The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce
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which is natural to a free country, where local self-government is fully developed and rooted in the habits of the people. It is from their local government that the political ideas of the American people have been formed; and they have applied to their state assemblies and their national assembly the customs which grew up in the smaller area.5
These are the best explanations I can give of a phenomenon which strikes Europeans all the more because it exists among a population more unsettled and migratory than any in the Old World. But they leave me still surprised at this strength of local feeling, a feeling not less marked in the new regions of the Far West than in the venerable commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia. Fierce as is the light of criticism which beats upon every part of that system, this point remains uncensured, because assumed to be part of the order of nature.
So far as the restriction to residents in a state is concerned it is intelligible. The senator was originally a sort of ambassador from his state. He is chosen by the legislature or collective authority of his state. He cannot well be a citizen of one state and represent another. Even a representative in the House from one state who lived in another might be perplexed by a divided allegiance, though there are groups of states, such as those of the Northwest, whose great industrial interests are substantially the same. But what reason can there be for preventing a man resident in one part of a state from representing another part, a Philadelphian, for instance, from being returned for Pittsburgh, or a Bostonian for Pittsfield in the west of Massachusetts? In Europe it is not found that a member is less active or successful in urging the local interests of his constituency because he does not live there. He is often more successful, because more personally influential or persuasive than any resident whom the constituency could supply; and in case of a conflict of interests he always feels his efforts to be owing first to his constituents, and not to the place in which he happens to reside.
The mischief is twofold. Inferior men are returned, because there are many parts of the country which do not grow statesmen, where nobody, or at any rate nobody desiring to enter Congress, is to be found above a moderate level of political capacity. And men of marked ability and zeal are prevented from forcing their way in. Such men are produced chiefly in the great cities of the older states. There is not room enough there for nearly all of them, but no other doors to Congress are open. Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, could furnish six or eight times as many good members as there are seats in these cities. As such men cannot enter from their place of residence, they do not enter at all, and the nation is deprived of the benefit of their services. Careers are moreover interrupted. A promising politician may lose his seat in his own district through some fluctuation of opinion, or perhaps because he has offended the local wire-pullers by too much independence. Since he cannot find a seat elsewhere he is stranded; his political life is closed, while other young men inclined to independence take warning from his fate. Changes in the state laws would not remove the evil, for the habit of choosing none but local men is rooted so deeply that it might probably long survive the abolition of a restrictive law, and it is just as strong in states where no such law exists.6
II. Every senator and representative receives a salary at present fixed at $7,500 per annum, besides an allowance (called mileage) of 20 cents (10d.) per mile for travelling expenses for one journey to and from Washington, $1,500 for clerk hire, and a sum for stationery. The salary is looked upon as a matter of course. It was not introduced for the sake of enabling working men to be returned as members, but on the general theory that all public work ought to be paid for.7 The reasons for it are stronger than in England or France, because the distance to Washington from most parts of the United States is so great, and the attendance required there so continuous, that a man cannot attend to his profession or business while sitting in Congress. If he loses his livelihood in serving the community, the community ought to compensate him, not to add that the class of persons whose private means put them above the need of a lucrative calling, or of compensation for interrupting it, is comparatively small even now, and hardly existed when the Constitution was framed. Cynics defend the payment of congressmen on another ground, viz., that “they would steal worse if they didn’t get it,” and would make politics, as Napoleon made war, support itself. Be the thing bad or good, it is at any rate necessary, so that no one talks of abolishing it. For that reason its existence furnishes no argument for its introduction into a small country with a large leisured and wealthy class. In fact, the conditions of European countries are so different from those of America that one must not cite American experience either for or against the remuneration of legislative work. I do not believe that the practice works ill by preventing good men from entering politics, for they feel no more delicacy in accepting their $7,500 than an English duke does in drawing his salary as a secretary of state. It may strengthen the tendency of members to regard themselves as mere delegates, but that tendency has other and deeper roots. It contributes to keep up a class of professional politicians, for the salary, though small in comparison with the incomes earned by successful merchants or lawyers, is a prize to men of the class whence professional politicians mostly come. But those European writers who describe it as the formative cause of that class are mistaken. That class would have existed had members not been paid, would continue to exist if payment were withdrawn. On the other hand, the benefit which Europeans look for from the payment of legislators, viz., the introduction of a large number of representative working men, has hitherto been little desired and even less secured. Few such persons appear as candidates in America; and until recently the working class did not deem itself, nor think of acting as, a distinct body with special interest.8
III. A congressman’s tenure of his place, though tending to grow longer, is still usually short. Senators are sometimes returned for two, four, or (in a few of the older states) even for five successive terms by the legislatures of their states, although it may befall even the best of them to be thrown out by a change in the balance of parties, or by the intrigues of an opponent. But a member of the House can seldom feel safe in the saddle. If he is so eminent as to be necessary to his party, or if he maintains intimate relations with the leading local wire-pullers of his district, he may in the Eastern and Middle, and still more in the Southern states, hold his ground for four or five Congresses, i.e., for eight or ten years. Few do more than this. In the West a member is fortunate if he does even this. Out there a seat is regarded as a good thing which ought to go round. It has a salary. It sends a man, free of expense, for two winters and springs to Washington and lets him and his wife and daughters see something of the fine world there. Local leaders cast sheep’s eyes at the seat, and make more or less open bargains between themselves as to the order in which they shall enjoy it. So far from its being a reason for reelecting a man that he has been a member already, it was, and is still in parts of the West, a reason for passing him by, and giving somebody else a turn. Rotation in office, dear to the Democrats of Jefferson’s school a century ago, still charms the less educated, who see in it a recognition of equality, and have no sense of the value of special knowledge or training. They like it for the same reason that the democrats of Athens liked the choice of magistrates by lot. It is a recognition and application of equality. An ambitious congressman is therefore forced to think day and night of his renomination, and to secure it not only by procuring, if he can, grants from the federal treasury for local purposes, and places for the relatives and friends of the local wire-pullers who control the nominating conventions, but also by sedulously “nursing” the constituency during the vacations. No habit could more effectually discourage noble ambition or check the growth of a class of accomplished statesmen. There are few walks of life in which experience counts for more than it does in parliamentary politics. It is an education in itself, an education in which the quick-witted Western American would make rapid progress were he suffered to remain long enough at Washington. At present he is not suffered, for nearly one-half of each successive House has usually consisted of new men, while the old members are too much harassed by the trouble of procuring their reelection to have time or motive for the serious study of political problems. This is what comes of the notion that politics is neither a science, nor an art, nor even an occupation, like farming or storekeeping, in which one learns by experience, but a thing that comes by nature, and for which one man of common sense is as fit as another.9
IV. The last-mentioned evil is aggravated by the short duration of a Congress. Short as it seems, the two years’ term was warmly opposed, when the Constitution was framed, as being too long.10 The constitutions