These may seem somewhat lofty sentiments to invoke in so practical, mechanical a matter as the conduct of parliamentary proceedings, yet we are accustomed to say of the purpose of such proceedings, even though with occasional skepticism, that "the voice of the people is the voice of God," and none but the cynic will smile when we recall the glorious declaration of Wendell Phillips, that "one with God is a majority." It will be a sorry day for liberty when no man imbued with that spirit and inspired by that belief can be found in the halls where the destinies of the world are shaped.

However, the necessary work of government must go on, and as practical men we must agree that ours is a government of majorities, as demonstrated by votes. We start from the premise that majorities must prevail and shall be responsible. There is undoubted force in the argument that whatever interferes with this is abnormal. Samuel W. McCall well said: "Violence is done to the foundation principle of our government, by putting it in the power of a single member [of the Senate] to bring about a paralysis of all legislative functions and to prevent indefinitely the other ninety-one members, and the House of Representatives as well, from transacting the business of the country. The two legislative organs of a great nation must have a procedure which will permit a majority of either in any crisis to assume the responsibility for performing its great part in the necessary work of government." 1

The very mild and moderate form of closure adopted by the Senate will permit the majority in that body to assume responsibility in time of crisis, and threatens no great harm to minorities. After all, it is in large part a question of degree. Somewhere between the extreme contentions of majority rule and minority right is a point where dangers balance. If the Senate has discovered that point, so much the better. Whether the House has been successful in like discovery is not even yet clear, though almost a score of years have passed since Mr. Reed put forth his famous rules. There is grave reason to fear that a lessening of sense of responsibility has accompanied the limitation of debate, throwing too much of the burden of decision on the Senate. Perhaps the size of the House compels this. If so, it is to be regretted. Mr. McCall thought it undeniable that in the last twenty-five years discussion had been too much restrained in

The Business of Congress, 198.

the House of Representatives. "It has been limited," he says, "altogether more than was necessary for the transaction of public business, and it has been limited also too much to secure the fair results of debate. But the limitations have always been by sanction of a majority vote of the members in each case." 1

The problem has not greatly perplexed the State Legislatures. Pressure of business has not there become so serious as in Washington, and vital issues involving questions of principle rarely arise. Prolonged filibusters have therefore been few in State capitals. Albany saw one half a century ago worth recalling because of the achievement of Andrew D. White, then the youngest member of the Senate, who was to become the President of Cornell. The story goes that he wanted a certain matter referred to a constitutional convention of three hundred members, which was to meet speedily, and in support of his wish he announced his intention of submitting three hundred arguments based on the attainments, character, and general fitness of each of the convention members in turn. It is said he had accomplished about twenty hours of consecutive oratory before the other side capitulated. Such a feat would still be possible where it is the rule that a member who has the floor may keep it as long as he can talk, but fortunately the Legislatures rarely see that rule put to such use.

1 The Business of Congress, 99.

CHAPTER XIII

ORATORY PAST AND PRESENT

IN the matter of parliamentary oratory no exception is to be found to the rule that many men, particularly if advanced in years, think yesterday was better than to-day. They would be quite agreed that the golden age of oratory has gone, never to return. Some of them would say there has never since been anything to equal the palmy days of the Roman Senate, when Cicero became the oratorical model for mankind. In the Roman Senate, however, there was no debating proper. A series of set speeches led to decision. Francis Lieber was of the belief that in debating oratory, in replying on the spot vigorously and clearly to an adversary, the best orators of his time and of the preceding century were greatly superior to the ancients.1

Records permit judgment in that particular, but it is not so easy to compare the orators of different ages in respect of manner. Some of the legends of orators whom nobody now living heard are equally impossible to refute and to believe. Not a few have been described in language much like that of Ben Jonson in extolling the oratory of Lord Bacon "The fear of every man who heard him was lest he should make an end." Unless the accounts of Patrick Henry's power are outrageously exaggerated, it neared the supernatural. We have been told how Daniel Webster held his hearers spellbound, how he stirred their deepest emotions, how he swayed them at will. Yet who fails to find the volumes of oratory on his library shelves the dullest and dreariest of all his books? The ponderous sentences, the elaborate periods, the involved rhetoric make it hard to believe that such utterances ever stirred the souls of men. The voice must have given their language life and color, beauty and power, beyond anything the dead words disclose. Perhaps, too, audiences were more sympathetic and emotional than they are to-day. We live in a critical, skeptical age. Perhaps our fathers were not so cold-blooded and cynical as their sons. Certain it is that tastes have changed. We ridicule the man who now indulges in what we sneeringly call "spread-eagle oratory." Bombast no longer delights.

1 On Civil Liberty and Self-Government, 189, note.

England tired of grandiloquence before it palled on us - probably never was so fond of it, for Americans developed unusual aptitude for hyperbole, and it was enjoyed. English taste for a long time favored sonorous, sententious discourses, like those of Burke. It was well after the period of Pitt and Fox when the House of Commons ceased to be an auditorium where eminent men delivered elaborate essays. Then the other extreme was quickly reached. Emerson after his second journey to England. in 1847, wrote in "English Traits": "A kind of pride in bad public speaking is noted in the House of Commons, as if they were willing to show that they did not live by their tongues, or thought they spoke well enough if they had the tone of gentlemen." Yet the transformation could not have been then complete, for it was sixty years later that Henry W. Lucy ("Toby, M.P.") said there had been a great change within even his "comparatively brief experience." He declared that in the Parliament then sitting there was not a man who posed as an orator.1

Augustine Birrell said oratory was a tradition of the House. In discussing its disappearance, he failed to recognize that we have been traveling along the same road. "In America," he declared, "you seem still to love talk for its own sake. I am told that in the States grown men and women really enjoy sitting still and being talked to in a loud voice. You love to hear the rolling sentence and the lofty and familiar sentiment. We don't. It cannot be denied that even common juries dislike what a few decades ago would have been considered very passable eloquence. As for our judges, their abhorrence of a full-mouthed sentence is morbid. It is daily growing upon us, this dislike of being talked to in a lofty vein - or, indeed, in any vein. The fact is that most men nowadays can make a speech. There never was a House of Commons either so impatient of speech or containing so many men capable of making a good speech as the present one. But real eloquence will always move, just as a plain-spoken, wellarranged, well-informed, honest speech will always be effective and give pleasure."2

It may be that in some localities and under some conditions the grandiose style will be welcome yet, but it has long ceased to

1 "Reminiscences of the House of Commons," Putnam's Monthly, JanuaryFebruary, 1907.

"The House of Commons," Scribner's Magazine, November, 1893.

be acceptable in our legislative assemblies. Nearly half a century ago James Parton, describing Congress, wrote: "Flights of oratory generally excite derisive smiles upon the floor of the House, and no man is much regarded by his fellow-members who is addicted to that species of composition." 1

It seems to be agreed that the change has come about chiefly by reason of the change in the nature and volume of parliamentary business. Whether or not there is less occasion nowadays to discuss general principles, abstract propositions, broad questions of public policy, they furnish relatively a far smaller part of the food for discussion than of old. The enormous increase in the number of technical measures, matters of administrative detail, which call for the conversational form of discussion and make pomposity particularly absurd, has brought a new standard of effective speech. Another result has been to compel brevity. Rarely is there time for exhaustive treatment of any theme. Too many men want also to be heard; too many other things press for attention.

Nevertheless it is not quite true that oratory has disappeared from legislative chambers on either side of the water, if to "oratory" we give its primary meaning — the art of public speech. The form has changed, but the new form is none the less an art in which men may and do excel, by dint of hard work and long practice. "There can be no question," Woodrow Wilson asserted, "that the debates which take place every session in the Senate are of a very high order of excellence. The average of the ability displayed in its discussions not infrequently rises quite to the level of those controversies of the past which we are wont to call great because they furnished occasion to men like Webster and Calhoun and Clay, whom we cannot now quite match in mastery of knowledge and of eloquence." 2

The "Nation" bore like testimony not so very long ago, and when the "Nation" praises, the rarity of that phenomenon in its columns goes far toward assuring the truth of its averment. "Not only is the worth of Congressional debate held too cheap by the general public," it said, "but the capacity of Representatives and Senators is grievously underestimated. Of course, there are wind bags and dunderheads among them. It is often exasperatingly difficult to get to the real points in issue But when large matters 1 "The Pressure upon Congress," Atlantic Monthly, February, 1870. Congressional Government, 218.