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The result on the national finance is unfortunate. thoughtful American publicist remarks, "So long as the debit side of the national account is managed by one set of men, and the credit side by another set, both sets working separately and in secret without public responsibility, and without intervention on the part of the executive official who is nominally responsible; so long as these sets, being composed largely of new men every two years, give no attention to business except when Congress is in session, and thus spend in preparing plans the whole time which ought to be spent in public discussion of plans already matured, so that an immense budget is rushed through without discussion in a week or ten days-just so long the finances will go from bad to worse, no matter by what name you call the party in power. No other nation on earth attempts such a thing, or could attempt it without soon coming to grief, our salvation thus far consisting in an enormous income, with practically no drain for military expenditure."

It may be replied to this criticism that the enormous income, added to the fact that the tariff is imposed for protection rather than for revenue, is not only the salvation of the United States Government under the present system, but also the cause of that system. Were the tariff framed with a view to revenue only, no higher taxes would be imposed than the public service required, and a better method of balancing the public accounts would follow. This is true. The present state of things is evidently exceptional. America is the only country in the world whose difficulty is not to raise money but to spend it. Still, as our critic remarks, Congress is contracting lax habits, and ought to change them.

scheme of 1873 had been pushed surreptitiously through the courses of its passage, Congress having been tricked into accepting it, doing it scarcely knew what."-Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government, p. 148.

"The Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1887 states the surplus in the treasury on 1st December of that year at $55,000,000, and estimates the surplus for the financial year ending 30th June, 1888, under the law then in force, at $140,000,000. For twenty-two years there have been surpluses, the smallest of $2,344,000 in 1874, the largest of $145,543,000 in 1882. The surplus taxation for the year ending 30th June, 1888, was $113,000,000. The total estimated revenue of 188788 was $383,000,000. The receipts from customs alone were greater by $24,000,000 in 1887 than in 1886.

Considering these faults, and considering that it is by preaching an adoption of British methods that the wisest American reformers are trying to cure the defects in the financial administration of Congress, it is odd that English publicists should at the same moment be suggesting the American system as a model for imitation by the House of Commons. The present British plan is probably open to the charge of not securing a full parliamentary control either of the expenses or of the administrative methods of the spending departments. But the arrangements of Congress seem, so far as an English observer can judge, less conducive to economy as well as to efficiency than those of Parliament.

How comes it, if all this be true, that the finances of America are so flourishing, and in particular that the war debt has been paid off with such regularity and speed that from $3,000,000,000 (£600,000,000) in 1865, it had sunk to less than $1,200,000,000 (£240,000,000) in 1887? Does not so brilliant a result speak of a continuously wise and skilful management of the national revenue?

The paying off of the debt seems to be due to the following causes:

To the prosperity of the country which, with one interval of trade depression, has for twenty years been developing its amazing natural resources so fast as to produce an amount of wealth which is not only greater, but more widely diffused through the population, than in any other part of the world.

To the spending habits of the people, who allow themselves luxuries such as the masses enjoy in no other country, and therefore pay more than any other people in the way of indirect taxation. The fact that Federal revenue is raised by duties of customs and excise makes the people far less sensible of the pressure of taxation than they would be did they pay directly. To the absence of the military and naval charges which press so heavily on European states.

To the maintenance of an exceedingly high tariff at the instance of numerous interested persons who have obtained the public ear and can influence Congress. Without expressing any opinion as to whether the policy of Protection be or be not

sound, one may observe that to its acceptance, more perhaps than to any deliberate conviction that the debt ought to be paid off, has been due the continuance of a tariff whose huge and constant surpluses have enabled the debt to be reduced.

Europeans, admiring and envying the rapidity with which the war debt has been reduced, have been disposed to credit the Americans with brilliant financial skill. That, however, which was really admirable in the conduct of the American people was not their judgment in selecting particular methods for raising money, but their readiness to submit during and immediately after the war to unprecedentedly heavy taxation. The interests (real or supposed) of the manufacturing classes have caused the maintenance of the tariff then imposed; nature, by giving the people a spending power which has rendered. the tariff marvellously productive, has done the rest.

Under the system of congressional finance here described America wastes millions annually. But her wealth is so great, her revenue so elastic, that she is not sensible of the loss. She has the glorious privilege of youth, the privilege of committing errors without suffering from their consequences.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RELATIONS OF THE TWO HOUSES

THE creation by the Constitution of 1789 of two chambers in the United States, in place of the one chamber which existed under the Confederation, has been usually ascribed by Europeans to mere imitation of England; and one learned writer goes so far as to suggest that if England had possessed three chambers, like the States General of France, or four, like the Diet of Sweden, a crop of three-chambered or four-chambered legislatures would, in obedience to the example of happy and successful England, have sprung up over the world. There were, however, better reasons than deference to English precedents to justify the division of Congress into two houses and no more; and so many indubitable instances of such a deference may be quoted that there is no need to hunt for others. Not to dwell upon the fact that there were two chambers in all but two1 of the thirteen original States, the Convention of 1787 had two solid motives for fixing on this number, a motive of principle and theory, a motive of immediate expediency.

The chief advantage of dividing a legislature into two branches is that the one may check the haste and correct the mistakes of the other. This advantage is purchased at the price of some delay, and of the weakness which results from a splitting up of authority. If a legislature be constituted of three or more branches, the advantage is scarcely increased, the delay and weakness are immensely aggravated. Two cham

'Pennsylvania and Georgia; the former of which added a Senate in 1789, the latter in 1790. See post, Chapter XXXIX, on State Legisla tures.

bers can be made to work together in a way almost impossible to more than two. As the proverb says, "Two's company, three's none." If there be three chambers, two are sure to intrigue and likely to combine against the third. The difficulties of carrying a measure without sacrificing its unity of principle, of fixing responsibility, of securing the watchful attention of the public, serious with two chambers, become enormous with three or more.

To these considerations there was added the practical ground that the division of Congress into two houses supplied a means of settling the dispute which raged between the small and the large States. The latter contended for a representation of the States in Congress proportioned to their respective populations, the former for their equal representation as sovereign commonwealths. Both were satisfied by the plan which created two chambers in one of which the former principle, in the other of which the latter principle was recognized. The country remained a federation in respect of the Senate, it became a nation in respect of the House: there was no occasion for a third chamber.

The respective characters of the two bodies are wholly unlike those of the so-called upper and lower chambers of Europe. In Europe there is always a difference of political complexion, generally resting on a difference in personal composition. There the upper chamber represents the aristocracy of the country, or the men of wealth, or the high officials, or the influence of the Crown and Court; while the lower chamber represents the multitude. Between the Senate and the House there is no such difference. Both equally represent the people, the whole people, and nothing but the people. The individual members come from the same classes of the community; and though there are more rich men (in proportion to numbers) in the Senate than in the House, the influence of capital is not markedly greater. Both have been formed by the same social influences: and the social pretensions of a senator expire with his term of office. Both are possessed by the same ideas, governed by the same sentiments, equally conscious of their dependence on public opinion. The one has never been, like