The Essential Writings of President Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson

20 No Committee is entitled, when called, to occupy more than the morning hours of two successive days with the measures which it has prepared; though if its second morning hour expire while the House is actually considering one of its bills, that single measure may hold over from morning hour to morning hour until it is disposed of.

21 Quoted from an exceedingly life-like and picturesque description of the House which appeared in the New York Nation for April 4, 1878.

22 No. Am. Rev., vol. xxvi., p. 162.

23 Id., the same article.

24 "Glances at Congress," Dem. Rev., March, 1839.

25 Autobiography, pp. 264, 265.

26 The National Budget, etc. (English Citizen Series), p. 146. In what I have to say of the English system, I follow this volume, pp. 146-149, and another volume of the same admirable series, entitled Central Government, pp. 36-47, most of my quotations being from the latter.

27 See an article entitled "National Appropriations and Misappropriations," by the late President Garfield, North American Review, vol cxxviii. pp 578 et seq.

28 Senator Hoar's article, already several times quoted.

29 Adams's John Randolph. American Statesman Series, pp. 210, 211.

30 On one occasion "the House passed thirty-seven pension bills at one sitting. The Senate, on its part, by unanimous consent, took up and passed in about ten minutes seven bills providing for public buildings in different States, appropriating an aggregate of $1,200,000 in this short time. A recent House feat was one in which a bill, allowing 1,300 war claims in a lump, was passed. It contained one hundred and nineteen pages full of little claims, amounting in all to $291,000; and a member, in deprecating criticism on this disposition of them, said that the Committee had received ten huge bags full of such claims, which had been adjudicated by the Treasury officials, and it was a physical impossibility to examine them."—N. Y. Sun, 1881.

31 Congress, though constantly erecting new Committees, never gives up old ones, no matter how useless they may have become by subtraction of duties. Thus there is not only the superseded Committee on Public Expenditures but the Committee on Manufactures also, which, when a part of the one-time Committee on Commerce and Manufactures, had plenty to do, but which, since the creation of a distinct Committee on Commerce, has had nothing to do, having now, together with the Committees on Agriculture and Indian Affairs, no duties assigned to it by the rules. It remains to be seen whether the Committee on Commerce will suffer a like eclipse because of the gift of its principal duties to the new Committee on Rivers and Harbors.

32 See the report of this Committee, which was under the chairmanship of Senator Windom.

      An illustration of what the House Committees find by special effort may be seen in the revelations of the investigation of the expenses of the notorious "Star Route Trials" made by the Forty-eighth Congress's Committee on Expenditures in the department of Justice.

33 See General Garfield's article, already once quoted, North American Review, vol. cxxviii. p. 533.

34 Essays on Parliamentary Reform.

35 Green's History of the English People, vol. iv., pp. 202, 203.

36 "G. B." in N. Y. Nation, Nov. 30, 1882.

37 An attempt was once made to bring the previous question into the practices of the Senate, but it failed of success, and so that imperative form of cutting off all further discussion has fortunately never found a place there.

38 As regards all financial measures indeed committee supervision is specially thorough in the Senate. "All amendments to general appropriation bills reported from the Committees of the Senate, proposing new items of appropriation, shall, one day before they are offered, be referred to the Committee on Appropriations, and all general appropriation bills shall be referred to said Committee; and in like manner amendments to bills making appropriations for rivers and harbors shall be again referred to the Committee to which such bills shall be referred."—Senate Rule 30.

39 The twenty-nine Standing Committees of the Senate are, however, chosen by ballot, not appointed by the Vice-President, who is an appendage, not a member, of the Senate.

40 In the Birmingham Town Hall, November 3, 1882. I quote from the report of the London Times.

41 "No Senator shall speak more than twice, in any one debate, on the same day, without leave of the Senate."—Senate Rule 4.

42 These quotations from Bagehot are taken from various parts of the fifth chapter of his English Constitution.

43 These are the words of Lord Rosebery—testimony from the oldest and most celebrated second chamber that exists.

44 There seems to have been at one time a tendency towards a better practice. In 1813 the Senate sought to revive the early custom, in accordance with which the President delivered his messages in person, by requesting the attendance of the President to consult upon foreign affairs; but Mr. Madison declined.

45 North American Review, vol. 108, p. 625.

46 English Constitution, chap, viii., p. 293.

47 Atlantic Monthly, vol. xxv., p. 148.

48 Something like this has been actually proposed by Mr. Albert Stickney, in his interesting and incisive essay, A True Republic.

49 State, Treasury, War, Navy.