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than ten years of the creation of the Committee on Appropriacomplaint was loudly made that its powers were too great and autocratic. But when the Democrats came into control of the Forty-fourth Congress, stringently pledged to retrenchment, one of the first steps they took was to increase the power of the Committee on Appropriations. They saw where they must strike if there was to be any cutting down at all. On Jan. 17, 1876, an amendment to the rules was introduced and passed which, in the language of one opposing the change, would "practically abolish all committees except the Committee on Appropriations." Mr. Randall frankly admitted that his intention was to consolidate control of expenditures in the Committee on Appropriations and so secure retrenchment. He himself was able to set forth the result on Feb. 8, 1877, when he said: "The appropriations of the last Congress amounted in the aggregate to $359,066,668. On the other hand, the appropriations of the Forty-fourth Congress, according to your own. books, made up by the Departments, were during the first session $148,451,573, and the probability is that if the Senate does not resist the appropriations recommended by the Committee on Appropriations, so far as I am able to gather what they will be this session, they will be $142,286,597; making the appropriation bills of the present Congress during its two sessions for the two years aggregate $290,738,171. And the net result of the presence here of a Democratic House is thus shown to be a saving to the people of $68,328,497."

It is not necessary to take up the disputed question whether these reductions were wise or not. The critical fact is that they were made, and that it was the concentrated and effective power of the Committee on Appropriations that allowed them to be made. With one great bill after another taken away from the purview and control of that committee, it is not strange that color should be given for the charge of congressional extravagance. It has, in fact, been distinctly invited and encouraged by the change of rule and practice now pointed out.

3. A third element should perhaps be added, and that is the breaking down of the power and prestige of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, even as respects matters. over which he has nominal control. When Mr. Randall was

chairman, he was practically a chancellor of the exchequer in the almost absolute veto power he exercised in the matter of granting money. Appropriations that he said should not be voted were not voted, and there was an end of it. He was able, in the last resort, to interpose his single masterful will, and in the face of clamor and complaint say in effect, "You shall not have this money because I will not let you have it." No doubt his character and the times made it possible for him to play the autocrat, as a less resolute man, backed by a less docile party majority, could not have done it. Still there has been, in the twenty years since he demonstrated the power of the position, a sad lowering of its dignity. No one will accuse the present chairman, Mr. Cannon, of being a man without a will of his own, or without a proper supply of pugnacity, yet he was overridden again and again in the last Congress. Probably never before did a chairman of the Committee on Appropriations protest so often in vain against what he called extravagance, or so frequently record his vote in the negative minority.

Mr. Cannon began the first session with a suitable assertion of the power which he ought to have, and of the aim with which he meant to wield it. His business, he fearlessly and truthfully proclaimed, was not, in the main, to make appropriations, but to prevent their being made. How many vicious money bills he succeeded in killing, we have no means of knowing. But that he tried to prevent a great many from being enacted into law and failed, the public records of Congress amply show. The process of deterioration in such a position as his is inevitable, once begun. Power consists largely in seeming to have power, and when you take away half the power, you run the risk of destroying all the seeming. The power which really remains no longer commands unforced respect, and is continually exposed to further attacks and weakening. The changes in rule and custom which broke the prestige of the chairmanship of the Committee on Appropriations were certain to lead to such humiliation and riding down of its occupant as Mr. Cannon had to suffer so many times during the two years past.

The one sure datum in the whole question is, that a representative body, empowered to spend money, is sure to spend it lavishly unless prevented in some way. It was a saying of an

old English financier, which has in it just the grain of cynicism necessary to give flavor to its truth: "If you want to raise a certain cheer in the House of Commons, make a general panegyric on economy; if you want to invite a sure defeat, propose a particular saving." That indicates the law, apparently the necessary law, of a popular assembly's being. If our Congress has been increasingly extravagant in recent years, that does not necessarily argue an increasing recklessness on the part of individual members. It may simply imply that the old checks on the innate recklessness of all Congresses, in money matters, have been removed or diminished. That they have been, it has been attempted to show in what goes before; and if successfully shown, the rationale of increasing congressional extravagance has been, in part at least, shown also.

What is to be the remedy? To what available checks on congressional wastefulness may we yet resort? Short-cut and infallible remedies are not to be hoped for. We shall have to agree with John Morley that politics, on its practical side at any rate, is one long second-best and choice between blunders. Such a radical change as the introduction of responsible cabinet government is an impossibility. We must do what we can with the material we have. Nor can we even expect to retrace our steps. It might seem a simple and obvious thing to climb the hill again to repeal the permanent appropriations, to restore the power of which the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Appropriations have been successively shorn, to make the Appropriations chairman once more the half of a chancellor of the exchequer — a chancellor, that is, on the spending side. But the separate committees have but tasted so much blood in the money bills given them, and their appetite is whetted for more. They will not give up a particle of the power they have acquired, and will always be able to vote down those who may want to take it from them.. In this situation, the thing to be done is to look about among existing political forces and motives, and choose out those which may be brought powerfully into play against the tendency to national lavish expenditure.

The popular judgment, often blind and unjust, may guide us here. The people have a way of locating the responsibility for public extravagance, which may suggest the true place to fix it,

both in theory and practice. A French writer, in speaking of the "mania for responsibility" which is so prominent a feature of political life in France, says that for the people or the Chamber to vote down a minister or a cabinet affords them the same relief that an angry man experiences in going home and smashing the furniture. What the American people always smash in their rage is the party in power. Personal objects of their disapproval or anger, they are seldom able to single out; but the party as a whole is always there, ready for a drubbing. Specifically in this very matter of congressional extravagance have we the two historic instances of the popular smiting of the BackPay Congress, and the Billion-Dollar Congress.

Is there any way of making this party responsibility, of which the voters have thus a vague but vital sense, an operative force in the effective control of national expenditure? May we have responsible party government in this particular, if not responsible cabinet government? Two ways seem feasible. One would be, to give openly to the speaker of the house the power over legislation, including appropriations, which he now wields secretly, and to insist upon his having an acknowledged public responsibility, as leader of his party, as well as the private one which he now really has. In her recent admirable and striking study of "The Speaker of the House of Representatives," Miss M. P. Follet has shown how, through rule and custom, through the appointment of committees and the reference of bills, through the famous right of "recognition," the speaker is truly the American Premier, in all matters of domestic policy and legislation. We might at least insist upon making him our chancellor of the exchequer. That he is so now to a very great extent was tacitly confessed by Speaker Reed in his remark at the close of the session of 1896, that he regretted having been compelled so often to say "no." He might have said "no" many times more to the great advantage of the country. The point is that he has the power to say it, and to make his "no" absolute. Masterful speakers are all the while saying it. It would seem possible, therefore, to put into their hands, as the chosen leaders and organs of their party in Congress, and to put it there with party consent and submission, open and full control of the appropriations of Congress.

There are, of course, obvious and strong objections. Such power in the hands of a weak speaker would be woefully out of place. But weak men run less and less chance of being elected speaker at all, and the plan suggested would but make it all the more necessary to elect strong men. Even a strong speaker, it may be said, would not want such power, or want to seem to have it. But in the rapid evolution of the functions of the speakership, its real power is coming more and more clearly to be perceived, and it might not be so hard to compel even an unwilling speaker to accept the responsibility if he is eager for the power. No party would consent to give the speaker such power, it may be objected. Very possibly not, just at present. So great is the strength of political fictions that we may prefer to go on cherishing the illusion that our laws are made by Congress, when they are really made by the speaker, and to refuse him the ostensible, while leaving him with the real, responsibility for the appropriations of Congress. But a change may come after parties have alternately received a few more buffetings for extravagance, and they may be led to see the wisdom, from a purely party point of view, of putting themselves for safety in the hands of their natural leader in all such matters, the speaker of the house.

Meanwhile, an alternative, in some respects a more plausible and promising, plan might be found in the device of applying the party caucus and party discipline to the difficulty. A maximum expenditure, or at least a maximum for each of the chief branches of national expenditure, might be decreed in caucus, and the chairmen of committees empowered to enforce the decree. Then every loyal member of the party would be prevented, in combination with rebellious colleagues, or in league with party opponents (who are always willing, when in the minority, to heap up appropriations and make them as offensive as possible), from entering into log-rolling schemes to go beyond the limits fixed. These quiet little conspiracies, carefully worked up on non-partisan lines, and supported on the ground of mutual benefit, are the things that are death to congressional economy. The most frugal chairman goes down before them. Even the speaker finds it hard to head them off or break them down. But if all appropriations were made a strictly party affair, party