POINT LOBOS. ABOVE the sea the crags rose wild and gray; And in their chasms dashed the foam ing tide; Before us stretched the waters dark and wide; And on the breakers dim and heavy lay The deepening mists; the headlands stretched away Steep and precipitous, on either side; Shrill in the windy roar a sea-gull cried, And dipped his snowy pinions in the spray. The slender column of Cathedral Spire Pierced the dark skies; back from the shore the breeze Stirred the light mosses hanging from the trees; The waters foamed and billowed, mounting higher On the great rocky walls and in the caves Hollowed by thundering footsteps of the waves. CONGRESSIONAL REFORM. .1,927 Private pension bills (notwithstanding the ex- General bills Total.... 5,531 1,201 .9,704 Exclusive of appropriation, committee, and Senate Out of this vast chaos of attempted legislation the House passed :— Private pension bills....... Public and local bills FOR many years Congress has been behindhand with its work. The evil increases with the growth of the nation. The reason whereof, in brief, is the failure of that great body to keep up with the progress of the age, and use the same adaptation of means to ends which is characteristic of the American people in the management of private business. Always controlled by a majority of lawyers1 who carry their professional habits into the legislature,-Congress bills. reveres precedent, believes in "stare decisis," complicates its rules of practice, abhors innovation, spends its time in hair-splitting arguments over points of order and in partisan contentions, insisting above all things in running its timeworn machinery in the old groove, regardless of its want of parallelism. with the needs of the people. So, with the exception of the regular appropriation bills, it accomplishes less and less of its proper work year by year. It has become a vast and costly engine whose apparent object is "how not to do it." Lubricated with sand instead of oil, its power is exhausted by the friction. is the weak point in the federal system, as the State legislatures are in our State systems. If it be so impotent to transact the business of sixty-three million people, what but a radical and thorough reform of its methods will enable it (even if its material be greatly improved) to supply the needs of our coming one hundred millions? WORK OF THE LAST SESSION. It Total, only ..... 151 48 41 220 460 During the same session there were introduced in the Senate :Private pension bills Relief and claims, "removals of charge of de sertion," war claims, etc. Local bills, for public buildings, bridges, In- Total... 713 1,418 715 549 3,395 Exclusive of committee and House bills. That is, the House passed 434 per cent of all the measures brought before it, and the Senate 20 per cent. LAWS ACTUALLY PASSED. But when it comes to bills passed by both Houses, and signed by the President, the result is almost farcically small, for the House passed of Senate bills. only. And the Senate passed of House bills... I 20 314 During the first session of the 52d Congress bills were introduced in the House of Representatives as follows:1Out of the 335 Representatives in the 52d Congress, Total which reached the President, 434 212 are lawyers, and in the Senate 65 out of 88 belong Less 2 vetoes.. to that profession. Total laws actually passed..... 432 4,975 $2,790,911 Ist. That neither House is capable, as at present organized, of transacting more than an average of about ten per cent of the business brought before it. 2d. That seventy per cent of all the business done is in the interest of individuals and not of the public. 3d. That the Senate, the smaller body, attends to business much more closely than the House. The Senate during the three Congressess passed 88 per cent of the House bills reaching it, while the House only passed 53 per cent of the Senate bills. The recent session of the 52d Congress shows a still greater inefficiency of the House; it being a presidential year, and the two Houses politically at variance. One half pay of Capitol Police... which it now finds it impossible to handle, while the attempt involves great injury to private claimants from delay, as well as to the public from the 83,30 consequent neglect of public business? PRIVATE LEGISLATION. $9,649 .44 Tolerably expensive to the nation, when more than half the statutes relate to sums representing a mere fraction of the cost of enacting them! This reminds one of the battle of Hilton Head, where the government expended $100,000 for each rebel killed! Such is the Herculean club provided by the American people for enforcing their sovereign will, but which is used mainly to kill flies! It is related that Jethro of old visited his son-in-law Moses when in the height of his power. He found him distracted with the work of adjudicating alone all the causes of three millions of people. He advised him to appoint subordinate magistrates, who should judge the people by thousands, hundreds, and tens, reserving only the great matters for himself. Moses had the good sense to adopt this advice, and thereafter the small litigants received prompt attention, while he had ample time to attend to the great cases, with which alone the supreme power should be expected to Occupy itself. Said the French prime-minister Turgot to Louis XVI. "Sire, your Majesty should govern like God, only by general laws." . Cannot the American Congress, which has sole charge of all the great matters of 63,000,000 of people, profitably adopt the advice of Jethro and Turgot? Is it not evident to every reader of the Record, that it has for many years been burdened with ten times the load it can carry, and that the first thing to be done to increase its efficiency is to provide other means for transacting the great mass of private and local business VOL. XX-54. On comparing the immense number of private bills introduced at every session with the small proportionate number of general bills, one perceives that Congress has become the resort of thousands of claimants, who, if their demands are just, are grievously oppressed by the necessity of going to Washington with their proofs and witnesses, session after session, instead of having a remedy within their home districts, as all other litigants have; also by the interminable delays and heavy expenses unavoidable in every case: and if their claims be false or fraudulent, a legislative body has none of the usual judicial machinery wherewith to protect the government. Moreover the continual and all pervading presence of these claimants, with their army of lobby agents, swarming all over the Capitol, following the members to their lodgings, and persistently worrying them with their solicitations, must render the lives of Congressmen intolerable, except as to those who are willing to work for private interests for a consideration. Judging by the multitude of these bills fathered by certain members (as many as 185 each having been introduced by two Representatives this session, and an average of 21 being offered by each member of the House); judging also by the heavy commissions always paid to somebody by the claimants, and by the evident reluctance to turn over the whole business to the judiciary; appearances do indicate corrupt motives as the inspiration of the present conditions. But this charge fails when, notwithstanding the thousands of bills, the vast committee work, the night sessions to consider their re not appertain to the legislature? Yet the entire separation of the three functions was the undoubted intention of the Federal Constitution. Why then is not this whole business sent to the courts, where it properly belongs? Why is not the statute of limitations made applicable to claims against the government as well as to private suits? Why is it necessary to wait till claimants and witnesses are all dead and perfect proof unattainable, before even a hearing can be had? What nonsense to expect a committee to do justice when all the evidence is ex parte, consists mainly of affidavits which would be ruled out as evidence in court, when there are no attorneys or witnesses for the government, no cross examinations possible, and the committee has not time to get at the merits of one tenth of the cases before it? ports, and the opportunity for log rolling, to claims against the government does so very few of these bills become laws. Only 240 such bills passed the last House, including pensions, out of 6458 introduced and 1540 reported. It follows that the majority of the claims are very old, and would long ago have been outlawed, if any statute of limitation ap plied to them. In fact, one bill was passed this session to pay the descendants of a Revolutionary officer some $600 of his salary, earned 112 years ago! A bill was introduced at the same session to indemnify the owners of the ship Cadmus for their loss incurred by bringing La Fayette to the United States in 1824. Probably that bill has danced attendance every session for sixty-eight years. All of the enormous war claims now on the files are of course thirty years old. Many a poor man like McGarrahan has spent the best part of his life in vainly hanging about the Capitol. Many a little Miss Flite has become a pauper and lunatic with the "hope deferred that maketh the heart sick." Why is all this? Is the great United States government so tyrannical as to be always robbing and defrauding individuals and corporations? Is it so dishonest as to refuse payment of hundreds of millions to suffering creditors, generation after generation? Or is the Treasury latch-string so easily pulled as to be a constant temptation to rogues and speculators? PRIVATE BUSINESS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Now the Constitution separates the great powers of government into the three well-known divisions, but unfortunately not so clearly as do some of the newer State constitutions. Had it contained the clause,-" No person charged with the exercise of power properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any function appertaining to either of the others," would it not be evident that the judicial function of ascertaining the facts and applying the law or administering equity THE COURT OF CLAIMS. Brought by its intolerable pressure to seek escape from this burden, Congress about forty years ago began to perceive that the old theory that the State cannot be sued (corollary to the English maxim, "The King can do no wrong") would be "more honored in the breach 1 Moreover, in the eighteen specifications of the pow when the Constitution (Art. III, Sec. 2) expressly United States the party defendant to them all? |