegration it would seem to be imperatively needful
that some energetic element of cohesion should be provided. It is
doubtful whether in any other nation, with a shorter inheritance of
political instinct, parties could long successfully resist the
centrifugal forces of the committee system with only the varying
attraction of the caucus to detain them. The wonder is that, despite the
forcible and unnatural divorcement of legislation and administration and
the consequent distraction of legislation from all attention to anything
like an intelligent planning and superintendence of policy, we are not
cursed with as many factions as now almost hopelessly confuse French
politics. That we have had, and continue to have, only two national
parties of national importance or real power is fortunate rather than
natural. Their names stand for a fact, but scarcely for a reason.
An intelligent observer of our politics[64] has declared that there is
in the United States "a class, including thousands and tens of thousands
of the best men in the country, who think it possible to enjoy the
fruits of good government without working for them." Every one who has
seen beyond the outside of our American life must recognize the truth of
this; to explain it is to state the sum of all the most valid criticisms
of congressional government. Public opinion has no easy vehicle for its
judgments, no quick channels for its action. Nothing about the system is
direct and simple. Authority is perplexingly subdivided and distributed,
and responsibility has to be hunted down in out-of-the-way corners. So
that the sum of the whole matter is that the means of working for the
fruits of good government are not readily to be found. The average
citizen may be excused for esteeming government at best but a haphazard
affair, upon which his vote and all of his influence can have but
little effect. How is his choice of a representative in Congress to
affect the policy of the country as regards the questions in which he is
most interested, if the man for whom he votes has no chance of getting
on the Standing Committee which has virtual charge of those questions?
How is it to make any difference who is chosen President? Has the
President any very great authority in matters of vital policy? It seems
almost a thing of despair to get any assurance that any vote he may cast
will even in an infinitesimal degree affect the essential courses of
administration. There are so many cooks mixing their ingredients in the
national broth that it seems hopeless, this thing of changing one cook
at a time.
* * * * *
The charm of our constitutional ideal has now been long enough wound up
to enable sober men who do not believe in political witchcraft to judge
what it has accomplished, and is likely still to accomplish, without
further winding. The Constitution is not honored by blind worship. The
more open-eyed we become, as a nation, to its defects, and the prompter
we grow in applying with the unhesitating courage of conviction all
thoroughly-tested or well-considered expedients necessary to make
self-government among us a straightforward thing of simple method,
single, unstinted power, and clear responsibility, the nearer will we
approach to the sound sense and practical genius of the great and
honorable statesmen of 1787. And the first step towards emancipation
from the timidity and false pride which have led us to seek to thrive
despite the defects of our national system rather than seem to deny its
perfection is a fearless criticism of that system. When we shall have
examined all its parts without sentiment, and ganged all its functions
by the standards of practical common sense, we shall have established
anew our right to the claim of political sagacity; and it will remain
only to act intelligently upon what our opened eyes have seen in order
to prove again the justice of our claim to political genius.
INDEX.
Aberdeen. Lord, and civil service reform, 285.
Accounts, British public, how audited, 144, how kept, 145; French
public, how kept, 145; federal, how audited, 175-179; how kept formerly,
179.
Adams, John, on the constitutional balances, 12, 13; influence of, as
President, 41; claim of originality for the Constitution, 55, 249.
Adams, Samuel, 209.
"Address" of early Presidents to Senate, 239.
Administration, talents for, not encouraged in U. S., 199, 200;
questions of, now predominant, 203; divorced from legislation in U. S.,
251-253; training necessary for, 255, 256; contrasted with legislation,
273, 274; not less important than legislation, 297; must be debated,
302; tendency towards widening sphere of national, 316, 317.
Alabama claims, in Senate, 51.
Alien and Sedition Laws, 21.
Amendment, difficulty of constitutional, 242, 243; extra-constitutional,
243.
"American system" of protective tariffs, 167.
Appointing power of Speaker of House, 103; history of, of Speaker, 104;
accustomed use of, for party ends, 108.
Appropriation, bills, "general," 150; former methods of, 151; stinginess
of Congress in, 152, 159; bills, reported at any time, 153; bills,
specially debated, 78, 154, 155, 183, 184; bills, in the Senate,
155-158.
Appropriations, debate of, 78, 154, 155, 183, 184; "white-button
mandarins" of Committee on, 111; Committee on, consider estimates, 149;
"permanent," 152, 153; Committee on, controls only annual grants, 153;
semi-annual, 159; Committees on, relations between, and financial
officers of the govt., 160-164; reports of Committee on, preferred to
reports of Committee of Ways and Means, 174, 183, 184.
Audit of public accounts in England, 144; in U. S., 175-179.
Bagehot, Walter, on living reality and paper description of English
Constitution, 10; description of Parliament by, applied to Congress, 44;
on time required for opinions, 130; on public opinion, 187; on House of
Lords, 220; on bicameral system, 221, 222; on technicalities of
constitutional interpretation in U. S., 243; on questions asked in the
Commons, 300; on influence of Geo. III. on Constitution of U. S., 309;
on multiplicity of authorities in American Constitution, 309, 310.
Balance, between state and federal powers, See 'Federal and State
governments;' between judiciary and other branches of federal govt., 34
_et seq_.; between state legislatures and the Senate, 40; of the people
against their representatives, 40; of presidential electors against the
people, 40; between Executive and Congress, 41; between Senate and House
of Representatives, real, 228.
Balances of the Constitution, ideal, 52; present state of, 53; at
variance with inevitable tendency to exalt representative body, 311.
Bank of the U. S., 22.
Bicameral system, utility of a, 219 _et seq_.
Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the U. S., 7.
Bills, introduced on Mondays, 66; early course of, in House, 67; all
committed, 67; doubt in committing some, 67, 68; fate of committed, 69;
passed under suspension of Rules, 111, 112; of private members in House
of Commons, 120, 121.
Bismarck, Count, stands for govt. in Germany, 59, 208.
"Bland Silver Bill," 185.
Bright, John, 198.
British govt. by party, 117 _et seq_.
Buckle, on use of legislation, 295.
Budget, controlled, not originated, by British House of Commons, 137;
preparation and submission of, by English Chancellor of Exchequer,
140-142; both originated and controlled by Congress, 148, 191.
Burke, Edmund, 209; on value of House of Commons, 227.
Cabinet, discords in first, 2; change in character of, 45 _et seq_.;
real executive equality of, with President, 46, 257; diminishing power
of, to control policy, 45, 47, 262, 269; parliamentary position of
British, 95; British, a single Standing Committee, 117; irresponsibility
of, in U. S., in matters of finance, 164; an integral part of the
Executive, 257; limits to independence of, 258; relations of, to
President, 258, 259; ministerial, rather than political, officers in U.
S., 261, 264 _et seq_., 291; duties of, supervised by Standing
Committees, 262; in the leading-strings of Congress, 262, 266; fixed
terms of, 261, 264 _et seq_.; represent whom? 265, 266; party relations
of, 269; easily evade many questions and commands of Congress, 271, 272;
indistinct responsibility of, 282; history of responsibility of British,
286 _et seq_.; status of, in American constitutional system, 291.
Calhoun, J. C., 89, 218.
Call of States for bills, 66; of Standing Committees for reports, 72,
73.
Canning, George, 209.
Caucus, failure of congressional nominating, 247; legislative,
disciplines parties in Congress, 326, 327; invention of, by Democrats,
327, 328; privacy and irresponsibility of legislative, 328, 329; methods
and constraints of legislative, 329, 330; necessity for legislative,
330.
Centralization, present tendency towards, in federal govt. and Congress,
53, 315, 316; questions which seem to necessitate, 54.
Chairman of Standing Committees, govt. by, 102; elders of Congress, 102;
relations of, to each other, 102, 103; limits to leadership of each of
the, 205.
Chatham, Earl of, 209, 258.
Civil Rights Act, 33, n.
Civil Service Reform, and usurpations of Senate, 49, 236 _et seq_.;
hindered by institutional causes in U. S., 285, 290; history of, in
Great Britain, 285 et seq.; history of, in U. S., 289, 290; conditions
precedent to, 290.
Clay, Henry, 89, 218, 252.
_Cloture_ in French Assembly, 126.
Cobden, Richard, 198.
Coinage Act of 1873, 185.
Commerce, federal power over, 30, 31; former control of appropriations
for internal improvements by Committee on, 167.
Commission, legislative, proposed by J. S. Mill, 115, 129, 192; the most
effective legislative, 192.
Committee, "Executive," proposed for House of Representatives, 114.
Committees, select, 67.
Committees, Standing, government by, 56; chairmen of, leaders of House,
60; chairmen of, do not consult or cooperate, 61; for every topic of
legislation, 61; served by rules of House, 66, 71; number and uses of,
67, 68; consider all bills, 67; overlapping jurisdiction of, 68; cannot
reject bills, 69; neglect of, to report, 69, 70; entire direction of
legislation by, 70, 78; hasty consideration of reports of, by House, 71;
four specially licensed, 71, 72; average time given to each of the, to
report, 72; call of, for reports, 72, 73; hastening of business by the,
74 _et seq_.; control of debate by, 75 _et seq_.; arguments before the,
81-85; division of power amongst the, 92; both parties represented on,
99; appointed in House by Speaker, 103; history of rules of appointment
of, 104; aided by Speaker, 108; Roman magistrates and the, 109; "little
legislatures" made up of all sorts of men, 113; contrasted with single
Standing Committee of Parliament, 116, 117; of House of Commons, 122;
which control national income, 136; which create demands upon the
Treasury, 167, 168; on expenditures, 175-177; multiplication of, by
Congress, 176, n.; approachability of the, by lobbyists, 189, 190;
choice of, in the Senate, 212, n.; supervision of the departments by
the, 231, 262, 271, 272; may command, but cannot superintend, 271; part
of the mechanism of Congress, 281; offset by legislative caucus, 326.
Commons, House of, represented by Ministers of Crown, 59, 244; character
of debate in the, 94, 95; Cabinet's place and functions in the, 117 _et
seq_.; private members' bills in the, 120, 121; committees of, 122;
functions and character of Speaker of, 122; the, in session, 123;
compared with French Chamber, 123, 128, 129; controls, does not
originate, financial measures, 137; opposition of, to civil service
reform, 285, 289; cross-examination of Ministers in, 300.
Conference Committees on appropriation bills, 157, 158, 280.
Congress, the centre and source of power, 11; early awkwardness of, 21,
44; made dominant and irresistible by doctrine of "implied powers," 23;
check upon, by Judiciary, 35, 36; power of, over federal courts, 38;
check upon, by President, 41; quick assumption of control by, 44, 45;
enlarged powers of, created by efficiency of organization, 47;
prominence of Senate in contests with executive, 47 _et seq_.; proper
central object of constitutional study, 57; complex organization of, 58;
without authoritative leaders, 59, 92, 205, 212, 315; embarrassments of
new member in, 61 _et seq_.; work of, parceled out to Committees, 67;
delays of each new, in getting to work, 72, 73; uninteresting character
of debate in, 95, 96; means of financial control by, 147; supervision of
expenditures by, 175, 179; difficulties of constituencies in
controlling, 186-189; cause for distrust of, 186 et seq.; lobbying in,
189, 190; failure of presidential nominating caucus of, 247; does not
breed administrators, 251, 252; and the Executive, party diversity
between, 267; defective means of, for controlling executive action, 270
_et seq_., 302; and the Executive, absence of confidential cooperation
between, 278; exactions of, upon the departments, 278, 279; diligence
of, in legislation, 294, 297; necessity for discussion of administration
by, 301 _et seq_.; informing function of, to be magnified, 303; grasps
after new subjects of legislation, 304; freedom of action possible to,
304, 305; inferior to the Press as a critical authority, 306, 319;
embarrassments of, in making its authority open and respectable, 312 _et
seq_.; and Parliament succeeding Revolution settlement in Eng., 315;
without adequate information, 315; tendency towards concentration of
federal powers in hands of, 315, 316; irresponsibility of, 318;
agreement and stability of majorities in, 324 _et seq_.; parties in,
disciplined by caucus, 326, 327.