their collection, or as regards the nature of various kinds of expenditure and their comparative utility, can be turned to account only by interrogating these officials before the committees. Their views are not stated in the House by a parliamentary chief, nor tested in debate by arguments addressed to him which he must there and then answer.
Little check exists on the tendency of members to deplete the public treasury by securing grants for their friends or constituents, or by putting through financial jobs for which they are to receive some private consideration. If either the majority of the Committee on Appropriations or the House itself suspects a job, the grant proposed may be rejected. But it is the duty of no one in particular to scent out a job, and to defeat it by public exposure.
The nation is sometimes puzzled by a financial policy varying from year to year, and controlled by no responsible leaders, and it feels less interest than it ought in congressional discussions, nor has it confidence in Congress.7
The result on the national finance is unfortunate. A thoughtful American publicist remarks, “So long as the debit side of the national account is managed by one set of men, and the credit side by another set, both sets working separately and in secret without public responsibility, and without intervention on the part of the executive official who is nominally responsible; so long as these sets, being composed largely of new men every two years, give no attention to business except when Congress is in session, and thus spend in preparing plans the whole time which ought to be spent in public discussion of plans already matured, so that an immense budget is rushed through without discussion in a week or ten days—just so long the finances will go from bad to worse, no matter by what name you call the party in power. No other nation on earth attempts such a thing, or could attempt it without soon coming to grief, our salvation thus far consisting in an enormous income.”
It may be replied to this criticism that the enormous income, added to the fact that the tariff is imposed for protection rather than for revenue, is not only the salvation of the United States government under the present system, but also the cause of that system. Were the tariff framed with a view to revenue only, no higher taxes would be imposed than the public service required, and a better method of balancing the public accounts would follow. America is the only country in the world whose difficulty is not to raise money but to spend it.8 But it is equally true that Congress is contracting lax habits, and ought to change them.
How comes it, if all this be true, that the finances of America have been so flourishing, and in particular that the Civil War debt was paid off with such regularity and speed that the total public debt of $3,000,000,000 (£600,000,000) in 1865 had sunk in 1890 to $1,000,000,000 (£200,000,000)? Does not so brilliant a result speak of a continuously wise and skilful management of the national revenue?
The swift reduction of the debt seems to be due to the following causes:
To the prosperity of the country which, with one interval of trade depression, has for twenty-five years been developing its amazing natural resources so fast as to produce an amount of wealth which is not only greater, but more widely diffused through the population, than in any other part of the world.9
To the spending habits of the people, who allow themselves luxuries such as the masses enjoy in no other country, and therefore pay more than any other people in the way of indirect taxation. The fact that federal revenue is raised by duties of customs and excise makes the people far less sensible of the pressure of taxation than they would be did they pay directly.
To the absence, down till 1899, of the military and naval charges which press so heavily on European states.
To the maintenance of an exceedingly high tariff at the instance of interested persons who have obtained the public ear and can influence Congress. It was the acceptance of the policy of protection, rather than any deliberate conviction that the debt ought to be paid off, that caused the continuance of a tariff whose huge and constant surpluses have enabled the debt to be reduced.
Europeans, admiring and envying the rapidity with which the Civil War debt was reduced were in those years disposed to credit the Americans with brilliant financial skill. That, however, which was really admirable in the conduct of the American people was not their judgment in selecting particular methods for raising money, but their readiness to submit during and immediately after the war to unprecedentedly heavy taxation. The interests (real or supposed) of the manufacturing classes have caused the maintenance of the tariff then imposed; nature, by giving the people a spending power which rendered the tariff marvellously productive, did the rest.
Under the system of congressional finance here described America wastes millions annually. But her wealth is so great, her revenue so elastic, that she is not sensible of the loss. She has the glorious privilege of youth, the privilege of committing errors without suffering from their consequences.
The Relations of the Two Houses
The creation by the Constitution of 1789 of two chambers in the United States, in place of the one chamber which existed under the Confederation has been usually ascribed by Europeans to mere imitation of England; and one learned writer goes so far as to suggest that if England had possessed three chambers, like the States General of France, or four, like the Diet of Sweden, a crop of three-chambered or four-chambered legislatures would, in obedience to the example of happy and successful England, have sprung up over the world. There were, however, better reasons than deference to English precedents to justify the division of Congress into two houses and no more; and so many indubitable instances of such a deference may be quoted that there is no need to hunt for others. Not to dwell upon the fact that there were two chambers in all but two1 of the thirteen original states, the Convention of 1787 had two solid motives for fixing on this number, a motive of principle and theory, a motive of immediate expediency.
The chief advantage of dividing a legislature into two branches is that the one may check the haste and correct the mistakes of the other. This advantage is purchased at the price of some delay, and of the weakness which results from a splitting up of authority. If a legislature be constituted of three or more branches, the advantage is scarcely increased, the delay and weakness are immensely aggravated. Two chambers can be made to work together in a way almost impossible to more than two. As the proverb says, “Two’s company, three’s none.” If there be three chambers, two are sure to intrigue and likely to combine against the third. The difficulties of carrying a measure without sacrificing its unity of principle, of fixing responsibility, of securing the watchful attention of the public, serious with two chambers, become enormous with three or more.
To these considerations there was added the practical ground that the division of Congress into two houses supplied a means of settling the dispute which raged between the small and the large states. The latter contended for a representation of the states in Congress proportioned to their respective populations, the former for their equal representation as sovereign commonwealths. Both were satisfied by the plan which created two chambers in one of which the former principle, in the other of which the latter principle was recognized. The country remained a federation in respect of the Senate, it became a nation in respect of the House: there was no occasion for a third chamber.
The respective characters of the two bodies are wholly unlike those of the so-called upper and lower chambers of Europe. In Europe there is always a difference of political complexion generally resting on a difference in personal composition. There the upper chamber represents the aristocracy of the country, or the men of wealth, or the high officials, or the influence of the Crown and court; while the lower chamber represents the multitude. Between the Senate and the House there is no
