Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889 / Dec 1888-May 1889

by Various

This is not the first instance of embarrassment of like sort. When the men who organized the Star Route dishonesty of the Post-office Department were indicted, it was found that the head and front of this offending was a United States Senator. He held the one vote that gave his party its supremacy in the Senate. To send the Republican majority vote to the penitentiary was not to be thought of—and so the court was packed to acquit.

A body that subordinates its dignity to the supremacy of a party cannot long retain that awe-inspiring respect so necessary to its existence. Our House of Lords should bear in mind that the only reason—if such it may be called—for its existence, is in this dignity. If the Senate is not the holy, embalmed mummy of a dead king once known as State sovereignty, it is naught; therefore, when a Senator endangers this title to existence by unseemly conduct, either as an inebriate or as a bribe-taker, he should be incontinently expelled. The expulsion should be conducted with great ceremony. He should be divested of his robes in the presence of the august body—robes being procured for the occasion. One might be borrowed from the Supreme Court. Then the culprit should be conducted by two assistant Sergeants-at-Arms, one having hold of each arm. The Sergeant-at-Arms should march behind, bearing the mace. We believe the Senate has that utensil; if not, that of the House of Representatives could be procured. At the main entrance the Sergeant-at-Arms should fetch the mace into a charge, and planting the eagle in the small of the culprit's back, thrust him out. All the while the chaplain, in a solemn but distinct voice, should read the Service for the Dead. After, the presiding officer should give three distinct raps of his ivory gavel, and say in joyous but decorous voice, indicative of triumphant yet seemly satisfaction: "The expurgated Senate will now proceed with the business of legislating for the House of Representatives."

So necessary is dignity to the existence of this august body, that the presiding officer should have an eye continually to it; and when a Senator, in debate, makes himself ridiculous, he should at once be called to order. When, for example, the Hon. Senator from Vermont (Mr. Edmunds) gave his grotesque picture of a common American laborer being possessed of a piano, and a wife in silk attire, in his own cottage home, he should have been promptly called to order. The presiding officer should have remarked that the picture, being imperfect, was in a measure untrue, and as such could not be entertained by the Senate. The Senator, however, has the privilege of amending his sketch by saying that the laborer has not only the luxury found in a piano and silk-clad wife, but a mortgage on the premises. This, although improbable, is not impossible for a common laborer; and if the Hon. Senator will vouch for the fact that he knows one such, his statement may go on record for what it is worth.

This would serve to abridge the liberty of speech guaranteed to us by the Constitution. But we must remember that the same larger freedom exercised in a bar-room, or upon the streets, or on the floor of the House of Representatives, is a menace to the dignity of the Senate; and in view of this, freedom of speech is somewhat circumscribed. When, therefore, the Hon. Senator from Indiana (Mr. Voorhees) shakes his senatorial fist at the Hon. Senator from Kansas (Mr. Ingalls), and calls him an anathematized offspring of a female canine, or words to that effect, he fractures the dignity of the Senate, and further adjudication does not turn on the truth of the utterances as in a court, for we are forced to remember that it is one-half of the sovereign State of Indiana shaking its fist at one half of the sovereign State of Kansas. This is very like the old story of the sheriff of Posey County, Kentucky, who being agitated in a robust manner by an angry citizen, called on his assailant to desist, as he was "shaking all Posey County."

How long the practical common-sense citizens of the United States will submit to this worn-out superstition of a Senate is a question that strikes every thoughtful mind. The body was born of a narrow sectional feeling, long before steam navigation and railroads made the continent more of one body than was a single colony before the Revolution; and was a concession to State sovereignty, with the new and accepted principle of home rule found in State rights. It further confuses and demoralizes the civil rule of the majority under the Constitution, as it gives to Rhode Island or Delaware the same power held by New York or Pennsylvania.

It was believed by the framers of our government that it would be a conservative body, and serve as a restraint upon the popular impulses to be expected from the House. This has not proved to be the fact. The tenure of office given a Senator is of such length that it weakens the only control found in public opinion, and this august body is more extravagant, corrupt, and impulsive than the more popular body at the other end of the Capitol. If any one doubts this, let such doubter follow any appropriation bill, say that highway robbery called the River and Harbor Appropriation, or pensions, from the House to the Senate.

The Senate has long since survived its usefulness, if it ever had any; is to-day an object of contempt; and the sooner we have done with it the better off we shall be.

OUR DIPLOMATIC ABSURDITY.

There is a deep-felt apprehension indulged in by a class of our citizens over the grave diplomatic complication found in the dismissal of Lord Sackville West, and the refusal on the part of Her Gracious Majesty of England to refill the vacant post at Washington with another lord. Our national dignity is menaced so long as Mr. Phelps, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary residing at or near St. James's, is permitted to remain. As soon as Sackville "got the sack," to use a vulgar but expressive phrase, a reasonable time should have been given Her Gracious Majesty to fill the place; and failing, the Hon. Phelps should have been promptly recalled. This would have been hard on the Hon. Phelps, but with our flag insulted and our eagle scoffed at by an empty legation at the national capital, the Hon. Phelps should have been prepared to wrap the star-spangled banner about his diplomatic body and die—if need be—to the fierce screams of the eagle. He might, after such a glorious demise, have been consigned to that corner of Westminster Abbey that Dean Stanley reserved for a distinguished American. It is true that we, in common with the American people, have designated Senator Ingalls as the one selected for that honor, and we are prepared to kill him any time, and forward his remains to the spot, provided the Westminster people are willing to receive them. But this is carrying us from our diplomatic mutton.

Under the circumstances, it is a comfort to know that all this apprehension of these sensitive citizens is quite uncalled for. This because we have no diplomatic service, no diplomatic agents, and therefore no complications to speak of.