grow in power at the expense of other branches of the government. So marked is this tendency that Professor Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the historian of the Commonwealth period in England, has formulated it as a rule of constitutional development, as follows:

"Once give a large constitutional place to a representative Parliament, and Parliament, merely because it is representative, will in the long run gain possession of supreme power."

According to this, the characteristics of the representative branch of the government of the United States present a strange constitutional anomaly. When viewed in contrast with European representative assemblies, or with those of English commonwealths all over the world, our House of Representatives appears to be the weakest and most ineffectual national representative assembly in the world. But that statement must be qualified when the outlook is shifted to the countries south of us. Professor Gardiner's rule is a generalization from the facts of European history. It is not sustained by the facts of American history as supplied by countries south of the Dominion of Canada. Debility of representative institutions seems to be the common characteristic of the United States and the countries of Central and South America, pointing to some common influence that has deeply affected their constitutional development and has widely differentiated it from the systems upon which popular government is founded in other countries. The original constitutional tradition is, however, still sufficiently active in the House of Representatives to inspire occasional protests against the present situation. Thus some

1 "Cromwell's Place in History,” p. 88.

remarkable admissions of constitutional degeneracy have been put upon record, an example of which is the following, from a speech by Mr. Theodore E. Burton of Ohio :

"I want to give due credit to the members of the House Committee on Appropriations for what they have done in seeking to secure economy in expenditures. What is the reason why we are deploring extravagance? The main reason is the system under which we are working, a system under which one House, charged originally with all responsibility for initiating and passing measures for raising the revenue and disbursing it, must submit their measures to another House that has unlimited authority to make additions, and has added $73,400,000 to the regular appropriation bills at this session. This is the evil in the system, that another House, with different ideas and more readily reached by those who represent local or special interests, has unlimited right to add to all appropriation bills any amount its members choose.

"Under the English system the Lords do not even provide for their own clerical assistance, and it is left to the Commons to determine what they shall receive. The upper House can only reject items, or, rather, bills, in toto. The same relation is maintained between the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in France. But here what is being done to check these large expenditures in order to bring them within reasonable limits?

"Estimates are not controlled by any one responsible head, but representatives of any bureau or of any department can come here and before House committees assert their claims to larger appropriations. There is, besides, no correlation between the committee which provides the revenue and those committees which expend it. It is not to be wondered at, in this year 1908, with all these defects in our system, with the growing wealth of the country, with the demands everywhere for these extravagant expenditures, that the appropriations for the coming year should mount up to more than a billion dollars; and it is an impressive lesson to this House that we should call for a halt. (Loud applause.) The first place for action, as I maintain, is not to yield the prerogative of the House to the Senate. (Applause.)

"Let the relations between the upper House and the lower House, as they are sometimes called, be fixed, as they should be. Let this House, which is responsible to the country for the initiative of measures for revenue, be also responsible for the aggregate amount of appropriations." (Applause.) 1

1

These remarks by Mr. Burton were made during debate on a conference committee report on the sundry civil appropriation bills. The House applauded his statements, but adopted the report.2

In a speech delivered in the House, June 20, 1910, Mr. T. W. Sims, of Tennessee, made the following statement:

I have been on the committee that handles claims on omnibus bills. In the conference I have come to an item or a claim in a bill in which I was a conferee, and when I would say that that is not a good item, that ought not to go in, it ought to go out, the answer would be, 'Oh, that is the only item that Senator So-and-so has in this bill,' and that was the only evidence of merit that was presented to the conferees very often." Congressional Record, Vol. 45, No. 159, p. 8929.

1 Congressional Record, May 25, 1908, p. 7216.

2 Since the above speech was made, Mr. Burton has himself become a member of the Senate. On April 15 and 16, 1910, he made an analysis of the River and Harbor bill, showing how the log-rolling system wasted the public money. He gave really startling instances. See Congressional Record, Vol. 45, No. 103, 61st Congress, 2d Session.

IV

THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

It is a common practice to blame the Senate for the constitutional derangement now manifest in the relations of the two houses. But even if it be true, as is often alleged in these times of muck-raking literature, that the Senate has become corrupt, that does not explain its ability to override the House, for the framers of the Constitution anticipated the possibility that the Senate would become corrupt. During the debates of the Constitutional Convention, Mr. Randolph of Virginia remarked:

"The Senate will be more likely to be corrupt than the House of Representatives, and should therefore have less to do with money matters." 1

The truth of the matter appears to be that the Senate displays just such proclivities as the framers of the Constitution anticipated. The debates of the Constitutional Convention and contemporary literature show plainly that the Senate was expected to give special representation to wealth and social position, whereas the House should represent the masses of the people. The background of thought on this subject, in the time of the Fathers, was that supplied by the relations of the Lords and the Commons in English history. By giving special representation to wealth and social 1 Madison's Journal, August 13, 1787.

position, the Fathers hoped to utilize for the public advantage the special knowledge, experience, and ability which wealth and social position may command. The constitutional prerogatives of the House were expected to prevent the use of senatorial influence for class advantage, and confine it to salutary operations. In this respect their expectation has been verified by the experience of other countries, but has been falsified in our republic by the breakdown of the House as an organ of control. Its actual attitude of subserviency to the Senate is contrary to the suggestions of all the political experience open to the Fathers.

Such considerations indicate that the true seat of constitutional defect is not in the Senate, but in the House. The supremacy of the Senate, now so conspicuous in our politics, is a result of the weakness and incompetency of the House. The case is simply this: Senatorial power has risen to a prodigious height because it is not held in check by the counterpoise of House authority intended by the framers of the Constitution. The cause of the wide deviation of our political practice from our constitutional theory must be sought for in the conditions under which the House transacts its business. If it be true, as has been frequently alleged in the House, that the Senate pads appropriation bills at its own will and pleasure, practising what has been described by Mr. Cannon as "blackmail," the charge implies confession of failure on the part of the House to uphold its constitutional authority. There is no escape from this conclusion. It follows that the true way to reform the Senate is to reform the House. The Senate may be brought to its