Constitutional government in the United States

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...one of the most admirable, as it is certainly one of the most original, of our political institutions. In our own day we have been equally lavish of hostile criticism. We have suspected it of every malign purpose, fixed every unhandsome motive upon it, and at times almost cast it out of our confidence altogether. The fact is that it is possible in your thought to make almost anything you please out of the Senate. It is a body variously compounded, made many-sided by containing many elements, and a critic may concentrate his attention upon one element at a time if he chooses, make the most of what is good and put the rest out of sight, or make more than the most of what is bad and ignore everything that does not chime with his thesis of evil. The Senate has, in fact, many contrasted characteristics, shows many faces, lends itself easily to no confident generalization. It differs very radically from the House of Representatives. The House is an organic unit; it has been at great pains to make itself so, and to become a working body under a single unifying discipline; while the Senate is not so much an organization as a body of individuals, retaining with singularly little modification the character it was originally intended to have. As I have already said in a previous lecture, it is impossible to characterize the United States in any single generalization; and for that very reason it is impossible to sum up the Senate in any single phrase or summary description. For the Senate is as various as the country it represents. It represents the country, not the people: the country in its many diverse sections, not the population of the country, which tends to become uniform where it is concentrated. Most of the leading figures among the active public...