The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce

1889 there were six fighting ships in the navy.

      In 1912 there were 208 fighting ships classified as follows:

Battleships (Besides nine old battleships)	29
Command of federal army Cruisers, First class	15
Second class	3
Third class	14
Gunboats	21
Monitors	10
Destroyers	49
Torpedo boats	32
Submarines	35

      In 1889 the cost of the navy was $25,767,348.19; in 1913, it was $123,220,707

CHAPTER 10

       The Senate

      The national legislature of the United States, called Congress, consists of two bodies, sufficiently dissimilar in composition, powers, and character to require a separate description.

      The Senate consists of two persons from each state, who must be inhabitants of that state, and at least thirty years of age. They were until 1913 elected by the legislature of their state for six years, but are now under the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution elected by the registered voters of the state. They are reeligible. One-third retire every two years, so that the whole body is renewed in a period of six years, the old members being thus at any given moment twice as numerous as the new members elected within the last two years. As there are now forty-eight states, the number of senators, originally twenty-six, is now ninety-six. This great and unforeseen augmentation must be borne in mind when considering the purposes for which the Senate was created, for some of which a small body is fitter than a large one. As there remain no Territories which can be formed into states,¹ the number of senators will not (unless, indeed, existing states are divided) rise beyond ninety-six. This is of course much below the present nominal strength of the English House of Lords² (above six hundred), and below that of the French Senate (three hundred), and the Prussian Herrenhaus. No senator can hold any office under the United States. The vice-president of the Union is ex officio president of the Senate, but has no vote, except a casting vote when the numbers are equally divided. Failing him (if, for instance, he dies, or falls sick, or succeeds to the presidency), the Senate chooses one of its number to be president pro tempore. His authority in questions of order is very limited, the decision of such questions being held to belong to the Senate itself.³

      The functions of the Senate fall into three classes—legislative, executive, and judicial.⁴ Its legislative function is to pass, along with the House of Representatives, bills which become acts of Congress on the assent of the president, or even without his consent if passed a second time by a two-thirds majority of each house, after he has returned them for reconsideration. Its executive functions are: (a) To approve or disapprove the president’s nominations of federal officers, including judges, ministers of state, and ambassadors; (b) to approve, by a majority of two-thirds of those present, of treaties made by the president—i.e., if less than two-thirds approve, the treaty falls to the ground. Its judicial function is to sit as a court for the trial of impeachments preferred by the House of Representatives.

      The most conspicuous, and what was at one time deemed the most important feature of the Senate, is that it represents the several states of the Union as separate commonwealths, and is thus an essential part of the federal scheme. Every state, be it as great as New York or as small as Delaware, sends two senators, no more and no less.⁵ This arrangement was long resisted by the delegates of the larger states in the Convention of 1787, and ultimately adopted because nothing less would reassure the smaller states, who feared to be overborne by the larger. It is now the provision of the Constitution most difficult to change, for “no State can be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent,” a consent most unlikely to be given. There has never, in point of fact, been any division of interests or consequent contest between the great states and the small ones.⁶ But the provision for the equal representation of all states had the important result of making the slaveholding party, during the thirty years which preceded the Civil War, eager to extend the area of slavery in order that by creating new slave states they might maintain at least an equality in the Senate, and thereby prevent any legislation hostile to slavery.

      The plan of giving representatives to the states as commonwealths has had several useful results. It has provided a basis for the Senate unlike that on which the other house of Congress is chosen. Every nation which has formed a legislature with two houses has experienced the difficulty of devising methods of choice sufficiently different to give a distinct character to each house. Italy has a Senate composed of persons nominated by the Crown. The Prussian House of Lords is partly nominated, partly hereditary, partly elective. The Spanish senators are partly hereditary, partly official, partly elective. In the Germanic Empire, the Federal Council consists of delegates of the several kingdoms and principalities. France appoints her senators by indirect election. In England the nonspiritual members of the House of Lords now sit by hereditary right; and those who propose to reconstruct that ancient body are at their wits’ end to discover some plan by which it may be strengthened, and made practically useful, without such a direct election as that by which members are chosen to the House of Commons.⁷ The American plan, which is older than any of those in use on the European continent, is also better, because it is not only simple, but natural, i.e., grounded on and consonant with the political conditions of America. It produces a body which is both strong in itself and different in its collective character from the more popular House.

      Till 1913, it also constituted, as Hamilton anticipated, a link between the state governments and the national government. It is a part of the latter, but its members derive their title to sit in it from their choice by state legislatures. In one respect this connection is no unmixed benefit, for it has helped to make the national parties powerful, and their strife intense, in these last-named bodies. Every vote in the Senate was so important to the great parties that they are forced to struggle for ascendency in each of the state legislatures by whom the senators were elected. The method of choice in these bodies was formerly left to be fixed by the laws of each state, but as this gave rise to much uncertainty and intrigue, a federal statute was passed in 1866 providing that each house of a state legislature shall first vote separately for the election of a federal senator, and that if the choice of both houses shall not fall on the same person, both houses in joint meeting shall proceed to a joint vote, a majority of all the members elected to both houses being present and voting. Even under this arrangement, a senatorial election often leads to long and bitter struggles; the minority endeavouring to prevent a choice, and so keep the seat vacant. Moreover such struggles gave occasion for efforts to influence the doubtful members of a legislature out of which charges of improper methods often arose.

      The method of choosing the Senate by indirect election used to excite the admiration of foreign critics, who have found in it a sole and sufficient cause of the excellence of the Senate as a legislative and executive authority. I shall presently inquire whether the critics were right. Be that as it may, the method was before the close of last century becoming increasingly unpopular. Choice by a legislature had come to mean choice by a party majority in a legislative caucus, and the determination of that caucus had often been prearranged by a small group of party managers; or if that did not happen secretly, it had been settled in a party convention which directed the members of the party in the legislature how to cast their votes. There was anyhow little room left for free selection by the legislature. The people, or rather those wire-pullers who manage the people and act in their name, had usually settled the matter beforehand. So hard is it to make any scheme of indirect election work according to its original design; so hard is it to keep even a written and rigid constitution from bending and warping under the actual forces of politics.

      Cases moreover occurred in which a rich man practically bought his election. One such led, in 1912, to the expulsion of a newly elected senator for bribery.

      While public sentiment was growing more and more hostile to the method of election by state legislatures, and resolutions calling for a change were being passed by these legislatures themselves at the bidding of that sentiment, a plan was discovered by which