allots part of it to other members, opponents as well as friends, and usually concludes by moving the previous question. This precludes subsequent amendments and leaves only an hour before the vote is taken. As on an average each committee (excluding the two or three great ones) has only two hours out of the whole ten months of Congress allotted to it to present and have discussed all its bills, it is plain that few measures can be considered, and each but shortly, in the House. The best chance of pressing one through is under the rule which permits the suspension of standing orders by a two-thirds majority during the last six days of the session.

On the whole, it may be said that under this system the House despatches a vast amount of work and does the negative part of it, the killing off of worthless bills, in a thorough way. Were the committees abolished and no other organization substituted, the work could not be done. But much of it, including most of the private bills, ought not to come before Congress at all; and the more important part of what remains, viz., public legislation, is dealt with by methods securing neither the pressing forward of the measures most needed, nor the due debate of those that are pressed forward.

"The Acts passed," say the Americans, "may not be the best possible; the legislation of the year may resemble a patch-work quilt, where each piece is different in color and texture from the rest. But as we do not need much legislation, and as nearly the whole field of ordinary private law lies outside the province of Congress, the mischief is slighter than you expect. If we made legislation easier, we might have too much of it; and in trying to give it more definite character we might make it too bold and sweeping. Be our present system bad or good, it is the only system possible under our Constitution, and

the fact that it was not directly created by that instrument, but has been evolved by the experience of a hundred years, shows how strong must be the tendencies whose natural working has produced it."

CHAPTER XIII.

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION

The Congressional legislative system is really a plan for legislating by a number of commissions. Each commission, receiving suggestions in the shape of bills, taking evidence upon them, and sifting them in debate, frames its measures and lays them before the House in a shape which seems designed to make amendment in details needless, while leaving the general policy to be accepted or rejected by a simple vote of the whole body. In this last respect the plan may be compared with that of the Romans during the Republic, whose general assembly of the people approved or disapproved of a bill as a whole, without power of amendment, a plan which had the advantage of making laws clear and simple. At Rome, however, bills could be proposed only by a magistrate upon his official responsibility; they were therefore comparatively few and sure to be carefully drawn. The members of American legislative commissions have no special training, no official experience, little praise or blame to look for, and no means of securing that the overburdened House will ever come to a vote on their proposals. There is no more agreement between the views of one commission and another than what may result from the majority in both belonging to the same party. Hence, as Woodrow Wilson observes in his "Congressional Government," "The legislation of a session does not represent the policy of either the majority or the minority: it is simply an aggregate of the bills recommended by commit

tees composed of members from both sides of the House, and it is known to be usually not the work of the majority men upon the committees, but compromise conclusions bearing some shade or tinge of each of the variously colored opinions and wishes of the committee men of both parties. Most of the measures which originate with the committees are framed with a view of securing their easy passage by giving them as neutral and inoffensive a character as is possible. The manifest object is to draw them to the liking of all factions. Hence neither the failure nor the success of any policy inaugurated by one of the committees can fairly be charged to the account of either party."

Add the fact that the House in its few months of life has not time to deal with one twentieth of the bills which are thrown upon it, that it therefore drops the enormous majority unconsidered, though some of the best may be in this majority, and passes many of those which it does pass by a suspension of the rules which leaves everything to a single vote, and the marvel comes to be, not that legislation is faulty, but that an intensely practical people tolerates such defective machinery. Some reasons may be suggested tending to explain this phenomenon.

Legislation is a difficult business in all free countries, and perhaps more difficult the more free the country is, because the discordant voices are more numerous and less under control. America has sometimes sacrificed practical convenience to her dislike to authority.

The Americans surpass all other nations in their power of making the best of bad conditions, getting the largest results out of scanty materials or rough methods. Many things in that country work better than they ought to work, so to speak, or could work in any other country, because the people are shrewdly

alert in minimizing such mischiefs as arise from their own haste or heedlessness, and have a great capacity for self help.

Aware that they have this gift, the Americans are content to leave their political machinery unreformed. Persons who propose comprehensive reforms are suspected as theorists and crotchet-mongers. The national inventiveness, active in the spheres of mechanics and money-making, spends little of its force on the details of governmental methods.

The want of legislation on topics where legislation is needed breeds fewer evils than would follow in countries like England or France where Parliament is the only law-making body. The powers of Congress are limited to comparatively few subjects: its failures do not touch the general well-being of the people, nor the healthy administration of the ordinary law.

The faults of bills passed by the House are often cured by the Senate, where discussion is more leisurely and thorough. The committee system produces in that body also some of the same flabbiness and colorlessness in bills passed. But the blunders, whether in substance or of form, of the one chamber are frequently corrected by the other, and many bad bills fail owing to a division of opinion between the Houses.

The President's veto kills off some vicious measures. He does not trouble himself about defects of form; but where a bill seems to him opposed to sound policy, it is his constitutional duty to disapprove it, and to throw on Congress the responsibility of passing it "over his veto" by a two-thirds vote. A good President accepts this responsibility.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONGRESSIONAL FINANCE

No legislature devotes a larger proportion of its time than does Congress to the consideration of financial bills. These are of two kinds: those which raise revenue by taxation, and those which direct the application of the public funds to the various expenses of the government. At present Congress raises all the revenue it requires by indirect taxation, and chiefly by duties of customs and excise; so taxing bills are practically tariff bills, the excise duties being comparatively little varied from year to year.

The Secretary of the Treasury sends annually to Congress a report containing a statement of the national income and expenditure and of the condition of the public debt, together with remarks on the system of taxation and suggestions for its improvement. He also sends what is called his Annual Letter, enclosing the estimates, framed by the various departments, of the sums needed for the public services of the United States during the coming year. So far the Secretary is like a European finance minister, except that he communicates with the chamber on paper instead of making his statement and proposals orally. But here the resemblance stops. Everything that remains in the way of financial legislation is done solely by Congress and its committees, the Executive having no further hand in the matter.

The business of raising money belongs to one committee only, the standing committee of Ways and Means, consisting of eleven members. This committee prepares and reports to the House the bills needed for imposing or continuing the various customs duties, excise duties, etc. The report of the Secretary has been referred by the House to this