“The presiding officer, though entitled on all occasions to be treated with the greatest attention and respect by the individual members, because the power and dignity and honor of the assembly are officially embodied in his person, is yet but the servant of the House to declare its will and to obey implicitly all its commands.”[142]
“The duties of a presiding officer are of such a nature, and require him to possess so entirely and exclusively the confidence of the assembly, that, with certain exceptions, which will presently be mentioned, he is not allowed to exercise any other functions than those which properly belong to his office; that is to say, he is excluded from submitting propositions to the assembly, from participating in its deliberations, and from voting.”[143]
At an early day an English Speaker vividly characterized his relations to the House, when he describes himself as “one of themselves to be the mouth, indeed the servant, of all the rest.”[144] This character appears in the memorable incident, when King Charles in his madness entered the Commons, and, going directly to the Speaker, asked for the five members he wished to arrest. Speaker Lenthall answered in ready words, revealing the function of the presiding officer: “May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak, in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.”[145] This reply was as good in law as in patriotism. Different words were employed by Sir William Scott, afterward Lord Stowell, when, in 1802, on moving the election of Mr. Speaker Abbot, he declared that a Speaker must add “to a jealous affection for the privileges of the House an awful sense of its duties.”[146] But the early Speaker and the great Judge did not differ. Both attest that the Speaker, when in the Chair, is only the organ of the House, and nothing more.
Passing from the Speaker to the Clerk, we find still another illustration, showing that the word preside, under which the Chief Justice derives all his powers, has received an authoritative interpretation in the rules of the House of Representatives, and the commentaries thereon. I cite from Barclay’s Digest.
“Under the authority contained in the Manual, and the usage of the House, the Clerk presided over its deliberations while there was no Speaker, but simply put questions, and, where specially authorized, preserved order, not, however, undertaking to decide questions of order.”[147]
In another place, after stating that in several Congresses there was a failure to elect a Speaker for several days, that in the twenty-sixth Congress there was a failure for eleven days, that in the thirty-first Congress there was a failure for nearly a month, that in the thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth Congresses respectively there was a failure for not less than two months, the author says:—
“During the three last-named periods, while the House was without a Speaker, the Clerk presided over its deliberations; not, however, exercising the functions of Speaker to the extent of deciding questions of order, but, as in the case of other questions, putting them to the House for its decision.”[148]
This limited power of the Clerk is described in a marginal note of the author,—“Clerk presides.” The author then proceeds:—
“To relieve future Houses of some of the difficulties which grew out of the very limited power of the Clerk as a presiding officer, the House of the thirty-sixth Congress adopted the present 146th and 147th rules, which provide, that, ‘pending the election of a Speaker, the Clerk shall preserve order and decorum, and shall decide all questions of order that may arise, subject to appeal to the House.’”[149]