Many circumstances have combined to fix attention at the present time upon the Senate of the United States. We have seen a Republican majority confirm the appointments of a Democratic President with the calmness and dignity of a Supreme Court passing upon questions of law. The event is not a new one, but it is still an impressive one, quite as much so as the change of the presidential office on the fourth of March. We then saw a defeated party resign the control of the government with decorum and civic reverence. We waited with bated breath for the first conflicts between the President and the Senate. No conflict came. Appointments were confirmed by the Senate without partisan bickerings or lamentations. The dignity of the Senate was seen to be a splendid and honorable reality. We catch other lights shining upon the Senate by going back a little. Last year, when the English people were “mad to the verge of insanity” because the House of Lords refused to pass a bill extending the franchise, the English magazines and newspapers overflowed with commendations of our Upper House. In the light of their own trouble, the English saw how happily our fathers had founded an Upper House upon enduring foundations, and how deftly they had combined popular representation with conservative privilege in our Senate. No other American institution ever had so much first-rate advertising as this Senate of ours had last year. The praise came from the best foreign sources; from men deeply versed in history, rich in public experience, and renowned for candid and sober judgment. What the historian sees in our Senate is an Upper House which reposes upon the elective principle, and is in fact constituted indirectly by the same vote which fills the Lower House—and therefore as truly from the people—but which has at the same time a distinct and original and impressive office in the government. The result was achieved by the fathers with a few well-aimed strokes of political art. For example, the Senate never dies. There are many Congresses, but there is only one Senate. There is at this time no House of Representatives; there never was an hour of constitutional history when there was not a Senate. This was achieved by a simple provision that one third of the Senators should retire biennially. The Senate must “advise,” that is to say, confirm all the President’s appointments. It is his council for considering and completing treaties with foreign powers—and without the consent of the Senate the President can make no treaty. And if the people through the House of Representatives impeach the President, it is in that august presence that he must appear and plead in his defense. The Senate has exercised all these peculiar functions during the century past, and in all of them it has displayed in the main those special qualities which the framers of the constitution sought to enlist in the service of government. It has even tried a President in the intense heat of controversies begotten in civil war—and acquitted him in the face of the clamorous dominant party to which the majority belonged. Its record is full of striking triumphs over the bitterness of party spirit. It has been judicial in its temper many a time when the air was full of rancorous strifes and malignant personalities. It has sloughed off the partisan sores caused by factional poison; and though it was seriously endangered by such devices as “the courtesy of the Senate,” it has refused to be used for narrow and selfish ends. The wranglers have passed out of sight; the Senate never dies.
The judicial character of the body is apparent in its methods of discussion. There is no “previous question” gag upon debate. A conspicuous unfairness to a member is impossible. A neat way of showing self respect by respecting brother Senators is the custom of confirming, without reference to a committee, any nomination of a Senator to an office. All other names must go to the committees; the names of Senators are honored by immediate action. Members of the Lower House are, not without reason, jealous of the power and “arrogance” of the Senate. But the people enjoy the breadth and decorum of their Senate. It can be trusted to judge, to put its candid opinion into all the peculiar functions which it exercises. In the field of politics, senatorial action may be very like any other human behaving in such environments; but in the special judicial tasks of the Senators there is the serenity and probity of a court room. And yet the Senate has its dangers, and it has in recent years been close to the perilous edge of the precipice. A tendency to venal methods of electing Senators came in after the civil war, and a number of rich nobodies have disgraced the high office. It is believed that there are now a few Senators whose purses are far longer than their heads, and in some of the wrangles over recent elections of Senators, the power of money has been very freely talked of and boasted of. But in this matter the worst is over. The election of Mr. Evarts in New York is a proof that legislatures can be lifted above money influence; for if any senatorships would invite special efforts to win them by venal arts, they are those of the Empire State. When that state chose last winter one of its most eminent citizens—a man known rather as a great man than as a politician—it set an example which will have no small influence over other states. The Senate has in both parties men of great ability. There is undoubtedly a growing desire and purpose that only great men be clothed with senatorial honors. We are well past the civil war and reconstruction periods, and as we advance into happier conditions we are likely to take an increasing popular pride in our unique, original and successful Upper House. There is nothing like it in the world. It is the most conspicuous work of American political genius. The more the people realize it, the more pains will they take in filling it with great men.
SUMMER AMUSEMENTS.
We are, as a people, growing in taste for amusements. Some of the manifestations of this taste are not of an entirely satisfactory character; but there are other aspects of a very agreeable nature. Our summer amusements are in the open air. We have not yet learned to play outdoors in the winter; but we are slowly learning of the Canadians, and it is not improbable that Southern people will by and by come north in the season of short days to play in the frost of our most Arctic states. We have commented in a former number of The Chautauquan upon the advantages of the Canadian winter sports. Our summer sports are in a more advanced state of development. Base ball, Lacrosse, lawn tennis and croquet are established institutions, while we are only experimenting with tobogganing. It needs no argument here to satisfy people who think at all that amusements should be in the open air and require exercise enough to increase the strength and expand the lungs. Exercise is a farce unless the heart is put into it; and play is unwise if it is not healthful. Play is primarily a demand of the physique; its value to the mind begins with the refreshment of the body by wholesome use of the muscles. The summer amusements in which women take part are above all just criticism. Croquet and lawn tennis have no doubtful elements. The exercise they afford will not content an athlete, but they are adequate to the wants of sedentary people in warm weather. There is no doubt that many persons would be greatly benefited by such games. They are too sedentary; they live too much indoors; they are too closely tied to a routine of thought or feeling. The open air, the mild exercise, the social chat, would give them a change of feeling and an agreeable exercise. Nor is there any conceivable avenue of approach for moral dangers. It is not wise for any one to make a business of croquet or of any other amusement; but the danger of excess is not worth considering. It will occur so seldom and have such limited consequences that the moralist need not post sentinels upon croquet grounds.
The “manly sports” are less satisfactory. Cricket, base ball and Lacrosse have the disadvantages following: First, they are exhibitions and public rather than social; second, they require violent exertion in hot weather; third, they are accompanied by gambling and other unmanly vices. Cricket and Lacrosse are not open to the last objection to any considerable extent. Those who engage in them are for the most part gentlemen; they are, so to say, the aristocratic games, while base ball is the great popular athletic game. It is not very old. When men now fifty were boys they did not know the modern game, though they did know a much simpler and far less strenuous practice with a soft ball—a game also called base ball. There is some reason to fear that this form of athletics is being ruined by immoral attachments and environments. Of boating we make special mention because it requires no overstrain—since boating need not mean boat-racing—and, indeed, is open to none of the objections urged against the exhibitory public games. On Chautauqua Lake, in the Assembly season, boating is one of the most healthful and enjoyable recreations. The exercise can be adjusted to strength, arrested at any time or prolonged at pleasure, and the boatload is enough for pleasant society—which may, of course, be selected to suit one’s tastes. Of this amusement we have only one regrettable feature to mention—it can be enjoyed only where there is convenient water.
Of the vigorous sports, we are compelled to speak with some reserve. We doubt the wholesomeness of athletics; they involve excess of exertion, and the gambler is the curse of base ball games. The other games may escape the influence of the demoralization, and cricket, polo and Lacrosse become great American exhibitory games of strength and skill. But the quiet social amusements ought to flourish among us, and indefinitely increase. The pleasure row-boat, the croquet and lawn tennis grounds, deserve our special attention. Let us play a little more. We can spare the time, for we shall live longer; we can well afford the hours, because the other hours will be worth more to us. In these quiet games we get refreshment of body and of spirit.
THE MODERN TREATMENT OF THE SOLDIER.
Decoration Day has many happy outlooks upon the humanities. Philanthropy may use it as a finger-board indicating the direction of our modern progress. The soldier’s grave is its special theme; it as clearly suggests the happier fate of the modern soldier as compared with his ancient brother. Great nations have always honored their dead soldiers; it is only in modern times that nations have given their whole hearts to the living soldiers. In the long wars between France and England from the twelfth century onward, the armies had no surgeons, and medical supplies were unknown. The medical equipment of a modern army is costly and ample; and that no man may die unnecessarily, woman hangs on the verge of battle to nurse the wounded, sheltered and safe under a red cross or a red crescent. In the old navies of England and France, the men were slaves who had been captured in their own lands and sent to suffer in crowded bulkheads of ships, or in the galleys, steaming with the most abominable odors. A French duchess in the sixteenth century wrote of that “living hell,” the many-oared galley war ship of the Mediterranean. One can not recall the horrors of any battle on sea or land with composure, but the whole life of soldier and sailor in public service was in the old days full of the horrors of battle fields.