worth noting that to each Senator an individual vote was given. Thus, even in the Senate the idea of popular representation was in a measure introduced by providing against a fixed solid vote of the State as a State, as had prevailed in the Congress of the Confederation.

Although the Senate has often been compared to the British House of Lords, there is a vital difference between the two; the former represents the people, even though in their corporate form of commonwealths instead of directly, while the latter is made up of and represents a fixed class of inherited aristocracy. In the convention of 1789 the original idea regarding the Senate was undoubtedly that it should partake, to a consideraable extent, of the character of an advisory and corrective body to the Executive as well as a legislative body coördinate with the House. Such had been the governor's councils in the several colonies, after which the Senate was in a measure designed. That intention is particularly evident in the provision that certain appointments of the President must be " and with the advice and consent of the Senate " and in the power given to the Senate to ratify or reject treaties with foreign nations and to try to try impeachments. This close relationship between the Executive and the Senate was further emphasized by making the Vice-President presiding officer of the Senate. It was even proposed by Hamilton and Pinckney

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(and favored by others) that the power of declaring war, making treaties, appointing foreign ministers and judges of the Supreme Court should rest solely in the Senate. The ultimate development of the Senate into a more purely legislative body coördinate with the House, is one of the most interesting chapters of our government history. It began in the Constitutional Convention, in the discussion of the powers of the proposed body, continued during the next century, and may continue for another hundred years to come.

As established by the Constitution, the Senate became second only to the Supreme Court in dignity, importance, impressiveness and power. It is the only part of the United States government system that never perishes. The arrangement for the expiration of terms of service of Senators and the election of their successors makes the body continuously existent. Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Cabinet officers may die or go out of office; the House of Representatives goes out of existence every two years; but the Senate is as permanent a body as the Supreme Court. In this respect it may be considered as more conspicuously representative of the people as the complete National body than any of the other branches of the Government.

Except that it is non-continuous, the House of Representatives is not inferior in power to the Senate. It is in no sense a "lower house," as it is

often termed. In respect to some powers it is superior to the Senate. Only in the House can bills for raising revenue originate and impeachment proceedings against public officials be instituted; and there alone must the President of the United States be elected in case the electoral college fails in that duty. But the permanence of the Senate, the general tendency to elect to that body men of superior attainments, and the advantage which long terms of office afford in familiarity with public affairs and parliamentary proceedings, have given to the Senate a distinction and a degree of parliamentary power and influence that the House has never possessed.

Membership in the House was restricted in the Constitution only to citizens of the United States and inhabitants of the State in which they are chosen, twenty-five years of age. Sometimes, in the early years of the Republic, all the Representatives were elected on a general ticket voted throughout the State. By the apportionment act of 1845 it was directed that Representatives should be chosen. by districts formed of contiguous territory, and that method finally became permanent. The House has from time to time taken to itself powers that were not specifically not specifically granted or denied by the Constitution. It has done this on the ground of exigencies arising which the framers of the Constitution could not foresee and which the legislative body, under

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its right to govern itself, should meet. Thus, Territorial delegates were admitted to act on committees, to debate, to make motions, and to exercise nearly all the powers of Representatives except that of voting. This practice, which is extra-constitutional, was begun in the case of the Northwest Territory by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787 and was continued by the House under the permanent constitutional government.

From the beginning the power of the Speaker of the House, elected by his fellow members, was great. He was always from necessity a skilled parliamentarian, but his power did not end there. As the recognized leader of the political majority of the House and through his committee appointments and other means, he often held in his hands the destiny of his party and even of the country, exercising, sometimes, an influence as great as, if not greater than, the President's. By law he was third in order of succession to the Presidency in case of the death of the Executive, only the Vice-President and the President of the Senate taking precedence. In the first half-century of the Republic some of the most eminent public men of the day occupied the Speaker's chair, but even in those days political expediency rather than admitted ability often dictated the choice. the choice. The first Speaker was F. A. Muhlenberg, of Pennsylvania. In subsequent years some of the most noted speakers were Jonathan Trum

bull, of Connecticut, Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey, Theodore Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina, Joseph B. Varnum, of Massachusetts, Henry Clay, of Kentucky, Philip P. Barbour, of Virginia, Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, and Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana. In ability, distinction and length of service, none surpassed Henry Clay, who was elected Speaker in the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 18th Congresses. He was the only man of real Presidential calibre to occupy the Speaker's chair prior to the Civil War, and the futile endeavors of his friends to secure the Presidency for him made a large part of the political history of the country in the first quarter of the Nineteenth century. The fact that in later years Speaker James K. Polk secured the Presidential prize which Clay missed does not alter this judgment of the preeminent solitary distinction of the Kentucky statesmen among the House Speakers of this period.

In the first Congress, which met in its first session on March 4, 1789, the thirteen original States were represented by 26 Senators and 65 Representatives. Virginia had 10 Representatives, Pennsylvania 8, North Carolina 17, New York 8, Massachusetts 8, Maryland 6 and Connecticut 5. In the second Congress Kentucky and Vermont came in. As time went on and new States were admitted to the Union, the size of the Senate.

and the House increased until in its thirty-first session, in December of 1850, there were 62 Senators, 239 Representatives, and 2 Territorial Delegates. The preponderance of numerical power still remained in the thirteen original States and also, to a proportionate extent, in the original largest States. Thus Massachusetts had 9 Representatives, New York 34, Pennsylvania 24, and Virginia 15, a total of 92, a little less than one-half. Sectionally the North, the Northwest, and the Middle West had over onehalf the House membership, the South and Southwest being in the minority.

A critical examination of the membership of the Senate and House in this period is instructive. It is a common opinion that in this formative. period of our National life public affairs were directed and moulded by statesmen of preeminent ability and distinction. It may be surprising to find, therefore, how comparatively few men who were then great or subsequently became great filled Congressional seats in the first half-century of National existence. In the first Congress of less than 100 members there were not more than a baker's dozen of eminent men. In the second and third Congresses the proportion was not larger, nor was there any perceptible increase later. The names of Oliver Ellsworth, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Rufus King, James Monroe, Albert Gallatin, John Randolph, Robert Morris, John Marshall, De Witt Clinton, John Quincy Adams,

Henry Clay, Joseph Story, John C. Calhoun, George McDuffie, Robert Y. Hayne, John J. Crittenden, Nathan Sanford, Richard M. Johnson, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, Thomas H. Benton, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, William C. Preston, Rufus Choate, Reverdy Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas, Lewis Cass, Lincoln, Salmon P. Chase, William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, Edward Everett, Hamilton Fish, R. M. T. Hunter, Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, W. L. Yancey and perhaps as many more loom large in the period of 17891860, not alone by reason of the individual distinction of the men who bore them but as well from the ordinary capacity of those surrounding them. To read the lists of the several thousand Congressmen of these 70 years is to read a list not only of forgotten reputations, but of names almost entirely unknown. Session after session the entire delegation of many of the largest States spelled obscurity then as ever. The history of the country in National legislation was made by a comparatively small percentage of the men who went to Congress.

Most of the business transacted by Congress in this period consisted (as always) of minor matters, small in themselves but essential to efficient government. There were great questions, however, the consideration and settlement of which called for the highest order of statesmanship and patriotism. Early in the century came the struggle for commercial

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independence and the maintenance of National rights against the aggressions of England and Franceaffairs scarcely less momentous than those of the Revolutionary period. Regulation of trade, the determination of the currency, the disposition of the newly-acquired western territory, the development of roads and canals; these were some of the matters relating to the internal life of the country that pressed for decision. That they were generally satisfactorily solved, in a manner that conserved the Nation's power and existence, is a credit to the statesmanship, the practical sound sense, and the patriotism of those who had control of the legislation of the period.

After the War of 1812, when the United States were safely on their feet as a Nation, arose those questions of domestic policy which were not to be finally settled save by the arbitrament of arms after 1860. For forty years commerce, territorial expansion, tariff and State-rights were all intermingled and centered around the one great issue of slavery. Forty years' records of Congress attest to the unceasing struggle. No parliamentary history of the world surpasses that of the United States in this period in either the brilliancy of the debates in Senate and House, the virulence of spirit manifested by the opposing parties or the magnitude and farreaching results of the issues involved. For forty years the halls of Congress were intellectual battlefields. In many