without any possibility of finding to whose account they were chargeable. The mischief may have been really accomplished by some one who posed before himself and the world as an ardent patriot. In no field does committee interference do so much harm as in foreign relations and at the same time nowhere is it so hard to trace accurately the sequence of cause and effect. Even a country so fortunately situated as the United States has suffered greatly in this way without any clear perception of the nature and extent of the injury.

The extent to which committee procedure may serve factional purpose in disregard of the general welfare is exactly correspondent to the extent to which the committees can obstruct the government and hinder its efforts to present its measures and obtain a decision upon them. If constitutional arrangements secure to the government complete opportunity, the matter of committee procedure may safely be left to the assembly's own views of convenience and propriety. Under such conditions little need will ordinarily be felt for the existence of committees. The British parliament, with the affairs of an empire to supervise, gets along with only six standing committees.

CHAPTER IX

EFFECTS OF TOO MUCH ELECTION

1

AMONG the numerous side remarks in The Federalist which cast flashes of light into dark places, is one which notes that paradoxical as it may seem to be, yet it is a fact "as undeniable as it is important," that a lack of "due responsibility in the government to the people" may result from "that frequency of elections which in other cases produces that responsibility." The severely practical purpose of The Federalist did not allow opportunity for drawing out fully the implications of the general observations made, but only so much as was required by the immediate purpose, which in this case was the need of a more permanent body than an annually elected assembly. As the constitution provided for election by the people only in the case of members of the house of representatives, and for that purpose adopted just such suffrage conditions as were prescribed by the several states for the election of their own representative assemblies, it did not come in the way of The Federalist to discuss the limitations upon the scope of elections which 1 The Federalist, No. 63.

inhere in the nature of representative government. Moreover, that was a point on which political practice seemed then to be well defined and permanently settled. All administrative office was filled by executive appointment, and elections were held only for the choice of representatives. The provision of the constitution that "executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States," reflected the principle of the undivided authority of the English crown, which had been the means by which the people had been delivered from the countless miseries resulting from the partitions of power and conflicts as to rights and duties which existed under the feudal system. There was general acquiescence in this principle, although influences corroding it were even then active in New England politics. The matter did not however attract general attention during the formative period of the American constitution, and the only point over which there was serious contention was whether representatives should be elected for a long term or a short. A maxim that had considerable vogue was that "where annual elections end, tyranny begins," and this view was so influential that in Connecticut and Rhode Island elections of members of the assembly were held every six months, as an extra precaution. The results were such as to supply an argument in

favor of the two year period fixed by the constitution of the United States.

The main argument of The Federalist in opposition to an annual election of representatives was that sufficient time was not allowed for intelligent service. It was observed:

"The objects of government may be divided into two general classes: the one depending on measures which have singly an immediate and sensible operation; the other depending upon a succession of well-chosen and well-connected measures, which have a gradual and perhaps unobserved operation. The importance of the latter description to the collective and permanent welfare of every country needs no explanation. And yet it is evident that an assembly elected for so short a term as to be unable to provide more than one or two links in a chain of measures, on which the general welfare may essentially depend, ought not to be answerable for the final result, any more than a steward or tenant, engaged for one year, could be justly made to answer for places or improvements which could not be accomplished in less than a dozen years."

The argument proves rather too much, for a two year term is almost as defective from this point of view as a one year term, and The Federalist virtually admitted this by remarking that the proper remedy was a well-constructed senate." Furthermore, a flaw in the argument is

produced by the fact that it does not follow that an annually elected body need necessarily be mutable in its composition. The annually engaged steward may feel so sure of retention in office that he can enter upon improvements requiring years for their completion. The present tendency everywhere in politics is decidedly against annual elections, but it is the rule in business corporations, without noticeable impairment of their ability to adopt plans whose execution may extend over a series of years. The old charter under which Barbados is still governed provides for annual elections and nevertheless the assembly is as permanent in its composition as any assembly elected for the five-year term now more usual for English colonial legislatures. In general the same members are elected year after year, and the assembly has as much capacity for sustained consideration of the public business as any long-term body. On the other hand, it would be possible to adduce instances in which long tenure of office has failed to impart to a legislative body breadth or elevation of view. Practical experience leads to the conclusion that the matter is one of minor importance. The character of the assembly takes its tone from the conditions under which the assembly exercises its power. The five-year term of the British parliament does not produce indifference to