The English Parliament was copied after the Saxon National Assemblies.  The Gemot, as it was called, consisted of a single body and was composed of the great and powerful supporters and defenders of the King.  The Magna Charta provided for the addition of a certain number of Lords and church dignitaries, to be selected from the spiritual hierarchy, such as Arch-bishops, Bishops and Abbots.  To these theocratic law makers were referred, among other important matters, all questions relating to taxation.  From the remotest period in the history of the Saxons it had been the settled policy never to submit to the imposition of taxes unless the subject had consented thereto either personally or through some authorized representative.  So scant were the royal revenues at this remote period, as compared with the extravagant expenditures, that it was with extreme difficulty that the wants of the crown and the nobility could be supplied at all; and history shows that in nearly every instance the taxes were voted only in return for some new concession of liberty to the people.  During the fitful intervals of peace, wealth accumulated and centers of population and commerce multiplied.  Naturally enough these communities, in course of time, asked for representation in the great council.  The prince and his barons consented — for a price.  The purchase was made and in this way the great body of the English people, who were neither clerical nor noble and who were simply organized into "communities," and shires, secured a hearing and gradually acquired a foothold among the law makers of the realm.  "With the lapse of time and the increase of population and wealth, came the extension of suffrage.  When the crown was powerful and the unrepresented people weak, the right of representation was sold for so much money paid directly into the royal treasury.  "When the electors became numerous and had the power of electing members of Parliament within their own hands, they in turn sold their votes to the highest bidder.  Mr. May, in his excellent work on the British constitution, informs us that up to within a very recent period, it was a common thing for candidates for Parliament to visit the locality of their candidacy and with ready cash purchase the votes necessary to elect them, and then close the negotiations with an agreement properly signed and witnessed.  But thanks to the extension of suffrage, and cognate reforms, England of to-day is comparatively free from this abuse.  There is virtue in the people, and the plague spots of the world have often been healed by jostling against the multitude — by reaching out and touching the hem of their garments.

For many years the Commons occupied the same hall with the Barons and Lords.  As they increased in numbers the Lords consented that these plebeian intruders might occupy a separate hall.  The Commons represented those who paid the taxes and fought the battles, and soon after the separation into the two houses or halls, they took the question of taxes exclusively into their own hands.  The power of the Commons has increased through all its history, while that of the Lords has constantly waned.  These manifestations of decay on the one hand and of growth on the other, are both natural and philosophic.  The functions of the House are normal and legitimate, while those of the Lords are imposed by law and are purely arbitrary and artificial.  Hence the tendency among enlightened people is to cherish the one and reject the other.  Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered at Newcastle, in October of this year, favors the utter abolition of the House of Lords.  He struck a popular chord which was already vibrating in America.

The revolt which brought on the American revolution was not so much against British institutions as against the tyranny of administration.  England, except under Cromwell's Commonwealth, had a House of Lords, therefore, it was argued, the young republic must have a similar body; the Lords were men of great wealth and represented the aristocracy of the realm, therefore our senators should be selected because of their holdings in order that they might represent the wealth of this country; the Lords were not compelled to look to the people for their positions, but either inherited them from their ancestors or received them at the hands of the sovereign; therefore there should be some intervening select body of men in this country who should designate and select our Senators.  It might be safe, they thought, to intrust the commonalty to select their State Legislators and national Representatives, but here their power must cease.  It would be positively dangerous to go farther.  Alexander Hamilton likened the method decided upon to a filter.  The State Legislatures were "filtered" through the people.  This refined and purified them, of course.  The Senators, in turn, were to be "filtered" through the Legislatures.  This removed them, with great prudence, far enough from the common herd to enable the wealthy classes to repose confidence in them.  It was argued that this would afford a safe retreat from the excesses of the multitude and the follies of democracy.  Hence they severed the legislative department and relegated the House to the vote holders and the Senate to the wealth holders.

When they reached the Executive, it was, of course, preposterous to think of electing that officer directly by the people.  If the upper house of the National Legislature was too exalted to admit of popular selection, of course it would be shocking to think of electing a President by that method.  Whoever heard of a British king being chosen by the multitude ?  Did he not wear his crown by divine authority ?  Our President could not hope to derive his office from so high a source, and yet it would never do to intrust his selection directly to the common people.  Who so rash as to think of cutting loose from the doctrine of jure divino and deferring to the opinions and wishes of the vulgar majority ?  No, if we were not to have divine selection, it were rash to go to the other extreme and adopt direct plebeian election; and so, with great solemnity, the middle ground was taken — that of selection by the Hamiltonian process of infiltration.  Hence the Electoral College was constructed.  The Constitution does not contemplate, nor did its founders ever dream of great national nominating conventions and Presidential campaigns such as are common in our day.  All that the law requires is for the people in the several states to repair to the polls every four years, at the stated time, and quietly vote for Presidential Electors, corresponding in number to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress.  The persons thus ordained and consecrated in turn select the chief magistrate.  So far as the law is concerned it is not necessary that a single name shall be designated by anybody in connection with that high office prior to the day upon which the electors cast their votes.  Everything in connection with our Presidential elections which is outside of this prescribed formula is extra-constitutional.  The electors may select whomsoever they please for President and Vice-president, provided they be native-born citizens of the chosen to represent the property rather than the people, and be empowered to choose the President and Vice-President of the United States.

After protracted delay and much discussion, however, the present method of selection by the State Legislatures was adopted by the vote of ten States, on the 7th day of June, 1787, on motion of Mr. Dickinson, of Delaware.

Mr. Dickinson stated that he had two reasons for his motion: "First, because the sense of the States would be better collected through their governments, than immediately from the people at large; secondly, because he wished the Senate to consist of the most distinguished characters, distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property, and bearing as strong a likeness to the British House of Lords as possible, and he thought such characters more likely to be selected by the State Legislatures, than in any other mode." (Madison papers, page 813.)

The operation of this method of selection during the latter half of the century, at least, has fully met the expectations of its author.  That Mr. Dickinson was fervently attached to the British monarchy is abundantly shown by his repeated eulogiums upon the British Constitution during the sessions of the Convention, and by the further fact that eleven years prior to the meeting of the Federal Convention, and while he was a member of the Continental Congress, he was the only member of that body who declined to sign the Declaration of Independence.

The first twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution were spent in adjusting the machinery of the new government.  Then came the controversy with Great Britain which culminated in the war of 1812.  Following the successful issue of that struggle came the questions of re-chartering the United States bank, internal improvement, the boundary line between the treaty making and the legislative power, the troubles growing out of the celebrated Hartford Convention, the compromise measure of 1820, which established the line of 36-30, nullification in South Carolina, the Indian wars, and the Mexican war.  Then followed a wide-spread slavery agitation which shook the country from center to circumference, and which finally resulted in civil war.  These, and other important questions engaged public attention for about seventy years.  The chief characters who figured from 1789 to 1850 would have adorned any age.  As a rule, the Senate was filled with men justly distinguished for their talent — not wealth — and whether, as judged by the present generation, they entertained correct or incorrect opinions of public policy, they were selected because they were known by the whole body of the people to represent some idea — some policy — and they retained their positions for that reason.  This brought together a body of strong men and made the Senate the theater of great intellectual conflicts.  A glance at some of the great names who made the Senate illustrious during the first half century under the constitution, will be of interest.  From Massachusetts we had John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Timothy Pickering and Rufus Choate.  From Connecticut, Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth and Jonathan Trumbull.  From New York, Gouveneur Morris, Martin Van Buren, Daniel S. Dickinson, Rufus King, Silas Wright and John A. Dix.  From New Jersey, William L. Dayton, Theodore Frelinghuysen.  From Pennsylvania, James Buchanan and Simon Cameron, From Delaware, Caesar A. Rodney, James Bayard, John M. and Charles Clayton and Richard H. Bayard.  From Maryland, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, William Pinkney and Reverdy Johnson.

From Virginia, James Monroe, John Randolph and Richard Henry Lee.  From North Carolina, W.P. Mangum.  South Carolina, Charles Pinkney, Robert Young Haine and John C. Calhoun.  Kentucky, Henry Clay, John J. Crittenden, Humphrey Marshall, John Breckenridge and Phelix Grundy.  Ohio, Thomas Corwin, Thomas Ewing and William Allen.  Indiana, William Hendricks, Edward A. Hannegan and Albert S. White.  Mississippi, George Poindexter and Robert J. Walker.  Maine, John Chandler and John Ruggles.  Missouri, Thomas H. Benton.  Michigan, Lewis Cass.  Florida, David L. Yulee.  Texas, Sam Houston.  Iowa, A.C. Dodge and Geo. W. Jones.  Almost every State within the Union was represented at this time by statesmen possessing national fame and influence.  They did not rise above criticism, of course.  Indeed, they were subject to that infirmity or perversity of judgment which caused them to transmit to posterity a solemn duty which they should have discharged themselves and which, in after years, had to be atoned for in blood.

Some one has well said that if a man would properly estimate public questions and foresee public crises, he must lay aside personal ambition and stubbornly and persistently decline official position.  The suggestion is full of wisdom.  With but few exceptions the official managers of public affairs and the law-makers, in periods of public tranquility, have been deaf to the wrongs and blind to the signs of the times in which they lived.  They have generally failed even to comprehend the tremendous fact of impending revolution when it was just ready to burst upon them in devastating fury.  The Magna Charta was extorted from a ruler who was blind to the march of events; Cromwell became Lord Protector of England because of another obdurate prince; George III and his ministry understood neither the character of the colonists whom they were oppressing nor the manifest destiny of the new world.  Louis XVI, of France, and his ministers, had they comprehended the march of ideas and the consequences likely to follow their own corrupt and oppressive reign and that of their immediate and profligate predecessors, could easily have averted the French Revolution, saved their heads and withheld from history the most tragic chapter in the blood-stained annals of mankind.  But they could not comprehend the situation.  Neither would they listen those who did.  Sins of omission are bad enough and lead to fearful consequences.  But how frightful the result when aggressive wrong doing takes the place of duty omitted.  Duty omitted sits idle and waits for calamity to overtake it.  The aggressive wrong-doer turns round and starts in quest of the avenger, meets him half way and hastens the catastrophe.  As a rule, men and women in the private walks of life — the sufferers — are first to apprehend impending danger, and it is their sleepless energies which finally arouse the drowsy conscience of the nations.

The renewal of the anti-slavery controversy, which occurred immediately preceding and following the compromise measures of 1850, developed and inducted into official life a new group of men, who represented the great forces which made up the irrepressible conflict destined to burst upon the nation at the end of that decade.  Illustrious among these were Seward, of New York, Hamlin and Fessenden of Maine, James Harlan, of Iowa, Hunter and Mason, of Virginia, Wade and Chase, of Ohio, Hale, or New Hampshire, Sumner and Wilson, of Massachusetts, Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, Bell, of Tennessee, Crittenden, of Kentucky, Robert Toombs, of Georgis, and Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana.

When hostilities began between the two sections, many of the southern Senators withdrew, and within a brief period the Senate was re-inforced by Grimes, of Iowa, Trumbull, of Illinois, Sherman, of Ohio, Boutwell, Morrill, Doolittle, and others, all men of distinguished ability.  But when hostilities were at their height the following gentlemen were among the most distinguished of the

Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, B.F. Wade and John Sherman, of Ohio, James Harlan and James W. Grimes, of Iowa, John P. Hale, of New Hampshire. William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine, Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, Lot M. Morrill, of Maine, James R. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, and Foote, of Vermont.

These were all men of extraordinary intellectual strength.  They passed to their positions through struggles which tested their capacity and developed their transcendent powers.  At the appointed time they sprang into the arena like gladiators and challenged the world to intellectual combat.  There were giants in those days.  Mr. Douglas closed his eyes upon life just as the curtain rose upon the great drama.  Most of the others filled their places until the curtain fell over the last scene and then joined the silent majority.  A few — Sherman, Morrill, Trumbull and Harlan — still survive and are in the enjoyment of robust and serene old age.

Sumner was the diplomat of the group — the scholarly evangel of liberty and the flaming tongue of fire; Chase, the fiscal manager and stately jurist; Wade, the rugged, intellectual athlete; Harlan, the logician, the resistless orator, practical legislator and unerring interpreter of international law; Sherman, the adroit financier, while Grimes, Trumbull and Doolittle were the great lawyers of the body.  All were thoroughly schooled in practical affairs, accomplished legislators and filled their places with matchless ability.  With but few exceptions all of these great characters have passed from the theater of action, and a

the immediate successors of the second, now briefly claims our attention.  A few of the second are found also in the third.  Among the most distinguished characters of the third group were Roscoe Conkling, Matthew H. Carpenter, Oliver P. Morton, John Sherman, George F. Hoar, George F. Edmunds, Henry L. Daws, David Davis, John A. Logan, William B. Allison, James Beck, James G. Blaine, John J. Ingalls, Daniel Vorhees, Preston B. Plumb, Joseph E. Brown, L.Q.C. Lamar, Benjamin H. Hill, Thomas F. Bayard, John P. Jones, Francis Kernan and Allan G. Thurman.  Fifteen have disappeared from this group.  Nine have died and six others are not now in the Senate.

The Senate of 1861-5 was called upon to legislate amid the perils of civil war.  To the third group was given the task of reconstructing and readjusting civil government after the conflict was over.  If peace hath her victories no less renowned than war, it must be that she hath her foes and perils also.  The courage which can successfully meet and foil the tempter is superior to that required in the shock of battle.  The former besieges the spirit, the latter assails only the body.  The one is an enchantress and lures us to destruction, while the other is a mailed warrior and smites only with the sword.

It seems strange that the legislators of the war and reconstruction periods failed to comprehend that those who drove hard bargains and exacted cruel concessions when the Republic was in peril, were as hostile to the spirit of liberty, though not so brave, as the armed Confederate.  The motto of the Confederate leader was, "Give us our slaves and a dissevered Union or we will take them by force;" while that of the money shark was, "If you do not give us our price you can perish." The slaveholder lost his human chattels and the Confederacy perished.  But the tyranny of capital was not broken by the war.  On the contrary it was augmented beyond measure.  The money power gained all that the slaveholder lost.  It conquered the whole country and chained the children of toil, both black and white, to its chariot wheels.  They threw the husk of liberty to the newly emancipated slave and appropriated to themselves the corn.  All that liberty gained in that struggle was the extension of its nominal area far enough to include the black man.  Surrounded by the perils of battle, the statesman of the war period made concessions which strengthened the tyranny of capital beyond the power of the imagination to conceive.  In the days of reconstruction our leaders surrendered to it without a struggle.  The battle for substantial and real emancipation has yet to be fought and it is but just ahead.

The leading members of the United States Senate during the war and reconstruction periods are chiefly responsible for the unconscionable acts of legislation which have cursed the Nation for over a quarter of a century and which, if not speedily corrected, are likely to precipitate a tragic revolution.  This chain of legislation began in the early days of the war and was finished during the period of reconstruction.  The following were enacted during the war period:

The exception clause of the Legal Tender act which placed a premium on gold for the benefit of gold gamblers, and at the same time depreciated the pay of the soldier fully one-half and greatly increased public expenditures.  It in fact placed the country at the mercy of the New York and European speculators and stock jobbers during the whole period of the war.  The exception clause was not in the bill when it passed the House.  It was inserted in the Senate.

The law which authorized the issue of bonds.  The exigencies of war never called for the issue of a single bond.  Those who framed the law simply intended to provide an opportunity for speculators whereby they could dispose of, at its face value in United States bonds, the paper which they had purposely depreciated and afterward purchased.  They procured one law which enabled them to purchase Greenbacks at less than their face value, and another which empowered them to realize in gold the face value of the Greenbacks.  They induced Congress to literally legislate hundreds of millions of wealth into their coffers.

The National bank act.  This act authorizes the bond holder to deposit his gold bearing bonds and secure from the treasury ninety per cent of his investment, and still draw quarterly from the people interest on the whole amount of the bond.  It further invested the associated banks with the power which belongs to the Government — the power to issue the money of the people and regulate its volume.

The Land Grant acts.  By these acts the Homestead law was made a nullity and the Public domain given away to corporations, syndicates, and foreign nabobs.

The act which surrendered the first mortgage lien of the government, on the Pacific railroads, and compelled the people to pay interest on the money which they advanced to construct the roads.  These bonds amounted to $64,623,512.  We have paid on them, in interest, up to August, 1891, the sum of $65,350,008.64, and the end is not yet.  The company now defies the government and laughs at the helplessness of the people.

The contraction act of 1866, which authorized the destruction of our currency and its conversion into interest-bearing, non-circulating, and non-taxable debt.  Under this act more than one billion of the currency was taken from circulation and destroyed.  All these acts were passed under the supervision of the war group of Senators.

The following acts were passed during the reign of the third, or reconstruction group:

The Credit Strengthening act of 1869.
The act of 1873, demonetizing silver.
The Resumption act of 1875.

The object of the first was to pledge the payment of the entire public debt in gold.  It looked to changing the contract in the interest of the grasping public creditor, long after the perils of war had passed and after our brave soldiers had abundantly strengthened the public credit by their valor and blood.  The war was over and the bonds were selling at a premium at the time the act was passed.

The second stealthily struck down one-half of our coin money, doubled the value of gold and converted the coin bonds into gold obligations.

The third, under the guise of resuming specie payments, in fact provided for the utter destruction of our legal tender currency and the increase of the bonded debt.  The calamity was in part averted by subsequent legislation which stopped the destruction of the greenback and partially remonetized silver.  Public sentiment came to the rescue, but the conspirators yielded with manifest and dogged reluctance.

Various degrees of responsibility attach, of course, to the public servants concerned in the passage of these accursed laws.  Charity, if not absolute regard for truth, requires us all to conclude that most of these legislators were at the time unadvised concerning the motives of those who forced this pitiless legislation upon the country.  The majority, perhaps, were as clay in the hands of the potter.  A few cruel and skillful schemers moulded them at will.  Honest men had their eyes on the salvation of the Union.  Bad men took advantage of the situation.  It was even so at the very foundation of our government.  Our fathers were forced, by professed friends of liberty, to make choice of evils.  Posterity had to atone for it.  So, many of our legislators, during the periods of war and reconstruction, fell short of their duty.  A few were willfully vicious.  We are now suffering the penalty.  It is to be hoped that the next generation may not have occasion to accuse those who shall legislate amid the tergiversations of the new revolution.

The slave holding aristocracy, restricted both as to locality and influence, was destroyed by the war only to be succeeded by an infinitely more dangerous and powerful aristocracy of wealth, which now pervades every State and aspires to universal dominion.  Its first conquest was the subjugation of the dominant political party of the nation, while it required the other to keep the peace, under the threat that if it did not succumb it should never come into power.

Next it secured control of State politics, and finally found expression in a vast net work of corporations which have seized upon almost every field of labor and every department of human effort.  Neither the military achievements of Caesar, the exploits of Cyrus, Hannibal, Alexander, nor the dazzling conquests of Napoleon in the fields of war, can compare with the stupendous victories of organized capital in this country during the past twenty-five years.  They have outstripped the imagination, rendered fiction dull and uninteresting, and robbed romance of its charms.

The chief spirits through whose agency all these things have been accomplished are not unmindful that they are in conflict with both private right and the public welfare.  They, above all others, know the extent of their wrong doing, and they fear reprisals at the hands of the people.  To prevent remedial legislation they have filled the Senate of the United States with men who represent the corporations and the various phases of organized greed.  The ideal Senate, longed for by Mr. Dickinson — a Senate composed of men of wealth and resembling the British House of Lords — has been realized and has long been in full operation.  The method of selection was found to be peculiarly well fitted to their scheme.  There is one characteristic common to all wrong doers — they work in the dark and conceal their motives.  You know nothing of their purpose until the stab is inflicted.  Like the cat, they walk in quest of prey with velvet feet; and like the assassin, they lie in wait and spring upon you without warning.  The corporations never make public their purpose.  They hold no public meetings.  Their plans are laid in the counting room, around the lunch table, and in the secret meetings of their directors away from the public.  When the plan is matured, a skillful agent is employed to carry it out, and a check is drawn to cover expenses.  The people at large are about their daily toil in the field and the workshop.  They are honest, unsuspecting, patriotic, and devoted to their respective parties.  The work that is to rob and ruin them is being done under cover.  The corporations — apparently wholly indifferent — having determined whom they wish, to elect to the United States Senate, the next thing in order is to secure the nomination of suitable Legislative candidates — men who can be trusted to do their bidding.  Secure in this, no effort or expense is spared to insure a triumph at the polls.  Usually the name of the man whom they intend to elect to the Senate is kept in the background.  The canvass is made wholly with reference to other issues.  But as soon, as the election is over, a venal subsidized press which has been party to the concealment during the campaign, suddenly throws off the mask and discovers that the senatorial question is all important and you then hear of nothing else.  They suddenly discover that Mr. A or B is just the right man for the position, and the one above all others whom the party and the State should delight to honor.  At the proper time headquarters are opened at the State Capital, and a lavish expenditure of money begins, while the people look on with amazement and wonder where the money comes from.  The local manipulators, many of whom were parties to the conspiracy from the beginning, are sent for and kept upon the ground as a guaranty that the various bargains made throughout the State, shall be carried out.  Then comes the party caucus, which all must attend and to whose decrees all must submit or lose their party standing.  Finally the majority of the caucus, which is usually a minority of the Legislature, nominates the corporation candidate and the drunken brawl that has rendered the State Capital disorderly for a fortnight or more, is at an end and the people are betrayed.

In Great Britain the Commons control the politics of the realm.  The Lords follow, and hence rarely originate a measure.

There have been but three instances of conflict between the two houses of Parliament for sixty years.  In 1860 a conflict arose concerning the abolition of the paper duty.  The lower house had voted it and the Lords wished to object.  Both the Commons and the Ministry of Lord Palmerston disputed the right of the Lords to make any change in a bill relating to taxation, and the Lords were forced to yield.  In 1868 and in 1874 similar conflicts concerning the Irish Church Bill and the jurisdiction of the English bishops, resulted in signal victories for the Commons.  But it is a common thing, at every session of our Congress, for the Senate to strike out all after the enacting clause of bills relating to revenue, and insert an entirely new bill of their own.  This course was pursued in the case of the Mills Tariff Bill, in the Fiftieth Congress, and in the Forty-ninth Congress the Morrison Bill was rejected altogether.  In vain did the House plead for an observance of the Constitution, which requires that Revenue Bills shall originate in the House.  The Senate haughtily persisted in according to the House the right to simply originate the formal title: "Be it enacted," but the right to originate the vital portions of the bill they stubbornly arrogated to themselves — thus trampling under foot both the Constitution and popular sentiment at one and the same time.

Theoretically the sovereign of Great Britain can withhold assent from any measure which may be passed by Parliament, but since the days when Queen Anne refused to sanction the Scotch Militia Bill, in 1707, the royal approval has never been withheld.

A vote in the House of Commons, in opposition to the policy of the ministry, hurls every minister from his position and compels a reorganization in harmony with public opinion.  In democratic America, strange to say, the Senate is all powerful.  To an alarming extent they can, and do, control both the House and the Executive, through the power lodged in them to confirm Executive appointments, and in various other ways.  To illustrate: The present Senate has a Republican majority.  During the administration of President Cleveland, the writer knew of instances where Democratic Secretaries of the Treasury, and of the Interior, before making appointments requiring confirmation by the Senate, requested a friend to consult with prominent Republican Senators and try to ascertain whether the appointments would be confirmed if made.  This is of frequent occurrence in other departments within the knowledge of the writer.  It is equivalent to giving the Senate, or still worse, the Senators consulted, the power to select, in addition to the power to confirm.  Anyone at all acquainted with the manner of doing business in the House of Representatives is aware of the fact that measures are frequently framed with a view to their acceptability in the Senate, rather than with reference to the pressing wants of the public, even when the two bodies differ in politics; and, as to important measures, it is almost universally true when they are in political accord.

The corporations and special interests of every class created during the past twenty-five years by various species of class legislation and favoritism, have grown rich and powerful.  They are now pleading to be let alone.  They cry out, "You will disturb the peace, unsettle business and violate our vested constitutional rights." The world has heard similar lamentations before.  The same spirit has lurked in the pathway of progress and hissed its sinister protests from behind the Constitution and from beneath the very altars of our holy religion, from the beginning until now.  The same argument was urged against the introduction of the gospel in the early days of Christianity.  Alexander, the coppersmith, found that the new doctrine would interfere with his sale of the images of Diana, and therefore concluded the gospel should not be tolerated.  And the Good Book tells us that the evil spirit that was caught torturing a poor unfortunate victim, upon beholding the Savior besought him to depart and not to interfere with his vested rights — not to cast him out before his time.  This is perhaps the earliest enunciation of the salutary doctrine of vested rights.  And it is a noteworthy fact that most of those who have occasion to plead it in modern times are engaged in the business of torturing somebody.  But the preaching of the gospel did not cease, the sale of images disappeared and the Devil had to go.  This old plea is now urged, however, in behalf of corporation usurpers and tyrants.  They have nothing to gain by change.  On the contrary everything to lose.  Their Juggernaut must move and the car of progress stand still.  They would not have the situation otherwise than it is, and as the most effectual method of enforcing this policy they have quietly filled the Senate with their friends.  The punishment meted out by the corporations to Judge Thurman, of Ohio, for the faithful discharge of his duty concerning the Pacific railroads, while a member of the Senate, and the defeat of General Van Wyck, in Nebraska, after the people had expressed a desire for his re-election — these and a score of similar instances — attest only too accurately the extent and the deadly character of corporate influence in this body.

The Senate, as we have seen, was incorporated into our legislative system as a check upon the rashness and apprehended extremes of the popular branch of Congress.  But it was not contemplated, even by Dickinson and Hamilton, that it should become the stronghold of monopoly, nor that it should hedge up the way to all reform and make impossible the peaceful overthrow of conceded abuses.  In fact no tendency in this direction was observable until within the past thirty years.  But of late this body has come to represent both the evil and the inertia of government.  When you visit the Senate chamber you are at once reminded of antiquity.  You feel that you are not far removed from that period when the changeless laws of the Medes and Persians were in force.  If, without diverting your attention, you could be suddenly transported to an Egyptian charnel-house filled with mummies, you would be likely to mistake it for a Senate cloak-room.  The very foot-falls of the Senators, as they walk across the tessellated floors sound like a constant iteration of statu quo! statu quo! statu quo!

Recent occurances have caused many persons to doubt the correctness of public sentiment concerning the Senate.  The whole country was taken aback and the majority of the people agreeably surprised, during the session of the Fifty-first Congress, by the passage through the Senate of a bill providing for the free coinage of silver.  It was strangled in the House of Representatives and the people were amazed.  Many thought that this called at least for a suspension, if not for a revision of public sentiment concerning the upper house of our Congress.  A moment's reflection will explain it all.  The Republican majority in the Senate is not large.  There are a few Republican Senators like Mr. Jones and Mr. Stewart of Nevada, Mr. Teller of Colorado, and Mr. Stanford of California, who really favor free coinage; and so of a few Democratic Senators, like Mr. Daniels of Virginia, Mr. Yorbees, of Indiana, and others.  But the great body of Democratic Senators voted for free coinage with no higher motive than to embarrass the Republican speaker, the leaders of the House and the administration, who were known to be hostile to such legislation.  For example, Senator Carlisle voted for the bill in the Senate, and yet while he was Speaker of the House in the preceding Congress, he was known to be uncompromisingly hostile to the free coinage of silver; and although he always appointed Mr. Bland chairman of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures, he invariably filled the committee with anti-silver men, and thus made legislation in that direction impossible.  No, with a sort of feline cruelty they were only playing with the free coinage mouse.  It could be allowed to escape from the Senate, but they felt certain, that the presiding officer at the other end of the Capitol could be relied upon to slay it at first sight.  And if, unhappily, it should run successfully the gauntlet of the House, there was a trap at the other end of the avenue already waiting for the intruder, and it could be relied upon to do its work — an Executive veto was in waiting.  Had there been the slightest probability, or even possibility, that the bill would become a law it could never have been reported for consideration.  This view of the silver episode is in strict accord with the history of the Senate for fully a quarter of a century, and it is in harmony with the personal biography of a large majority of its members regardless of party.

The opinion expressed by Mr. Dickinson, in the constitutional convention, that men of wealth would be more likely to be selected for the Senate by State legislatures than by the people themselves, has been justified by the experience of the last thirty years.  A large number of Senators are men of great wealth.  Many of them have been the beneficiaries of class legislation which of late years has marked our history, and have acquired fabulous fortunes.  A few have grown rich by superior business energy and enterprise.  A small number inherited their riches.  But without regard to the methods by which their wealth was acquired, the over-shadowing influence of the wealthy members over their less fortunate colleagues is a fact beyond dispute.  It is still true that knowledge is power, but its processes are often tedious and its rewards tardy.  Accumulated wealth is also power and it can exercise its strength at a moment's notice and often, for the time being, drives knowledge ignominiously from the field.  But the latter generally returns re-enforced by experience.  Ready cash is the storage battery of social and business influence.  When directed in legitimate channels its energies are helpful and safe; but it also possesses a death-dealing current and the world is full of its victims.  Under our present method of electing Senators it is an easy matter for an unscrupulous man of wealth to secure the position.  When elected it is extremely difficult to displace him.  Length of service affords opportunity to become established socially and officially.  When a new Senator makes his appearance he is duly estimated and every courtesy and clever attention is extended to him.  If the new member is a man of wealth, his status is fixed at once.  If he is poor, it will not be long, unless he be unusually alert, before he is likely to find himself under some obligation to his wealthy colleagues which tends to greatly circumscribe his power and limit his independence.  If wealthy Senators were few in number they would still wield a dangerous influence over legislation.  But when you add numbers to wealth, the danger is frightfully increased.  At least a score of our Senators are millionaires.  Another score are worth each a hundred thousand or more.  Half a score are men of very considerable wealth.  The remainder range from twenty thousand down to near the value of their salaries.

The immense volume of legislation relating to land grants, internal and external commerce, railway subsidies, excise taxes and import duties, contracts for carrying the mails, purchase of Indian lands, private land grants, steam ship subsidies, and a thousand and one other matters, have given rise to a flood tide of litigation unequaled in any age or clime.  A large number of the contentious rising out of this legislation involve the construction of acts of congress, and not unfrequently their constitutionality also.  In many cases the collection and proper disbursement of public moneys are called directly in question, and as long as Senators stand in the relation of law makers to the public, a proper appreciation of their high office should restrain them from appearing as attorneys, either for corporations or individuals, in cases involving the proper interpretation of statutes which they themselves have made.  The practice, however, is just the reverse.  When the Supreme Court is in session it is a common thing to see the leading Senators leave their seats and pass into the court room, there to act as counsel for the leading corporations.  Many Senators are annually retained by corporations arid other moneyed interests.  Such things are incompatible with the faithful discharge of public duty.  It is true that the salaries and lawful emoluments of Senatorial life are meagre and uninviting; but no one is compelled to accept them.  When once accepted, however, the privileges of the lawyer should cease just where the duties of the public servant begin.  At this point his relation to the public changes entirely.  The Nation then becomes his client and he should appear in his place and plead the cause of the whole people without mental reservation or self-evasion.  No other rule is compatible with public duty or private honor.  Public sentiment which will knowingly tolerate the infraction of such rule is utterly demoralized, and law makers who insist upon such indulgence should at once be permitted to return to the practice of their profession and to private life.

There is not a single great leader in the Senate of to-day, not one who is abreast of the times, or who can be truthfully said to be the exponent of American civilization or the active champion of the reforms made necessary by the growth and changed relations of a century, and which are now struggling for recognition.  John P. Jones, of Nevada, is the ripest philosopher, and by all odds the greatest thinker now in the Senate.  We doubt, indeed, whether he has ever had an equal, along the line of economic thought, in all the history of that distinguished body.  The versatility and scope of his genius make him a matchless teacher and he will forever rank as one of the great men of his day.  He is full of forceful, original thought, and expresses himself in proverbs, but he lacks that singleness of purpose which marks the great leader.  He has, in his mental armory, sufficient munitions of war to equip a whole legion, but he waits for others to recruit the forces and lead them to battle.  There are other Senators who have a clear conception of duty, but this conception never ripens into action.  They are stifled by their surroundings and dwarfed by their parties.  One and all, they stand dumb and aimless in the presence of the mighty problems of the age.  The situation reminds one of the era in the history of our planet mentioned in the book of Genesis, when it is said: "There was not a man to till the ground."

This august body is literally filled with splendid specimens of a by-gone epoch — men whose only mission is to preserve the old order of things — to guard the embalmed corpse of the past from the touch of the profane reformer.  They are the lineal descendants of the fellows who skulked in the camp of Israel when Joshua insisted on crossing the Jordan into the promised land.  They are as much out of place in this pulsating age of reform as a mastodon or a megatherium would be among a herd of our modern well bred domestic animals.  They are fit only to adorn museums and musty cabinets.  If their commissions could be recalled to-day and the question of their return referred to an open vote of their constituents, there is not one in ten who would stand a ghost of a show for re-election.  They are not in touch with the people.  Their strength lies in their entrenched position — not in their achievements nor the principles which they represent.  If dislodged, they would be powerless to make another stand.  We, of course, do not include in this criticism the two or three prophets of the new order of things, who have but recently been commissioned to go unto Ninevah, that great city, and to preach unto it the preaching whereunto they have been called.  It will be time enough to speak of them when they shall have had opportunity to obey those who sent them.

Every great movement and struggle of the race develops its own leaders, who are forced to assault fortified positions and fight against great odds.  Some positions have to be carried by storm, while others can only be taken by regular approaches which sorely try the endurance and resources of the besieging columns.  Such were the characteristics of the great struggle of the 60s.  Their storming parties were hurled forward with dash and power, and their sieges were stubborn and successful.  To change the figure, the pioneers in the movement doubtless had a clear vision of the land to be ultimately possessed, but they quickly passed away and were succeeded by an inferior order of leaders who felt that they had done their whole duty when they had driven out the wild beasts, cleared away the forest and prepared the ground for the reception of good seed.  They then rested upon their laurels and allowed the enemy to sow the field with tares.  The seed has grown, the harvest has ripened, and the reapers are under orders to burn the tares.

The moral, intellectual and political leaders during the twenty years immediately following the war, with the single exception of Wendell Phillips, failed to comprehend the problems which confronted them.  They stopped with the overthrow of the outward form, of slavery.  Through the strength and suffering of the great army of the people they succeeded in breaking the chains of chattel slavery and prepared the way for the complete triumph of man over those who lived by the enslavement of labor.  All that was necessary was one more forward movement of the column, and the victory would have been complete.  But they failed to make it and surrendered to a handful of task masters of another type, whose triumphs in the slave trade have never, in all the ages, been limited by distinctions of race or complexions of skin.  This class of slave drivers have never yet been routed or permanently crippled.  They have plied their cruel vocation among all the families of men.  To overthrow them is the grand work of the new crusade.  Confederated labor has proclaimed the new emancipation.  Now let the great army of toilers move on the enemy's works and enforce the decree.

The Constitution makes each house of Congress the judge of the qualification and election of its own members.  They can, and do, prescribe their own codes of procedure, and the rules which shall govern the production of testimony in proceedings looking to the expulsion of a member.  If a Senator is charged with the corrupt use of money in securing his election, it is quite natural that the other Senators, many of whom are under the same cloud, should at least be disposed to take a very charitable view of the rules which should govern the investigation and their own final action.  There is a deep-seated conviction among the people, which in some way is strengthened by each recurring Senatorial election, that such positions are secured by open and shameless bribery and the criminal expenditure of money.  Indeed it has become of late the custom to inform the public, in a general way, that it cost the successful candidate from $50,000 to perhaps four times that sum to secure his election, and that the rival and defeated candidate — well, he was a little too coarse to pass through the Hamiltonian filter.  His purse gave out, and the glittering prize eluded his grasp.

In the month of January, 1884, Henry B. Payne was elected to the Senate by the Legislature of the State of Ohio, having been nominated previously by the Democratic caucus, in which he received 45 votes, Durbin Ward 17, George H. Pendleton 15.  The result was unexpected, as it was supposed the sitting member, the Hon. George H. Pendleton, and Mr. Durbin Ward, had secured the pledges of a safe majority of those who would constitute the caucus of the dominant party, and the chances were largely in favor of Mr. Pendleton as against the field.  No one had been so rash as to anticipate the election of Mr. Payne, nor had his candidacy even been mentioned prior to the election of the Legislature.  The result was so unexpected that the large majority of the Democratic newspapers of the State openly charged that Payne's election had been secured by the corrupt use of money.  Judge McKemy, of Butler county; Judge Coryell, of Adams; Alien G. Thurman and Gen. A.J. Warner, Democrats of national fame, all charged that the election of Payne was the result of corrupt purchase.  Finally, the succeeding General Assembly of the State of Ohio, Republican in politics, proceeded to investigate the case.  A large amount of very damaging and startling testimony was taken and reported by the committee.  The Ohio Senate and House, each acting separately, passed the following resolutions, and transmitted them, along with the testimony adduced, to the Senate of the United States:

WHEREAS, by common report, suggested and corroborated by the public press of the State without respect to party, and by a recent investigation of the House of Representatives, the title of Henry B. Payne to a seat in the United States Senate is vitiated by corrupt practices and the corrupt use of money in procuring his election; and

WHEREAS, it is deemed expedient, in order to secure a thorough investigation of his said election as Senator by the United States Senate, that the belief of the General Assembly in this regard be formulated in a specific charge: Therefore, be it

Resolved, That in the opinion of the General Assembly, and it so charges, the election of Henry B. Payne as Senator of the United States from Ohio, in January, 1884, was procured and brought about by the corrupt use of money paid to or for the benefit of divers and sundry members of the Sixty-sixth General Assembly of Ohio, and by other corrupt means and practices, a more particular statement of which cannot now be given.

Resolved, That the Senate of the United States be, and the same is hereby, requested to make a full investigation into the facts of such election so far as pertains to corrupt means used in that behalf,

Resolved, That the governor be, and is hereby, requested to forward a copy thereof to the president of the Senate of the United States.

I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and correct copy of said resolution, as the same appears upon the Senate journal of Friday, May 14, 1886, after being changed from a "joint" to a "Senate" resolution, and adopted by the Senate.

C.N. Vallandigham,
Clerk Ohio Senate

[H.R No. 80 — Mr. Brumback.]

WHEREAS, it is the precedent in the United States Senate that charges of bribery must be directly made to warrant a committee of said body in proceeding to investigate the title of any United States Senator to his seat: Therefore,

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of Ohio, That in the investigation made under House resolution No. 28, ample testimony was adduced to warrant the belief that the charges heretofore made by the Democratic press of Ohio are true, to-wit: That the seat of Henry B. Payne, in the United States Senate, was purchased by the corrupt use of money ; and

Further resolved, That the honor of Ohio demands, and this House of Representatives requests, that the said title of Henry B. Payne to a seat in the United States Senate be rigidly investigated by said Senate; and

Further resolved, That the governor of Ohio be requested to forward a copy of this resolution to the president of the United States Senate.

In House of Representatives
Adopted May 38, 1886.
Attest: DAVID LANNING, Clerk

In addition to this charge of corruption and request for investigation by the Legislature of Ohio, ten of the Representatives in Congress from that State, headed by the Hon. Benjamin Butterworth and the Hon. Mr. Little, also made formal charges and requested investigation.  The names of witnesses, and a fearful synopsis of what could be proven by them, accompanied the request.  It must be remembered that the Senate was the only body then having complete jurisdiction over both the accused and the subject matter under controversy.  The moment that the certificate of election was delivered to Mr. Payne, the Senate became the sole judge of his qualification and election.

April 27th, 1886, the Senate of the United States referred these resolutions, together with the accompanying testimony, to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, composed of nine members, five Republicans and four Democrats, to-wit: Wm. M. Evarts, H.M. Teller, John A. Logan, Geo. F. Hoar, Wm. P. Frye, James L. Pugh, Eli Saulsbury, Z.B. Vance and J.B. Eustis.

In addition to the mass of printed testimony referred to this committee, Mr. Butterworth and Mr. Little appeared in person and gave the names of additional witnesses by whom the charges could be sustained, if the committee wished to be informed.

The evidence taken before the committee of the Ohio Legislature, and submitted to the Senate committee, established by creditable witnesses the following facts:

One member, after the caucus, deposited $2,500 in two amounts, and being charged that it was the price of his vote, did not persist in denial.  Another who changed to Payne, just before the caucus, stated to a colleague that he was offered $5,000 to vote for Payne, and intended to accept it, and tried to induce his colleague to do the same.  That this person's wife, just afterward, deposited $2,500 in a Toledo bank, took a certificate therefor, which she transferred to her husband.

Another, who is claimed to have changed suddenly from Pendleton to Payne, is found making, soon after, expenditures amounting to $1,600 with his own money on land, the title to which was taken in the name of his father, who paid $3,000 for it about the same time.  The father and son lived together in the same house.  The son testified that he did not know where the father got the money to pay the $2,000.  The father refused to state where he got his $2,000, and said he did not know where the son got the $1,600, and if he did he would not tell.  The same member also made other large payments of money about the same time.

Another, who had to borrow money when he went to Columbus, and changed suddenly from Pendleton to Payne, was shown just after the election to be in possession of money to purchase property, refurnish his house, etc.  He was denounced by another member as having sold his vote.  He turned exceedingly sick, made no denial, and was taken away.  Two others, elected as anti-monopolists, became supporters of Mr. Payne, and were heard discussing together the amount of money each had received.  Another, who had before been for another candidate, but voted for Mr. Payne, received from Oliver B. Payne $3,500, which he said was a loan.  Another, according to affidavits produced by Mr. Little, was declared by a fellow member to be claiming $3,500 for his vote.  Another, who had been very earnest in support of Pendleton, visited the room of Mr. Payne's managers, where the large sums of money are alleged to have been seen, and immediately afterward voted for Mr. Payne.

Sixty-five thousand dollars was taken to Columbus, as stated to a witness by D.R. Paige, Payne's friend.  The room of Paige, immediately preceding the caucus, presented the appearance of a bank, as stated by Governor Mueller and Paige's friend.  There were, in Paige's private room, coin sacks, empty sacks, and cases for greenbacks, scattered about on the floor and table, according to Paige's friend, who called to see him, and a few moments afterwards told Colonel Russell, saying, also, that Payne would get there.  It appears that the conversions from Pendleton to Payne were largely the result of a visit to the Paige rooms.

It appears, also, that those who had been pledged to Pendleton were immediately thereafter flush, could discharge debts, lift mortgages, and buy property for cash.

With these facts before them, the committee reported that there was not sufficient evidence to justify the Senate in further investigation! The following is taken from the majority report:

Your committee are of the opinion that, to deprive a sitting member of the Senate of his seat, the Senate must be satisfied by legal evidence that he was personally guilty of bribery, or that he was personally connected with the bribery or the corrupt use of money to secure his election, or that he had personal knowledge of such corrupt use of money, and personally sanctioned or encouraged such use thereof to insure his election.  The legal effect of such personal guilt of the sitting member on his election your committee do not decide, some members being of opinion that whether it extended to the corruption of the majority of the nominating caucus or the majority of the Legislature of the State which secured his election is immaterial.  The trial of the validity of his title or on the question of his expulsion, as the single personal act of bribery or other corrupt use of money by the sitting member, as stated, to procure his election, would be sufficient, in the opinion of some of us, to invalidate the title he claims to have acquired, and would justify his expulsion from the Senate.

Your committee are also of the opinion that, if the evidence fails to show that the sitting member was guilty of the bribery of any member of the caucus or the Legislature, or had any personal knowledge or agency in the bribery, or the corrupt use of money to secure his election, then the Senate must be satisfied by legal evidence that a sufficient number of the members of the Legislature were bribed by the friends of the sitting member to secure the votes of enough members of the Legislature to insure his election, and that without the votes thus corruptly obtained the sitting member could not have been declared elected.

* * * *

That Henry B. Payne has not been charged with having anything to do personally, or with having any personal knowledge of, connection with, or participation in any act, or anything that may have been done, or charged as having been done, that was wrong, criminal, immoral, or reprehensible in his election; that no member of your committee, and no witness, Representative, or other person, has expressed the opinion or intimated any belief or suspicion that Henry B. Payne is or was connected in the remotest degree, by act or knowledge, with anything that was or may have been wrong, or criminal, or immoral in his election.

A majority of your committee report that on the whole case, as presented to them, they recommend that the Senate make no further investigation of the charge involving the right of Henry B. Payne to his seat.

Seven of the committee, four Democrats and three Republicans, concurred in this report.  Senators Hoar and Frye made a minority report, in which they say :

The Ohio Senate of 1883-'84 contained 33 members.  Of these 22 were Democrats and 11 Republicans.  The House contained 105 members, of which 60 were Democrats and 45 Republicans.  The members entitled to vote on joint ballot were 138 in all, 82 Democrats, and 56 Republicans.  Eighty-two persons were entitled to vote in the Democratic caucus, of whom 42 were a majority.  Seventy-nine persons actually attended that caucus, of which 40 were a majority.  Is there fair reason for instituting an inquiry whether the result of the election was procured by bribery? We think that the character of the persons making the charge is of itself sufficient to require the Senate to listen to it.  But they produce a great body of evidence, all pointing in the same direction.

We are not now to consider whether the case is proved, or even whether there be a prima facie case.  There has as yet been no evidence laid before us addressed to either of these considerations.  That cannot be done without the issue of process for the attendance of witnesses.  Messrs. Little and Butterworth now offer, on their personal responsibility, to establish to the satisfaction of the Senate, largely by witnesses who were not within the reach of the Ohio committee, and partly by evidence which strengthens, supplements and confirms that which was before that committee, the following among other propositions:

That of the Democratic members elected to the Sixty-sixth General Assembly more than three-fourths were positively pledged to Mr. Pendleton and General Ward, and more than a majority pledged to Mr. Pendleton.  This they offer to prove by Mr. Pendletom himself, by Col. W.A. Taylor, and others.

That in these pledges these members represented the opinion and desire of their constituents.

That Mr. Payne was nowhere spoken of or known as a candidate during the popular election or until a very short time before the appointment of Senator.

That just before the legislative caucus, where the nomination was made, which was one week before the election, large sums of money were placed by Mr. Payne's son, and other near friends of his, at the control of the active managers of his canvass in Columbus.  This they allege can be shown by the books of one or more banks.

Mr. Payne's near friends declare that his election has cost very large sums.

A gentleman whose name is offered to be given will testify that David R. Paige declared to him that he had handled $65,000.

Oliver B. Paine stated to the same person that it had cost him $100,000 to elect his father.

That the members of the Legislature who changed from Pendleton to Payne, did so after secret and confidential interviews with the agents who had the disbursement of these moneys.

That members of the Legislature who so suddenly changed their attitude can be proved to have, at about the time of the change, acquired large sums of money, of which they give no satisfactory account.

Respectable Ohio Democrats affirm that just before the caucus the room of Mr. Payne's manager, Mr. Paige, "was like a banking-house," the "evidence of large sums of money was abundant and conclusive," that Paige's clerk declared in the presence of a gentleman of integrity that "he had never seen so much money handled in his life."

That the public belief that the choice of Senator was procured by the corrupt use of money prevails almost universally in Ohio among persons of both parties, which finds very general expression in the press.

That there is specific proof leading with great force to the conclusion that each of ten members will be shown to have changed their votes corruptly, and thereby that the result was changed.

The Senate has also recently referred to the committee certain resolutions adopted by a convention of the Republican editors of Ohio, held at Columbus, July 8, 1886, praying the Senate to investigate these charges.  The newspaper reports of the convention show that the Governor of the state was present at the convention, and declared his concurrence in said prayer.  There have also been communicated to us extracts from the Democratic newspapers of Ohio, showing that a majority of those papers have declared their opinion that the election was procured by corruption.  Copies of these extracts are appended.

What is the effect upon an election of Senator by bribery of voters in a caucus of Legislators who are to make the choice, is a question upon which we prefer not to form an opinion until the evidence is before us.  The members of a caucus ordinarily deem themselves bound in honor to vote in the election for the person whom it nominates, by the vote of a majority, on condition that such person belong to their party, and is fit for the office in point of character and ability.  Bribery, therefore, which changes the result in the caucus, would ordinarily determine the election.

If B, C, and D have promised to vote as A shall vote, if A be corrupted, four votes are gained by the process, although B, C, and D be innocent.  In looking, therefore, to see whether an election by the Legislature was procured or effected by bribery, it may be very important to discover whether that bribery procured the nomination of a caucus, whose action a majority of the Legislature were bound in honor to support.  Seventy-nine persons attended the Senatorial caucus and voted on the first ballot.  Of these Mr. Payne had the votes of 46, Ward 17, Pendleton 15, Booth 1.  If six only of Mr. Payne's votes in the caucus were procured by bribery, the result of the election of Senator was clearly brought about by that means.  Now, Messrs. Little and Butterworth tender specific proof, part of which was before the Ohio committee and part here offered for the first time, directly and very strongly tending to create the belief as to each of ten of the members of the Ohio Legislature that his vote for Mr. Payne was purchased, and that proper process and inquiry will establish the fact by competent and sufficient evidence.

One member, after the caucus, deposited $2,500 in two amounts, and being charged that it was the price of his vote did not persist in a denial.

In submitting their views the minority urged the following with great force:

It will hardly be doubted that cases of purchase of seats in the Senate will multiply rapidly under the decision proposed by the majority of the committee.  The first great precedent to constitute the rule under this branch of law is to be this:

Held, By the Senate of the United States, that a charge made by the Legislature of a State, and by the committee of the political party to which the larger number of its citizens belong, and by ten of its Representatives in Congress, that an election of Senator was procured by bribery, accompanied by the offer to prove the fact, does not deserve the attention of the Senate.

The Senate, controlled by the Republican party, adopted the majority report and refused to proceed further with the matter.  There seems to have been no dispute between the majority and the minority of the committee as to the facts in the case.  They differed solely as to the propriety of further investigation and action.  It is amazing to think that the rule laid down and its application in this particular case, has the deliberate sanction of a majority of both Republican and Democratic Senators.  Should we be surprised that popular confidence has been shaken in the integrity of this body? The Ohio case does not stand alone.  Almost every state in the Union has been cursed by the same shameless and corrupt use of money in Senatorial elections, and hence the now almost universal demand that the Senate shall be made elective by popular vote.  The disinclination of the Senate to proceed with this case was well understood by the people, and the rule upon which the committee based its report was felt to be abhorrent to honesty, decency and common-sense.  When it is once established by reliable evidence, that a single member who voted for the successful candidate, received or was offered money to cast his vote or use his influence, it should vitiate the election.  There is neither safety nor propriety in any other rule.  The position of the committee offers immunity to crime and bribery.  It openly points out a way by which elections to the Senate can be secured by crime without the disagreeable apprehension of punishment.  Even under the abominable rule of the committee, Mr. Payne should have been put upon his trial.  It is clear that members were paid large sums to vote for him in the Ohio Legislative caucus; and both he and his managers were too smart to have expended the money if the votes were not necessary to nominate in the caucus and elect in the Legislature.  Whatever may have been the doubts entertained by the Senate committee two years after the transaction, it is certain that Mr. Payne's managers thought that they needed the votes at the time.  For the complete history of this shameful case the reader is referred to Senate Report No. 1490, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress.  But shocking and disgraceful as it is, it can be matched and duplicated in almost every state in this Union.  We have selected this as a representative case.  It taints both of the old parties.  The Democratic as committing the felony and the Republican as concealing the crime.  The present constitutional method of election is a lamentable failure and the situation cries aloud for reform.  The time has come when the people should plat a whip of cords and scourge the promoters of bribery from the temple.  They who buy will also sell, and the punishment for such betrayal of duty should be swift and relentless.  Such is the present status of the American Senate.  Its fallen condition was not reached by a single bound.  It is the result of growth, nurtured by an aristocratic and undemocratic method of selecting this class of public servants — a method which invites corruption and destroys in the person elected all sense of responsibility to the people.

The cure for this frightful public affliction cannot be applied too quickly.  It should, consist of a plain amendment to the Constitution which shall provide for the election of the United States Senators by the direct vote of the people of the respective States.  The writer had the honor to introduce into the Forty-sixth, Forty-ninth and Fiftieth congresses joint resolutions which provided for this method of selection.  They were referred to the judiciary committee but were never reported to the House.  In the Fiftieth Congress, Mr. Gates, from the Committee on the Revision of the Laws, reported favorably a joint resolution of this character but it was not acted upon.  The machine managers of the decrepit old party organizations view every suggestion of change with alarm.  Like the worn out sluggard who is unwilling to rise with the dawn, they darken the windows of their habitations, draw down the curtains and shut out the light of day.  Let them slumber.  The chastisement of their sins is upon them and their dim eyes are turned toward the stygian shore.  But the sun still shines, and a newer and more vigorous civilization will inhabit the land.  We can expect nothing from the old, but should trust confidingly for many good things from the new.  It was the youthful shepherd boy and not the rheumatic, jealous-hearted old Saul, who slew the Mighty Man of Gath, We may never expect a paralytic to compete for the first prize as an athlete.  Truth always chooses its own champions.  It is ever stronger than its defenders and more powerful than its foes.

Pending the tedious operation of amending the Constitution, the people can readily secure practical control over the election of their Senators by publicly nominating in each State, from time to time, the man of their choice, and by publicly pledging the Legislative candidates to vote for such nominees.

In the tremendous crisis which witnessed the dissolution and transformation of political parties in 1858-60, the people of Illinois flew to this method as to a rock of defense.  Lincoln and Douglass were nominated for the Senate by their respective parties, and they met in joint debate before the people.  Their audience was the civilized world.  The people were mentally and morally equipped by that debate for the unprecedented and dreadful drama upon which the curtain was then destined soon to rise.  The world lost nothing by that struggle of the giants.  Civilization gained much.  One of the parties of Illinois recently returned to this praiseworthy example.  It should be the rule at all times in all the states.  The industrial movement has taken up this reform as one of its cardinal tenets, and with unabated zeal will press it to a successful conclusion.