been done, a risk which makes foreign states legitimately suspicious and unwilling to negotiate, or that the nation may have to ratify, because it feels bound in honor by the act of its executive agents, arrangements which its judgment condemns. The frequent participation of the Senate in negotiations diminishes these difficulties, because it apprises the Executive of what the judgment of the ratifying body is likely to be, and it commits that body in advance.

The Senate may, and occasionally does, amend a treaty, and return it amended to the President. There is nothing to prevent it from proposing a draft treaty to him, or asking him to prepare one, but this is not the practice. For ratification a vote of two thirds of the senators present is required. This gives great power to a vexatious minority, and increases the danger, evidenced by several incidents in the history of the Union, that the Senate or a faction in it may deal with foreign policy in a narrow, sectional, electioneering spirit. When the interest of any group of States is, or is supposed to be, opposed to the making of a given treaty, that treaty may be defeated by the senators from those States. Supposing their party to command a majority, the treaty is probably rejected, and the settlement of the question at issue perhaps indefinitely postponed.

The judicial function of the Senate is to sit as a High Court for the trial of persons impeached by the House of Representatives. The Chief Justice of the United States presides, and a vote of two thirds of the senators voting is needed for a conviction. The process is applicable to other officials besides the President, including Federal judges.

Rare as this method of proceeding is, it could not be dispensed with, and it is better that the Senate should try cases in which a political element is usually present, than that the impartiality of the Supreme Court should be exposed to the criticism it would have to bear, did political questions come before it.

CHAPTER IX

THE SENATE: ITS WORKING AND INFLUENCE

The chamber in which the Senate meets is semicircular in form, the Vice-President of the United States, who acts as presiding officer, having his chair on a marble dais, slightly raised, in the center of the chord, with the senators all turned toward him as they sit in concentric semicircles, each in a morocco leather-covered arm-chair, with a desk in front of it. The floor is about as large as the whole superficial area of the British House of Commons, but as there are great galleries on all four sides, running back over the lobbies, the upper part of the chamber and its total air-space much exceeds that of the English House. One of these galleries is appropriated to the President of the United States; the others to ladies, the press, and the public. Behind the senatorial chairs and desks there is an open space into which strangers may be brought by the senators, who sit and talk on the sofas there placed. Members of foreign legislatures are allowed access to this outer "floor of the Senate." There is, especially when the galleries are empty, a slight echo in the room, which obliges most speakers to strain their voices. Two or three pictures on the walls somewhat relieve the cold tone of the chamber, with its marble platform and sides unpierced by windows, for the light enters through glass compartments in the ceiling.

A senator always addresses the Chair “Mr. President,” and refers to other senators by their States: "The senator from Ohio,” “The senator from Tennessee." When two senators rise at the same moment, the Chair calls on one, indicating him by his State, "The senator from Minnesota has the floor.” Senators of the Democratic party sit, and apparently always have sat, on the right of the Chair, Republican senators on the left; but, as already explained, the parties do not face one another. The impression which the place makes on a visitor is one of business-like gravity, a gravity which though plain is

dignified. It has the air not so much of a popular assembly as of a diplomatic congress. The English House of Lords, with its fretted roof and windows rich with the figures of departed kings, its majestic throne, its Lord Chancellor in his wig on the woolsack, its benches of lawn-sleeved bishops, its bar where the Commons throng at a great debate, is not only more gorgeous and picturesque in externals, but appeals far more powerfully to the historical imagination, for it seems to carry the Middle Ages down into the modern world. The Senate is modern, severe, and practical. So, too, few debates in the Senate rise to the level of the better debates in the English chamber. But the Senate seldom wears the air of listless vacuity and superannuated indolence which the House of Lords. presents on all but a few nights of every session. The faces are keen and forcible, as of men who have learned to know the world, and have much to do in it; the place seems consecrated to great affairs.

As might be expected from the small number of the audience, as well as from its character, discussions in the Senate are apt to be sensible and practical. Speeches are shorter and less fervid than those made in the House of Representatives, for the larger an assembly the more prone is it to declamation. The least useful debates are those on show-days, when a series of set discourses are delivered on some prominent question, because no one expects such discourses to have any persuasive effect. The question at issue is sure to have been already settled, either in a committee or in a "caucus" of the party which commands the majority, so that these long and sonorous harangues are mere rhetorical thunder addressed to the nation outside.

The Senate contains men of great wealth. Some, an increasing number, are senators because they are rich; a few are rich because they are senators, while in the remaining cases the same talents which have won success in law or commerce have brought their possessor to the top in politics also. The great majority are or have been lawyers; some regularly practice before the Supreme Court. Complaints are occasionally leveled against the aristocratic tendencies which wealth is sup

posed to have bred, and sarcastic references are made to the sumptuous residences which senators have built on the new avenues of Washington. While admitting that there is more sympathy for the capitalist class among these rich men than there would be in a Senate of poor men, I must add that the Senate is far from being a class body like the upper houses of England or Prussia or Spain or Denmark. It is substantially representative, by its composition as well as by legal delegation, of all parts of American society; it is far too dependent, and far too sensible that it is dependent, upon public opinion, to dream of legislating in the interest of the rich. The senators, however, indulge some social pretensions. They are the nearest approach to an official aristocracy that has yet been seen in America. They and their wives are allowed precedence at private entertainments, as well as on public occasions, over members of the House, and of course over private citizens. Jefferson might turn in his grave if he knew of such an attempt to introduce European distinctions of rank into his democracy; yet as the office is temporary, and the rank vanishes with the office, these pretensions are harmless; it is only the universal social equality of the country that makes them noteworthy. Apart from such petty advantages, the position of a senator, who can count on reelection, is the most desirable in the political world of America. It gives as much power and influence as a man need desire. It secures for him the ear of the public. It is more permanent than the presidency or any great ministerial office, requires less labor, involves less vexation, though still great vexation, by importunate office-seekers.

The smallness and the permanence of the Senate have an important influence on its character. They contribute to one main cause of its success, the superior intellectual quality of its members. Every European who has described it has dwelt upon the capacity of those who compose it, and most have followed De Tocqueville in attributing this capacity to the method of double election. The choice of senators by the State legislatures is supposed to have proved a better means than direct choice by the people of discovering and selecting the fittest men. I have already remarked that practically the election of

senators has become a popular election, the function of the legislatures being now little more than to register and formally complete a choice already made by the party managers, and perhaps ratified in the party convention. But apart altogether from this recent development, and reviewing the whole hundred years' history of the Senate, the true explanation of its intellectual capacity is to be found in the superior attraction which it has for the ablest and most ambitious men. A senator has more power than a member of the House, more dignity, a longer term of service, a more independent position. Hence every Federal politician aims at a senatorship, and looks on the place of representative as a stepping-stone to what is in this sense an Upper House, that is, the House to which representatives seek to mount. It is no more surprising that the average capacity of the Senate should surpass that of the House, than that the average cabinet minister of Europe should be abler than the average member of the legislature.

European writers on America have been too much inclined to idealize the Senate. Admiring its structure and function, they have assumed that the actors must be worthy of their parts. They have been encouraged in this tendency by the language of many Americans. As the Romans were never tired of repeating that the ambassador of Pyrrhus had called the Roman senate an assembly of kings, so Americans of refinement, who are ashamed of the turbulent House of Representatives, are wont to talk of the Senate as a sort of Olympian dwelling-place of statesmen and sages. It is nothing of the kind. It is a company of shrewd and vigorous men who have fought their way to the front by the ordinary methods of American politics, and on many of whom the battle has left its stains. There are abundant opportunities for intrigue in the Senate, because its most important business is done in the secrecy of committee rooms or of executive session; and many senators are intriguers. There are opportunities for misusing senatorial powers. Scandals have sometimes arisen from the practice of employing as counsel before the Supreme Court senators whose influence has contributed to the appointment or confirmation of the judges. There are opportunities for