sary for every legislative body to evolve some kind of organization, and being debarred from having the ministers of the day as a ruling committee controlling all business as in England, the Houses of Congress took the alternative of distributing business amongst a number of small standing committees to each of which . is assigned a specific class of subjects indicated by the names of the committees, such as Ways and Means, Appropriations, Banking and Currency, Rivers and Harbours, and so on. These committees consist of only from three to, at most, sixteen members each. We may confine our view to the House of Representatives, but the system in both Houses is the same. And while I shall derive mainly what I am about to state, from the pages of Mr. Woodrow Wilson's work on Congressional Government, I may say at once that his statements seem to be in no way impugned by other American writers.

Now to some of these small standing committees each and every Bill, Memorial, Proposition, or Report of a Department, is referred without debate, and what we find is, that all legislation is at the mercy practically of the particular committee to which a bill is assigned. These committees deliberate in secret, and no member speaking in the House is entitled to state anything that has taken place in committee other than what is stated in the report of that committee. They are practically under the control of their chairman, who are strict party men, appointed by the Speaker, himself under the American system a staunch and avowed partisan, and as I shall presently have occasion to point out when I refer to him again, the most powerful man in the House by virtue of his power of appointing these chairmen of the standing committees, and of his other functions. "I know not how better to describe our form of government in a single phrase," says Mr. Wilson, "than by calling it a government by the chairman of the standing committees of Congress' (s).

(s) Congressional Government, p. 102. References are to the 4th edition published in 1887. However in letters written to the writer of this pamphlet in March, 1906, of which Mr. Woodrow Wilson has kindly authorized quotation, he says: "In many details the present method of conducting business in Congress differs from that described in my Congressional Government, but not in any essential particular, except that the House Com

These chairmen, however, do not constitute a co-operative body like a ministry; they do not consult and concur in the adoption of homogeneous and mutually helpful measures; there is no thought of acting in concert. Each committee goes its own way, at its own pace, and it is impossible to discover any unity of method in the disconnected and desultory action of the House, or any common purpose in the measures which its committees from time to time recommend.

We will now glance for one moment at the way in which legislation is conducted under this system. In the first place as to the initiation of legislative measures. Under the British system, which is also the Canadian, public bills fall into two classes, those brought in by the ministry of the day as responsible advisers of the Sovereign, and those brought in by private members. In neither House of Congress, on the other hand, is there any such thing as Government bills. In England or Canada a strong Cabinet can obtain the concurrence of the Legislature in all acts which facilitate its administration; it is, so to speak, the Legislature. For, as Sir Henry Maine says, "The nation whose constitutional practice suggested to Montesquieu his memorable maxim concerning executive, legislative, and judicial powers, has in the course of a century falsified it. The formal executive is the true source of legislation; the formal Legislature is incessantly concerned with executive government" (t).

In America, on the other hand, the initiation of legislation belongs to nobody in particular. Any member may introduce

mittee on Rules, which consists of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and four other members, has now a degree of control which was not looked forward to twenty years ago. That committee from time to time introduces a programme for the conduct of the business of the House, which determines the amount of time to be devoted to the several parts of the House's business. This constitutes. the committee a sort of "Steering Committee” and it gives great power. The ascendency of the Committee on Rules in the House of Representatives has no further effect than this, that it gives the House a definite programme. But that, so far as I can see, is all that it does, except to increase still further the arbitrary power of the Speaker of the House who is, of course, the domineering member of the Committee."

(t) Popular Government, p. 239.

a bill or resolution upon any subject in which he feels an interest, and a dozen of these may be presented upon the same subject, which differ entirely from one another. Mr. Woodrow Wilson gives a very amusing sketch (u), too long to quote, of what would be the experience of a new member going to Washington as the representative of a particular line of policy and endeavouring to bring the matter up for legislation before the House. No debate at all is allowed upon the first or second reading of bills, which, of course, prevents the public being necessarily apprised of what measures are before Congress. Without debate the bill is sent to the proper committee, discussion only being allowed as to what committee it shall be sent to. And we are told that the fate of a bill committed is not uncertain, for as a rule a bill committed is a bill doomed. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain has told us in 1890, that in the preceding session of Congress more than sixteen thousand separate bills were introduced, of which less than one-tenth were finally dealt with by the House, the remainder being either rejected in committee or practically stifled by not being reported to the House (v). It is perfectly easy for the committee to which a bill has been referred, and therefore common, to let the session pass without making any report at all upon the bills deemed objectionable or unimportant, or to substitute for reports upon them a few bills of the committee's own drafting (w). So that the practical effect of this committee organization by the House is to consign to each of the standing committees the entire direction of legislation upon the subjects which have come under its consideration.

When, however, these committees do report upon a bill it might be supposed that full debate would be allowed. On the contrary we are told on the authority of Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, a man of very long Congressional experience, that, supposing the two sessions which make up the life of the House to

(u) Congressional Government, p. 64 et seq.

(v) "Shall We Americanize our Institutions?" Nineteenth Century for December, 1890, Vol. 28, p. 863-4.

(w) Congressional Government, pp. 69-70.

last ten months, most of the committees have at their disposal during each Congress but two hours each in which to report upon, debate, and dispose of all the subjects of general legislation committed to their charge(x). And even that space of time is not allowed to free and open debate. The reporting committee man is allowed to absorb a great part of it, and as to the rest the Speaker recognizes only those persons who have previously come to a private understanding with the makers of the report, and these only upon their promise to limit their remarks to a certain number of minutes. In addition to all this a practice has risen of hastening the passage of bills by suspension of the rules, "by means of which," says Senator Hoar, "a large proportion, perhaps the majority, of the bills which pass the House are carried through. It requires two-thirds of the members voting to adopt such a motion. Upon it no debate or amendment is in order. In this way if two-thirds of the body agree, a bill is by a single vote, without discussion and without change, passed through all the necessary stages, and made a law, so far as the House of Representatives can accomplish it; and in this mode hundreds of measures of vital importance receive, near the close of an exhausting session, without being debated, amended, printed, or understood, the constitutional assent of the representatives of the American people" (y).

However, even this stringent practice apparently was not deemed sufficient. In his article to which I have already referred, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain describes a proceeding then recently introduced under the provocation of obstruction or filibustering, by which a resolution is brought up to the House from the committee on rules fixing the length of time and the conditions under which further debate on a measure which it is desired to carry in this way, can be carried on, and this resolution is passed by the majority under the action of "the previous question" rule without discussion or amendment. The chairman of this

(x) Quoted in Congressional Government, at p. 72, from an Article in the North American Review.

(y) Quoted in Congressional Government, at p. 111-2.

committee on rules is the Speaker himself, who is thus entitled in practice to decide how long the discussion on every bill or stage of a bill shall be allowed, and when the final vote must be taken (z). It appears that the late Mr. Reed, when Speaker of the House of Representatives, was asked what under this system becomes of the rights of a minority, to which he replied that "the right of the minority is to draw its salaries, and its function is to make a quorum" (a). "Thank God," the same gentleman once exclaimed, according to the New York Weekly Post, "the House is not a deliberative body"(b). "It is like a woman," said Secretary Evarts, "if it deliberates, it is lost" (c).

Space will not permit us to dwell upon the contrast presented here with the system in vogue in the British House of Commons, and the Canadian House of Commons at Ottawa. The committees of the House of Commons at Ottawa, as those of the House of Commons in London, merely investigate and report. They are not appointed by the Speaker but are chosen with care by a committee of selection composed of members of both parties. Moreover, they are very large,-some of them comprising twothirds of the whole House. Thus the committees entrusted with private bills in the House of Commons at Ottawa, comprise from 43 to 162 members each. And as to opportunities for debate, anyone who wishes to see what they are can do so in Sir John Bourinot's Canadian Studies in Comparative Politics, or in Mr. Chamberlain's article above referred to. Under the British system, as Mr. Chamberlain states, "there may be lengthened discussion on all the six stages of an English bill, and such discussion almost invariably takes place on four of them"(d).

Nor, again, can I dwell upon the numerous evil incidental

(z) Nineteenth Century, December, 1890, Vol. 28, p. 866. p. 31 n. (s.)

(a) Ibid., p. 871.

(b) New York Weekly Post, January 4th, 1890.

(c) Nineteenth Century, December, 1890, Vol. 28, p. 870.
(d) Ibid., at p. 864.

See supra