ing confidential proceedings, makes himself liable. Practically, however, newspaper men find little difficulty in ascertaining what passes in secret session. The threatened punishment has never been inflicted, and occasions often arise when senators feel it to be desirable that the public should know what their colleagues have been doing.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SENATE AS AN EXECUTIVE AND JUDICIAL BODY

The Senate is not only a legislative but also an executive chamber; in fact, in its early days the executive functions seem to have been thought the more important; and Hamilton went so far as to speak of the national executive authority as divided between two branches, the President and the Senate. These executive functions are two, the power of approving treaties and that of confirming nominations to office submitted by the President.

The Senate through its right of confirming or rejecting engagements with foreign powers, secures a general control over foreign policy. It is in the discretion of the President whether he will communicate current negotiations to it and take its advice upon them, or will say nothing till he lays a completed treaty before it. One or other course is from time to time followed, according to the nature of the case, or the degree of friendliness existing between the President and the majority of the Senate. But in general, the President's best policy is to keep the leaders of the senatorial majority, and in particular the Committee on Foreign Relations, informed of the progress of any pending negotiation. He thus feels the pulse of the Senate, and foresees what kind of arrangement he can induce it to sanction, while at the

same time a good understanding between himself and his coadjutors is promoted.

This control of foreign policy by the Senate goes far to meet that terrible difficulty which a democracy, or indeed any free government, finds in dealing with foreign Powers. If every step to be taken must be previously submitted to the governing assembly, the nation is forced to show its whole hand, and precious opportunities of winning an ally or striking a bargain may be lost. If on the other hand the Executive is permitted to conduct negotiations in secret, there is always the risk, either that the governing assembly may disavow what has been done, a risk which makes foreign states legitimately suspicious and unwilling to negotiate, or that the nation may have to ratify, because it feels bound in honor by the act of its executive agents, arrangements which its judgment condemns. The frequent participation of the Senate in negotiations diminishes these difficulties, because it apprises the Executive of what the judgment of the ratifying body is likely to be, and it commits that body in advance.

The Senate may, and occasionally does, amend a treaty, and return it amended to the President. There is nothing to prevent it from proposing a draft treaty to him, or asking him to prepare one, but this is not the practice. For ratification a vote of two thirds of the senators present is required. This gives great power to a vexatious minority, and increases the danger, evidenced by several incidents in the history of the Union, that the Senate or a faction in it may deal with foreign policy in a narrow, sectional, electioneering spirit. When the interest of any group of States is, or is supposed to be, opposed to the making of a given treaty, that treaty may be defeated by the senators from those States. Supposing their party to command a majority, the treaty

is probably rejected, and the settlement of the question at issue perhaps indefinitely postponed.

The judicial function of the Senate is to sit as a High Court for the trial of persons impeached by the House of Representatives. The Chief Justice of the United States presides, and a vote of two thirds of the senators voting is needed for a conviction. The process is applicable to other officials besides the President, including Federal judges.

Rare as this method of proceeding is, it could not be dispensed with, and it is better that the Senate should try cases in which a political element is usually present, than that the impartiality of the Supreme Court should be exposed to the criticism it would have to bear, did political questions come before it.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SENATE: ITS WORKING AND INFLUENCE

The chamber in which the Senate meets is semicircular in form, the Vice-President of the United States, who acts as presiding officer, having his chair on a marble dais, slightly raised, in the center of the chord, with the senators all turned toward him as they sit in concentric simicircles, each in a morocco leather-covered arm-chair, with a desk in front of it. The floor is about as large as the whole superficial area of the British House of Commons, but as there are great galleries on all four sides, running back over the lobbies, the upper part of the chamber and its total air-space much exceeds that of the English House. One of these galleries is appropriated to the President of the United States; the others to ladies, the press, and the public. Behind the senatorial chairs and desks there is an open space into which strangers may be brought by the senators, who sit and talk on the sofas there placed. Members

of foreign legislatures are allowed access to this outer "floor of the Senate." There is, especially when the galleries are empty, a slight echo in the room, which obliges most speakers to strain their voices. Two or three pictures on the walls somewhat relieve the cold tone of the chamber, with its marble platform and sides unpierced by windows, for the light enters through glass compartments in the ceiling.

A senator always addresses the Chair "Mr. President," and refers to other senators by their States: "The senator from Ohio," "The senator from Tennessee." When two senators rise at the same moment, the Chair calls on one, indicating him by his State, "The senator from Minnesota has the floor." Senators of the Democratic party sit, and apparently always have sat, on the right of the Chair, Republican senators on the left; but, as already explained, the parties do not face one another. The impression which the place makes on a visitor is one of businesslike gravity, a gravity which though plain is dignified. It has the air not so much of a popular assembly as of a diplomatic congress. The English House of Lords, with its fretted roof and windows rich with the figures of departed kings, its majestic throne, its Lord Chancellor in his wig on the woolsack, its benches of lawn-sleeved bishops, its bar where the Commons throng in'externals, but appeals far more powerfully to the historical imagination, for it seems to carry the Middle Ages down into the modern world. The Senate is modern, severe, and practical. So, too, few debates in the Senate rise to the level of the better debates in the English chamber. But the Senate seldom wears the air of listless vacuity and superannuated indolence which the House of Lords presents on all but a few nights of every session. The faces are keen and forcible, as

of men who have learned to know the world, and have much to do in it; the place seems consecrated to great affairs.

As might be expected from the small number of the audience, as well as from its character, discussions in the Senate are apt to be sensible and practical. Speeches are shorter and less fervid than those made in the House of Representatives, for the larger an assembly the more prone is it to declamation. The least useful debates are those on showdays, when a series of set discourses are delivered on some prominent question, because no one expects such discourses to have any persuasive effect. The question at issue is sure to have been already settled, either in a committee or in a "caucus" of the party which commands the majority, so that these long and sonorous harangues are mere rhetorical thunder addressed to the nation outside.

The Senate contains men of great wealth. Some, an increasing number, are senators because they are rich; a few are rich because they are senators, while in the remaining cases the same talents which have won success in law or commerce have brought their possessor to the top in politics also. The great majority are or have been lawyers; some regularly practice before the Supreme Court. Complaints are occasionally leveled against the aristocratic tendencies which wealth is supposed to have bred, and sarcastic references are, made to the sumptuous residences which senators have built on the new avenues of Washington. While admitting that there is more sympathy for the capitalist class among these rich men than there would be in a Senate of poor men, I must add that the Senate is far from being a class body like the upper houses of England or Prussia or Spain or Denmark. It is substantially representative, by its composition as well as by legal delega