XXV. THE ORIGIN OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE SYSTEM IN AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE BODIES. By PROFESSOR J. FRANKLIN JAMESON, THE ORIGIN OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE SYSTEM IN AMER ICAN LEGISLATIVE BODIES. BY J. FRANKLIN JAMESON. Mr. Bryce and Mr. Woodrow Wilson have familiarized us all with the notion that the transaction of business through standing committees is one of the leading peculiarities of American legislative bodies, as compared with the English legislature, and indeed perhaps the most important of such peculiarities. Congressional government is mainly government by standing committees and their rôle in State legislatures is equally important. It is therefore somewhat remarkable that, so far as the writer knows, no thorough historical examination has ever been made into the origin of the system. This is, to be sure, of a piece with our usual neglect of the history of all portions of our constitution except such as have found place and mention in the document called the Constitution of the United States. Our system of standing committees is one of the most important elements in our form of government; yet we have been content to examine its development in the Federal Senate and House of Representatives alone, and to assume that its history begins with the year 1789, and with the United States. That the first Congresses had very few standing committees, and that the transaction of nearly all legislative business through them can hardly be said to have become the regular practice of the House until the time of Speaker Clay is familiar. It is the object of the present paper to show that the institution existed long before this, in England and the American colonies, and to trace its development from the sixteenth century to the time of the American Revolution. No doubt two reasons why this has not been done before are, first, that the system has no place in the procedure of the House of Commons, and has virtually had none for nearly two centuries; and second, that it is not found in the colonial legisla tures of New England, the region in which historical writers upon the colonial period have been most numerous. The standing-committee system, in its modern form, involves the following particulars: The institution by a legislative body, as a regular practice, of several committees, composed of its own members, and continuing in existence throughout the session, each of which has charge of a specific division of the business of the house in such manner that all matters falling within that division are regularly and usually referred to that committee for preparative consideration previously to their disposal by the house. Leaving out of account the ancient "triers of petitions," we may say that in the procedure of the English Parliament the germ of the system is the committee especially appointed to frame a particular statute from a petition or bill. Of such, an instance is found in the records of the House of Commons as far back as 1340. From the beginning of the printed journals of the House of Commons (1547), we find bills committed to one or two members, and other special committees. When Sir Thomas Smith, who died in 1577, wrote his famous treatise of the "Commonwealth of England," committees for framing laws were already an essential part of the procedure of Parliament. In describing its organization, he says: The Committies are such as either the Lords in the higher House, or Burgesses in the Lower House, doe choose to frame the Lawes upon such Bils as are agreed upon, and afterward to bee ratified by the same Houses. It marks a distinct forward step in the development of the institution when, at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's third Parliament, on April 6, 1571, we find a group of election cases or a group of bills, all relating to the same general subject, referred to a single committee. In the committees of this session, thus charged with an entire division of the business of the House, we find the germs of three of the great committees of subsequent times, the committee of privileges and elections, the committee of religion, and the committee of grievances. But apparently they did not continue in the exercise of their functions throughout the session, nor do we find an equally developed arrangement in operation during the first two sessions of the Queen's fourth Parliament. In that of 1584-'85 and the next three the standing committee of privi leges and elections was developed. It was natural that this should be the first of the standing committees to attain full development, partly because of the nature of its business, involving many questions too detailed and complicated for discussion in the whole house, partly because of the increas ing vigor with which the Commons were in this reign beginning to assert their privileges, among others that of determining all matters relating to their own elections. The Parliaments of 1584-'85 and 1586-'87 had committees of privileges but none of elections. That of 1589 had both. At the beginning of the Queen's eighth Parliament the final step is taken; these two functions are fused and confided to the charge of one and the same committee. February 26, 1592-'93, "Upon a Motion made by Sir George Moore touching some questions for the manner of Election of one Richard Hutton returned into this House one of the Burgesses of the Borough of Southwark in the County of Surry, * And upon another Motion thereupon also made by Mr. Wroth for a Committee for the Liberties and Priviledges of the Members of this House and their Servants, it is upon the question Ordered, that all the Members of this House being of her Majesties Privy-Council, Sir William Moore, Mr. Serjeant Yelverton, Mr. Robert Wroth, * Sir George Moore, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Mr. Tanfield, Mr. Francis Bacon," and others "shall, during all this present Sessions of Parliament, examine and make report of all such Cases touching the Elections and Returns of any the Knights, Burgesses, and Barons of this House, and also all such Cases for priviledge as in any wise may fall out during all the same Sessions of Parliament." In this committee, with its roll of distinguished names, we have the first fully developed standing committee of the modern American type. In the Parliament of 1598-'99 the practice begun in the last Parliament seems to have been regarded as a matter of course, and so also with those of 1601 and 1603-'4; in the latter case a comment in the Commons Journal declares that "this is a usual Motion in the Beginning of every Parliament." Of the procedure of these early committees there is not time to speak, further than to say that their members were appointed by the House, not by the Speaker. From the accession of the Stuarts to the outbreak of the Civil War, the standing committee of privileges and elections maintained its place. Matters of religion and grievances were confided, now to select committees, now to "grand committees," or, in modern parlance, committees of the whole. The Parliament of 1621 added two new committees of the whole, one for matters of trade, the other for courts of justice. With these additions the House of Commons completed its system,-a select committee of privileges and returns, |