57. When the recent strike at Colorado had got beyond the control of the State government the Governor called upon the national government for protection. What clause of the Constitution justified the President's interference? Could the President under those circumstances control the Colorado militia? 58. How does the national government protect the States against violence and disorder?

59. Is the Cabinet provided for by law? What is its purpose? Explain the various elements which usually compose the Cabinet and why.

60. Mention some of the chief differences between the American and the British Cabinets.

61. Correct the following statement: The President has power to introduce in Congress bills covering the recommendations made in his annual message. 62. Why and how does the President seek to influence public opinion after he has secured office? Mention some examples.

63. Can the President pardon a highwayman who holds up a pedestrian on the streets of Chicago? Reasons.

64. U. S. Judge X is impeached and discharged from office by Congress. Can the President pardon him and restore him to the bench? Why?

65. Resolved that the welfare of the country is best served by a stronger executive department than that planned by the framers of the Constitution. Take either side.

CHAPTER III

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Why the House is a Popular Body.-The American visiting the Capitol at Washington approaches the Supreme Court Chamber with reverence, he listens to the Senate debates with mingled respect and doubt, but he enters the Hall of the Representatives with the confident belief that here he will find his delegates expressing his views. "The House," as it is familiarly called, is the traditional protector and champion of the people's cause. It inherits all that popular confidence and loyalty which have accumulated through centuries of struggle in England between the House of Commons and the King and through the long colonial era in America when the people's representatives in each colony defied the royal governors. Such is the force of old traditions. But the House is also popular because it personifies all the national qualities of our people. It has its moods of exalted patriotism and of captious irritability, of noble self-sacrifice and of flippant cynicism. It can vote by acclamation in the twinkling of an eye fifty millions of dollars for national defence, or it can spend an entire afternoon on the hilarious and farcical discussion of a bill providing a whippingpost for wife-beaters in the District of Columbia. The same House which as a Committee of the Whole, threatens to plunge our civil service into the corruption of fifty years ago, by refusing to appropriate money for the expenses of the Civil Service Commission, rises from its session as a Committee and becoming once more the House proper, gravely votes to grant the appropriation which it threw out as a committee. Then too the House has the American love of extremes. It will follow its leaders sedately and decorously for half a session, then suddenly rising up for one exhilarating moment of utter defiance it can brush aside all the carefully laid plans of the leaders and send Speaker, Rules Committee, Senate and President about their business. Because it represents so many sides of American character, strong and weak, exalted and commonplace, the House has won and maintained the sympathy and confidence of the masses.

Another cause of its popular nature is the shortness of its term. As one of the Federalist writers has said, the House cannot get far away from the people in sentiment and opinions, because its term is only two years. This is a briefer term than that of any other important national legislature in the world. The British House of Commons is elected for five years but may be dissolved at any time and a new Commons may be elected in response to a change

in public opinion. The German and French lower Houses have likewise a long term, with a provision for dissolution at any moment. As between the American and English methods there can be little doubt that, practically, the latter makes the legislature correspond even more closely to the views of the people than does ours, since in America, no matter what sudden national crisis occurs, the House remains in office for its full term. Unfortunately, our House while elected in November does not go into office untiĺ the fourth of March after its election and usually does not meet until the following December, one year and one month after its election. In this period of one year new problems and public questions may arise on which the people have no opportunity to express themselves. The issues upon which the new House was elected must be decided by the old House which is still in office. There are no reasons to-day for such a long interval between the election and the meeting of the House. Its responsiveness to public opinion might be increased by an earlier opening of the session.

Another ground for the distinctly popular character of the House is its direct election by the people. The men of 1787 had little confidence in popular government. Direct election of Senate or President appeared to them to be an experiment so fraught with dangers of demagogue rule and popular turbulence as to be out of the question. The direct election of the House was however a concession to democracy which seemed reasonably safe provided it was checked by an indirect method of choice for the other departments. This popularity in the method of choice is further fortified by the provision of Section 2 of Article I, requiring that the voters shall have the same qualifications as electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature. In Colonial times the most numerous branch of the Colonial or State legislature was the lower house and it was this lower house which had most firmly espoused the popular cause.

Finally the House is popular in a deeper sense in that it represents the people directly in proportion to their numbers while the Senate represents arbitrary State lines. The majority of the people no longer controls the majority of the Senate because the new and sparsely populated States which have been carved out of the West, taken together with certain diminutive Commonwealths in the East, possess a balance of power in the upper house. But in the House of Representatives a just rule of apportionment according to population has created a confidence that the majority of the members expresses the sentiments of a majority of the people.

Qualifications.-The requirements of Section 2 that every member be twenty-five years of age, seven years a citizen of the United States and an inhabitant of the State from which he is chosen, are designed to secure a reasonable maturity, Americanism and knowledge of local conditions. In practice no man is nominated as Representative by any party unless he resides in the district from which

he is to be chosen. If any party were to break this custom the opposition would have an excellent opportunity to appeal to local prejudice by nominating a man of local prominence against the outsider. There are many strong reasons for allowing any citizen who is an inhabitant of the State, to be elected from any Congressional district within the State, as is the case in Europe, but the establishment of such a practice is difficult if not impossible in America because of the political effect just described.

Basis of Apportionment.-The apportionment of members of the House of Representatives among the States according to the population was originally a complicated matter because of the dispute in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 between the slave and free States. The slave States wanted slaves counted as a basis of apportionment; the free States objected. The same dispute arose in relation to direct taxes, the free States wanting the slaves counted for taxation to which the slave States objected. A deadlock resulted from this inconsistent position taken on both sides, and a compromise was finally effected, by which direct taxes and representation in the lower house were coupled together, and it was agreed that for both purposes a slave should count for three-fifths of a white person, leading to the curious Clause 3 of Section 2, Article that "representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned, etc." The three-fifths clause has since been repealed by the 13th Amendment, which abolishes slavery, and the 14th Amendment which provides simply that "representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers." The same section further declares that when male citizens of the United States, twenty-one years of age, are denied the right of suffrage by a State, the representation of that State shall be proportionately reduced in the House of Representatives. This latter provision, which is aimed to protect the negroes against disfranchisement, has never been enforced by Congress because of the disinclination to raise the race question and also because of the very great difficulty of ascertaining the exact number of persons who have been disqualified, and of making a proportional reduction in the representation of the State.

Congressional Districts.-After each decennial census Congress passes an act fixing the number of members of the next House and redistributing the Representatives among the States according to the new figures of population. It then becomes the duty of each State legislature to divide the State into Congressional districts, provided a change in the State's representation has been made. A State however may, if it chooses, elect its Representatives "at large," that is, the State is not divided into districts but the Representatives are elected from the entire State. Each voter instead of balloting for only one Representative from his district, ballots. for as many Representatives as the entire State is entitled to elect. This plan is now practiced in North and South Dakota and Wash

ington. It is open to the objection that the minority party can elect no Representatives at all from the State, but the majority party takes all, although it may have only 51% of the total vote, while under the district plan a section of the State which favors the minority party may elect a Representative of that party. Some abuse has been made of the district method by dishonest elements in the State legislatures; in some States the legislatures have so arranged the Congressional districts as to throw into each district a majority of voters of the majority party thus giving it practically all the Representatives from the State. This is called a Gerrymander. The fairest method would be to elect at large the Representatives from each State but to adopt some plan of minority representation in voting so that the minority party would also be represented according to its proportional strength.

The Special Right to Propose Tax Bills.-The Russian Douma or Lower House had been in existence just seven days when in May, 1906, it demanded complete control over the imperial finances. It is for this purpose that nations establish representative legislatures. The British House of Commons fought with the Crown for centuries to conquer and maintain this right over the purse and it was only in the measure that the Commons succeeded, that real popular government was established. It is to a dim recognition of the rights of the people to be consulted in taxation that the very existence of the British Parliament is due, and, almost without exception, the great constitutional documents of Great Britain from Magna Charta in 1215 down to the Bill of Rights of 1689, contain the solemn promises of the King to respect this right. One of the means of securing popular control is the custom of allowing only the direct representatives of the people to propose tax bills. Our American House as a lawful heir of the British Commons has inherited this privilege which is guaranteed by Section 7 of Article I.

1 The best short but comprehensive description of this dishonest practice is given in Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Volume I, page 126, new edition: "So called from Elbridge Gerry, a leading Democratic politician in Massachusetts (a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and in 1812 elected Vice-President of the United States), who when Massachusetts was being redistricted contrived a scheme which gave one of the districts a shape like that of a lizard. Stuart, the well-known artist, entering the room of an editor who had a map of the new districts hanging on the wall over his desk observed, "Why, this district looks like a salamander,' and put in the claws and eyes of the creature with his pencil. 'Say rather a Gerrymander,' replied the editor; and the name stuck. The aim of gerrymandering, of course, is so to lay out the one-membered districts as to secure in the greatest possible number of them a majority for the party which conducts the operation. This is done sometimes by throwing the greatest possible number of hostile voters into a district which is sufficient to turn the scale. Thus a district was carved out in Mississippi (the so-called Shoe String district) 500 miles long by forty broad, and another in Pennsylvania resembling a dumb-bell. South Carolina furnishes some beautifu! recent examples. And in Missouri a district was contrived longer, if measured along its windings, than the State itself, into which as large a number as possible of the negro voters were thrown."