I For One Do Not Grudge Them All The Good They Can Do, All
The Honor They Can Win.
But I grieve over the evil name which now
taints them, and which has accompanied that wider spread of
democracy which the last twenty years has produced.
This longing
for universal suffrage in all things - in voting for the President,
in voting for judges, in voting for the Representatives, in
dictating to Senators - has come up since the days of President
Jackson, and with it has come corruption and unclean hands.
Democracy must look to it, or the world at large will declare her to
have failed.
One would say that at any rate the Senate might be filled with
unpaid servants of the public. Each State might surely find two men
who could afford to attend to the public weal of their country
without claiming a compensation for their time. In England we find
no difficulty in being so served. Those cities among us in which
the democratic element most strongly abounds, can procure
representatives to their minds, even though the honor of filling the
position is not only not remunerative, but is very costly. I cannot
but think that the Senate of the United States would stand higher in
the public estimation of its own country if it were an unpaid body
of men.
It is enjoined that no person holding any office under the United
States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in
office. At first sight such a rule as this appears to be good in
its nature; but a comparison of the practice of the United States
government with that of our own makes me think that this embargo on
members of the legislative bodies is a mistake. It prohibits the
President's ministers from a seat in either house, and thereby
relieves them from the weight of that responsibility to which our
ministers are subjected. It is quite true that the United States
ministers cannot be responsible as are our ministers, seeing that
the President himself is responsible, and that the Queen is not so.
Indeed, according to the theory of the American Constitution, the
President has no ministers. The Constitution speaks only of the
principal officers of the executive departments. "He" (the
President) "may require the opinion in writing of the principal
officer in each of the executive departments." But in practice he
has his cabinet, and the irresponsibility of that cabinet would
practically cease if the members of it were subjected to the
questionings of the two Houses. With us the rule which prohibits
servants of the State from going into Parliament is, like many of
our constitutional rules, hard to be defined, and yet perfectly
understood. It may perhaps be said, with the nearest approach to a
correct definition, that permanent servants of the State may not go
into Parliament, and that those may do so whose services are
political, depending for the duration of their term on the duration
of the existing ministry.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 159 of 275
Words from 81757 to 82261
of 142339
