The Speaker's distribution of members among the committees is, next to his own election, the most critical point in the history of a Congress, and that watched with most interest. He devotes himself to it for the fortnight after his installation with an intensity equalling that of a European prime minister constructing a cabinet. The parallel goes further, for as the chairmanships of the chief committees may be compared to the cabinet offices of Europe, so the Speaker is himself a great party leader as well as the president of a deliberative assembly.

Although expected to serve his party in all possible direc-. tions, he must not resort to all possible means. Both in the conduct of debate and in the formation of committees a certain measure of fairness to opponents is required from him. He must not palpably wrest the rules of the House to their disadvantage, though he may decide all doubtful points against them. He must give them a reasonable share of "the floor" (i.e. of debate). He must concede to them proper representation on committees. To define his duties on these points is impossible; yet everybody knows when they have been neglected, as was the case with a recent Speaker, whom I heard universally condemned because he had usually "recognized" (i.e. called on in debate) his own friends only, and had otherwise crossed the line which custom has drawn between ordinary and oppressive partisanship.

The dignity of the Speaker's office is high. He receives a salary. of $8000 a year (£1600), which is a large salary for America. In rank he stands next after the President and on a level with the justices of the Supreme Court. Washington society was lately agitated by a claim of his wife to take precedence over the wives of these judges, a claim so ominous in a democratic country that efforts were made to have it adjusted without a formal decision. is never consistent or uniform. The bias of the Speaker at a critical moment will turn the scale. Mr. Randall as Speaker determined the assent of the House to the action of the Electoral Commission [of 1877]. Had he wished for a revolutionary attempt to prevent the announcement of Hayes's election, no one who has had experience in Congress, at least, will doubt that he could have forced the collision."-From an article in the New York Nation of April 4, 1878, by an experienced member of Congress.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HOUSE AT WORK

AN Englishman expects to find his House of Commons reproduced in the House of Representatives. He has the more reason

1

for this notion because he knows that the latter was modelled on the former, has borrowed many of its rules and technical expressions, and regards the procedure of the English chamber as a storehouse of precedents for its own guidance. The notion is delusive. Resemblances of course there are. But an English parliamentarian who observes the American House at work is more impressed by the points of contrast than by those of similarity. The life and spirit of the two bodies are wholly different.

The room in which the House meets is in the south wing of the Capitol, the Senate and the Supreme Court being lodged in the north wing. It is more than thrice as large as the English House of Commons, with a floor about equal in area to that of Westminster Hall, 139 feet long by 93 feet wide and 36 feet high.2 Light is admitted through the ceiling. There are on all sides deep galleries running backwards over the lobbies, and capable of holding two thousand five hundred persons. The proportions are so gooa that it is not till you observe how small a man looks at the farther end, and how faint ordinary voices sound, that you realize its vast size. The seats are arranged in curved concentric rows looking towards the Speaker, whose handsome marble chair is placed on a raised marble platform

1 Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have recognized Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice as governing the House when none of its own rules (or of the joint rules of Congress) is applicable. This manual, prepared by President Jefferson, is based on English precedents.

2 Not reckoning in the staircase at the south end of Westminster Hall. The figure of the two halls is different, Westminster Hall being rather longer, and the House of Representatives wider. The English House of Commons is only 75 feet long by 45 broad.

projecting slightly forward into the room, the clerks and the mace below in front of him, in front of the clerks the official stenographers, to the right the seat of the sergeant-at-arms. Each member has a revolving arm-chair, with a roomy desk in front of it, where he writes and keeps his papers. Behind these chairs runs a railing, and behind the railing is an open space into which some classes of strangers may be brought, where sofas stand against the wall, and where smoking is practised, even by strangers, though the rules forbid it.

When you enter, your first impression is of noise and turmoil, a noise like that of short sharp waves in a Highland loch, fretting under a squall against a rocky shore. The raising and dropping of desk lids, the scratching of pens, the clapping of hands to call the pages, keen little boys who race along the gangways, the pattering of many feet, the hum of talking on the floor and in the galleries, make up a din over which the Speaker with the sharp taps of his hammer, or the orators straining shrill throats, find it hard to make themselves audible. I never heard American voices sound so harsh or disagreeable as they do here. Nor is it only the noise that gives the impression of disorder. Often three or four members are on their feet at once, each shouting to catch the Speaker's attention. Others, tired of sitting still, rise to stretch themselves, while the Western visitor, long, lank, and imperturbable, leans his arms on the railing, chewing his cigar, and surveys the scene with little reverence. Less favourable conditions for oratory cannot be imagined, and one is not surprised to be told that debate was more animated and practical in the much smaller room which the House formerly occupied.

Not only is the present room so big that only a powerful and well-trained voice can fill it, but the desks and chairs make a speaker feel as if he were addressing furniture rather than men, while of the members few seem to listen to the speeches. It is true that they sit in the House instead of running out into the lobbies as people do in the British House of Commons, but they are more occupied in talking or writing, or reading newspapers, than in attending to the debate. To attend is not easy, for only a shrill voice can overcome the murmurous roar; and one sometimes finds the newspapers in describing an unusually effective speech, observe that "Mr. So-and-So's speech drew listeners about him from all parts of the House." They could not hear him where they sat, so they left their places to crowd in the

gangways near him. "Speaking in the House," says an American writer, "is like trying to address the people in the Broadway omnibuses from the kerbstone in front of the Astor House.

Men of fine intellect and of good ordinary elocution have exclaimed in despair that in the House of Representatives the mere physical effort to be heard uses up all the powers, so that intellectual action becomes impossible. The natural refuge is in written speeches or in habitual silence, which one dreads more and more to break."

It is hard to talk calm good sense at the top of your voice, hard to unfold a complicated measure. A speaker's vocal organs react upon his manner, and his manner on the substance of his speech. It is also hard to thunder at an unscrupulous majority or a factious minority when they do not sit opposite to you, but all round you and behind you as is the case in the House. The Americans think this an advantage, because it prevents scenes of disorder. They may be right; but what order gains oratory loses. It is admitted that the desks are a mistake, as encouraging inattention by enabling men to write their letters; but though nearly everybody agrees that they would be better away, nobody supposes that a proposition to remove them would succeed.1 So too the huge galleries add to the area the voice has to fill; but the public like them, and might resent a removal to a smaller room. The smoking shocks an Englishman, but not more than the English practice of wearing hats in both Houses of Parliament shocks an American. Interruption, cries of "Divide," interjected remarks, are not more frequent-when I have been present they seemed to be much less frequent-than in the House of Commons. Applause is given more charily, as is usually the case in America. Instead of "Hear, hear," there is a clapping of hands and hitting of desks.

The method of taking a division by calling on each party to stand up, first the ayes and then the noes, is more expeditious than the English plan of sending men into opposite lobbies, but the calling of the roll, which one-fifth of half the House can and frequently does demand, is slower. Both methods of dividing are less dramatic than the English, and neither compels a man to vote, for if you wish to abstain, you need not rise; and when the roll

1 The House decided in 1859, at the end of one Congress, that the desks should be removed from the Hall (as the House is called), but in the next succeeding session the old arrangement was resumed.

is called you may refrain from answering to your name, or may slip outside the bar.

There is little good speaking. I do not mean merely that fine oratory, oratory which presents valuable thoughts in eloquent words, is rare, for it is rare in all assemblies. But in the House of Representatives a set speech upon any subject of importance tends to become not an exposition or an argument but a piece of elaborate and high-flown declamation. Its author is often wise enough to send direct to the reporters what.he has written out, having read aloud a small part of it in the House. When it has been printed in extenso in the Congressional Record (leave to get this done being readily obtained), he has copies struck off and distributes them among his constituents. Thus everybody is pleased and time is saved.1.

That there is not much good business debating, by which I mean a succession of comparatively short speeches addressed to a practical question, and hammering it out by the collision of mind. with mind, arises not from any want of ability among the members, but from the unfavourable conditions under which the House acts. Most of the practical work is done in the standing committees, while much of the House's time is consumed in pointless discussions, where member after member delivers himself upon large questions, not likely to be brought to a definite issue. Many of the speeches thus called forth have a value as repertories of facts, but the debate as a whole is unprofitable and languid. On the other hand the five-minute debates which take place, when the House imposes that limit of time, in Committee of the Whole on the consideration of a bill reported from a standing committee, are often lively, pointed, and effective. The topics which excite most interest and are best discussed are those of taxation and the appropriation of money, more particularly to public works, the improvement of rivers and harbours, erection of Federal buildings, and so forth. This kind of business is indeed to most of its members the chief interest of Congress, the business which evokes the finest skill of a tactician and offers the severest temptations to a frail conscience. As a theatre or school either of political eloquence or political wisdom, the House has been inferior not only to the Senate but to most

1 I was told that formerly speeches might be printed in the Record as a matter of course, but that, a member having used this privilege to print and circulate a poem, the right was restrained.