The Small Sins of Congress

THE ATLANTIC l

A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art. and Politics.

STROLLERS about the capitol at Washington frequently pause to admire the ingenuity and the studious habits of a certain respectable colored man who serves as door-keeper to an august national court. It is an established principle at Washington that an American citizen visiting the capital of his beloved country shall never be allowed to open a door for himself; and, consequently, wherever there is a door, there must needs be a door-keeper. A being more superfluous than a doorkeeper to the room in which this high court is held it would be difficult to imagine. The door has been provided by a grateful nation with a convenient loop or handle of brass, adapted to the meanest capacity, and with a spring which causes it gently to close without the interposition of human hands. It closes, too, upon something soft, so that there is no danger of the deliberations of the court being disturbed by a bang. Most of the persons who enter the room are familiar with all its arrangements ; and if their hands should chance to be full of papers, they could easily thrust out one little finger, and, inserting it in the handle, pull the light and unlatched door wide open. Nor does the door-keeper show to a seat the awe-struck visitors who are occasionally attracted to the apartment by curiosity. Within the room other officers, white in color or higher in rank, stand ready to prevent ladies from rushing forward to the bench of the judges or losing themselves among the lawyers within the bar. The sole business of that respectable colored man from II A. 31. to 3 P M. is to open a light door which shuts itself. Being a man of resources, he has provided himself with a chair and tied a string to the handle of his door. He goes to his place every morning provided with readingmatter, and there he sits, holding his newspaper or book in one hand, and the end of his string with the other. When any one approaches, he knows it by instinct, and gives the string a mechanical pull, without looking up or being mentally aware that he has performed an official duty.

Behold the typical man in him ! He represents a class in Washington, He is one of the small sins which Congress permits and commits.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869. by FIELDS. OSGOOD, & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

The sins of this kind which Congress commits are worse than those which it permits. After satisfying the curiosity of the ladies with a view of the Supreme Court, — a work of three minutes,— you naturally ascend to the gallery of the Senate. This is the paradise of door-keepers. I think I counted fourteen doors to this gallery. There are doors which admit only ambassadors, door-keepers’ friends, and other privileged persons. There are doors which exclude the public from the Reporters’ Gallery, writing-room, and telegraph office. There are many doors which admit ladies, and many more that open into the portions of the gallery used chiefly as a warming-place by unemployed negroes. Each of these doors consists of two leaves that swing together, and are kept shut by the attraction of gravitation. What a field for door-keeping is here ! At nearly every leaf of these numerous doors sits or stands a door-keeper, his hand inserted in his brass loop, —one man outside to let in the coming, and another inside to let out the parting guests. From their keeping such a tight clutch upon their handles, I think there must be more door-keepers than there are doors. Every man seems afraid that if he should let go his handle another might get hold of it, and thus rob him of his slight pretext for being on the pay-roll. Half a dozen locks and a hundred latch-keys would deprive of all semblance of pretext the gentlemen who exclude the miscellaneous public from the Ambassadors’ Gallery and the Reporters’ apartments : and the rest of the door-keeping could be well done by two men. But that would never do in Washington. The pretext for being on the pay-roll is the very thing wanted.

If the visitor is rash enough to hint that two men to each door is rather a lavish expenditure of human force, considering the scarcity of labor on this continent, he is silenced by the question, How could two or three or half a dozen men “ clear the galleries ” ? They could not. Nor could forty, if the auditors were determined to sit fast. But the Speaker’s simple order, addressed to people habituated and wholly disposed to obey properly constituted authority, clears them with all requisite despatch. If not, there are thirty-three bored, yawning, inexpressibly idle men about the capitol, in blue uniform and steeple-crowned hats, who are styled the Capitol police. They have a captain and two lieutenants, to head any onset upon a stubborn public which the Speaker might order, and it would relieve the monotony of their existence to be ordered upon any duty whatever.

Congress has, indeed, furnished itself most liberally with servants. The Senate, which consists of seventy-four members, is served by at least one hundred officers of all grades, from secretary to page. The House, which numbers two hundred and fifty-three members when the States are fully represented, has not less than a hundred and fifty officers, although the investigator does not find so many in the published list. We observe a considerable number of persons employed about the Capitol whose names elude the search of those who pore over the Blue Book of Mr. Disturnell, or the useful and excellent Congressional Directory of Major Ben Perley Poore. If we add to the officers employed about the two chambers the printers and binders who do the work of Congress in the public printing-office, we shall find that Congress has many more servants than members. It may be that most of these are necessary. The Secretary of the Senate may require the assistance of twenty - one clerks. The heating-apparatus of the Capitol may be of such a complicated and tremendous nature that it is as much as fourteen men can do to manage it. Members may read and consult such a prodigious number of books and documents as to need the assistance of more librarians than are employed in the Mercantile Library of New York, which has ten or twelve thousand subscribers, as well as an immense reading-room. Including the librarians of the library proper and those of the sub-libraries and document-rooms of the two houses, there are twenty-four persons in the Capitol supposed to be chiefly employed in ministering to the intellectual wants of members of Congress. All these persons may be indispensable, but they do not seem so to the casual observer. The casual observer receives the impression that the servants of Congress, like those of the government generally, would be improved if two very simple and easy things were done, — the salary of the chiefs doubled, and the number of their assistants reduced one half.

I can show the reader, by relating a little incident which I witnessed in Washington last winter, how it comes to pass that so many more officers get appointed than seem to be necessary. While resting in the office of the public printer, after going over the most admirably complete and efficient printingoffice in the country, a well-dressed, polite young man came in, and presented a letter of introduction to the superintendent. Clouds gathered over the face of that functionary as he read it ; and he invited the bearer to be seated in a tone which implied that he wished he was in Jericho. I was afterward favored with an explanation of the scene ; and that explanation applies to a large number of the names in the Blue Book. A few days before, the superintendent had discharged thirty compositors because he had no work for them. This nice young man, who was one of them, went to one of the senators from his State, stated his case, and asked the senator to procure his reappointment. That senator, not considering the gross impropriety of his interference, but complying with the established custom, wrote a letter to the superintendent, of some length and much urgency, asking him to put his constituent back to the place from which he had been removed. I am afraid that this most improper request was complied with ; for the officer to whom it was addressed was a servant of Congress, who might one day want that senator’s vote. It is of no consequence whether he complied or not. Every reader acquainted with governments or with human nature knows that nine men out of ten, in that superintendent’s place, would have found work, or a pretence of work, for that man. Nor can we so much wonder at the conduct of the senator. He also looks to re-election. He also desires to make friends. This pleasing young man may have an uncle who controls a newspaper or an iron-foundry in the senator’s State, and it is convenient, at a critical time, to have the hearty support of a few uncles of that description. The difficulty is, that at Washington there is no rock of security anywhere in the system, against which applications like this can strike and be repulsed. If that superintendent were properly secure in his place, he would have shown the young man to the door, just as any other printer would have done, with the simple remark that he had no work for him.

Some time will probably elapse before the people gain such a triumph over the politicians as to secure permanency of appointment to government officials. Meanwhile members of Congress should disdain to listen to applications like this ; especially members whose position has some basis of security.

A stranger to politics and to Washington is astonished to observe howgeneral the feeling is, that a public man is justified in gratifying an impulse of benevolence, or in discharging a private obligation, at the cost of the public. Some time ago, General Grant chanced to be looking out of a window while a salute was firing in his honor, and he saw a man lose one of his legs by the bursting of a cannon. When the man had recovered his health, General Grant was President of the United States. What more natural than that the President should ask Mr. Boutwell to give the unfortunate man, if convenient, a watchman’s place in the treasury? He pitied the man, and he had the power to give him effectual relief at the public expense. Most men would have yielded to this impulse of benevolence, as General Grant did, and most men perhaps approved the act. Nevertheless, it is just in this way that the Capitol, the departments, the post-offices, and the custom-houses get clogged with superfluous persons. It is thus that one-legged incompetence pushes from its place two-legged ability. Some one, who cannot be refused, asks the appointment, and then one of two things must happen, — either a man must be summarily and unhandsomely, if not inhumanly, thrust from his post, or two men must be set to doing one man’s work. Generally, both these things are done. The two men go on for a while, until some new broom sweeps one or both away, to make room for the favorites of another irresistible personage.

An entertaining writer, some weeks ago, favored the public with reminiscences of former administrations, in order to show that the people cordially sustain a President who indulges his personal feelings at the people’s cost. He told a story of General Jackson, which might have been true, the incident being entirely characteristic. “General,” asked an old friend of the ex-President, at his Tennessee Hermitage, “ tell me why you kept yourself and all your friends in trouble, through your first Presidential term, by keeping Mr. Gwinn Marshal of Mississippi ? ” To this General Jackson replied: “When my mother fled with me and my brother from the oppression of the British, who held possession of North Carolina, we were very, very poor. My brother had a long sickness (occasioned by a wound received from a British officer because he refused to do some menial service), and finally died. In the midst of our distress and poverty, an old Baptist minister called at our log-cabin, and spoke the first kind words my mother heard in her new home ; and this good man continued to call, and he finally made our house his lodging-place, and continued to prefer it, when better ones in the neighborhood were at his service Years rolled on, and this good man died. Weil, sir, when the news was brought me that I was elected President, I put up my hands and exclaimed, ‘Thank God for that, for it will enable me to give the best office under the government to the son of the old minister who was the friend of my mother, and of me in my youth ’; and I kept my promise, and, if it had been necessary, I would have sacrificed my office before he should have been removed.”

The feeling was natural and noble. The only question is, whether a man should requite at the expense of his country services done to his mother. The relater of the anecdote appends to it this commentary : “ General Jackson was triumphantly re-elected to a second term.” It is true ; but it was In spite of such errors as this, not in consequence of them. Members of Congress who can remember that mad period of our political history will not justify personal government by the example of General Jackson.

Few of us, perhaps, have an adequate sense of the superior sacredness of public property to private, of public trusts to private. Little things betray our sluggish public conscience. No man, except a thief, would think of taking a sheet of postage-stamps from the desk of a banker or merchant.; but, in Washington, it seems to be only men exceptionally honorable who scruple to use, or even to take, franked envelopes, which appear to be lying about everywhere. Still fewer have a proper sense of how much worse it is to steal from all their fellow-citizens than it is to steal from one of them. In everything relating to the government, a citizen of the United States should feel that he is upon his most sacred honor. We are here in double trust. Our difficult and and still doubtful experiment is for mankind as well as ourselves. I would not magnify a small sin into a great one ; still less would I assume to be more virtuous than others ; and yet it seems to me that a citizen of the United States should shrink from accepting a proffered frank, as he would avoid touching only enough pitch to defile the tips of his fingers. I would not blame, but forgive, a Frenchman for cheating his government, which is itself a cheat; but the citizens of free countries defraud and despoil themselves when they do or permit an action which implies that public property is less sacred than private.

A special calamity of the small sins of Congress is, that their results are exceedingly conspicuous, and bring upon Congress an amount of odium or ridicule that ought to be excited only by great transgressions. I have mentioned the superfluous door-keepers and the swarms of officers everywhere to be seen about the two chambers. The amount of money wasted upon these gentlemen is not great ; but the waste is obvious and striking. The dullest visitor comprehends that a small party of ladies can gain admittance to a gallery by a light and easy door without the assistance of two able-bodied men. Some of the small sins of Congress entail effects still more glaring, and fix a permanent, unconcealable stain upon the nation itself. Not a stain upon its honor; but such a stain as a lady incurs when her dress comes in contact with a freshly painted railing. We do not want fair Columbia to be thus disfigured. We wish her to be spotless and glorious even in the garments that she wears and in the Ornaments that adorn her. We desire her to be tasteful in her splendors.

The reader has probably often asked himself, while wandering about the Capitol, what could possess Congress to throw away the public money upon some of those pictures that disgrace the western continent, and human nature generally, in the Rotunda. He has, perhaps, also, after giving up that conundrum, essayed to conjecture why no member has risen superior to the clamor of economists, and proposed an appropriation of two dollars to whitewash them from the view of mankind. It was bad enough to put them there ; but to keep them visible, year after year, and give new commissions to the painters who produced them, are acts almost too abominable to be reckoned among the small sins of the national legislature.

Congress no doubt interpreted cor rectly the wishes of the people in making the Capitol stately and ornate ; and it was an exquisite thought to go on decorating and completing it while the hosts of the Rebellion were intrenched within sight of its rising dome. Every building that belongs to the nation every object that bears upon its surface the letters “ U. S.,” should have something in its style and appearance that will convey to the mind of the beholder a feeling of the imperial grandeur of the country’s mission and destiny Those nasty and cheap sub-post-offices in the city of New York, and those con - spicuously shabby, rusty, cast-iron lamp - post letter-boxes, are an abomination in my eyes ; not merely because they are stupidly inconvenient, but because they are mean in appearance ; because I desire that whenever American eyes rest upon an object bearing the stamp of the nation, they should rest upon something which they can contemplate with satisfaction and pride. Hence, it is always a pleasure to get round to the front of the Capitol, and turn away from the shanties, the shops, the sand - heaps, the general dilapidation and shabbiness of the region, and gaze for a while upon the magnificence of that vast range of architecture, with its avalanches of snowy steps, that glorious dome floating lightly over the centre, and the small, brilliant flag above each wing, denoting that Congress is in session. In this brave attempt to express in marble the grandeur and glory of the United States, we see the prophecy of those chaster splendors, that simpler magnificence, which will enchant and exalt our grandchildren when they visit the future and final capital of the country. It was an excellens thing, perhaps, after all, to try our ’prentice hand on Washington, and exhaust all the possibilities of error there The interior of the Capitol is chaos, of course. That is unavoidable when a large building is erected over a smaller one. The visitor forgives and is amused at the labyrinthine intricacies in which he is continually lost; and when at last he stands beneath that beautiful dome, which hovers over him like an open balloon of silk illuminated by the sun, he experiences a renewal of the joy which the exterior afforded him. Doubtless, we are running too much to domes ; we are putting a dome over every building of much magnitude, — it is such a fruitful source of contracts. But this one justifies itself, and startles the coldest spectator into admiration. It was also a fine conception to place under it in that perfect light a series of large historical paintings. Nor was it necessary that they should be of the highest rank as mere works of art; because it is not certain that there are now living upon earth artists capable of executing paintings of that magnitude in a truly excellent manner. No artist in these times can get the many years of large practice which is necessary for the attainment of the large manner ; and, I suppose, the best we can hope for, at present, in pictures of great size, is correct, refined, excellent scene-painting. But some of the paintings in the Rotunda, besides being singularly hideous as pictures, are historical falsehoods, which any school-boy might be able to detect at a glance. That one, for example, which is supposed to have been suggested by De Soto and his men discovering the Mississippi River,—what a curiously ridiculous lie it is, with its display of superb costumes, its well-conditioned horses, and its plump cavaliers as fresh and gay, in their silk and velvet, as if they were careering in the streets of Madrid on a day of festival! What is better known than that these Spaniards reached the banks of the Great River in woful plight after a wearisome march of many months through the wilderness ! It is also particularly recorded that De Soto was sparing in expenditure for gay apparel, and that every rag of clothes, except what his followers wore, was burnt after one of their bloody encounters with the Indians. An hour’s research in the library of Congress, under the intelligent guidance of the librarian, would have put the painter in possession of all the picturesque details of the real scenes, and given him subjects for several pictures of peculiar interest. A picture could have been composed for that panel which would have such fascinating power as a mere exhibition of truth, that few would have cared to criticise it as a work of art.

But the question recurs, Why are such artists employed ? The shameful answer is, Because they lobby for a commission and know how to lobby with effect. It is not an honest ignorance of art and history which has thus disfigured the Capital ; for these paintings are the constant theme of ridicule among members as they are among private citizens. One artist won bis commission, it is said, by assiduous flattery of the wives and daughters of members of Congress. While artists of merit were toiling after excellence in distant studios, this wiser man in his generation was enjoying elegant leisure in the drawing-rooms of Washington, where he made sketches in the albums of ladies who could influence votes, or painted their portraits in some Italian or Spanish costume from his portfolio. He is thought to have secured votes by pretending that the excellent but not beautiful wife of a member of Congress reminded him constantly of an exquisite model he once had in Rome, — one of the loveliest creatures in the world. He had moreover, some little talent in small album-sketches and little fancy portraits in costume. This, doubtless, deceived some members, who did not reflect upon the infinite difference between a grand historical painting and an imitation of the velvet in a cavalier’s doublet. If that man’s claim to the highest honor which the nation can bestow upon an artist had been openly discussed in committee, his name would never have reached the House at all. It was private lobbying that brought this dishonor upon art, upon Congress, and upon the national taste. It has been proposed to introduce the rule that no man shall be appointed to office who seeks office. Congress may rely with certainty the most complete upon this, that no artist capable of worthily filling one of the panels of the Rotunda will ever lobby for the commission in the drawing-rooms of Washington. If that artist should ever be wanted, he will have to be looked for and solicited.

The reader has perhaps wondered also why Congress should have selected for the execution of the national statue of Abraham Lincoln a person of no standing or experience as an artist. Miss Vinnie Ream is a young lady of perfect respectability, and, no doubt, highly estimable in her private relations. No one can blame her for her good fortune. She has done little more than open her mouth and let the plum fall into it. But what has Congress done ? Here was a piece of work to be given out, —the statue of a man as little statuesque as any we can imagine, — which required in the artist a combination of artistic skill and judgment, love of the man, and love of truth. The work was to be seen by hundreds who had been familiar with the subject, and by tens of thousands who would take a kind of affectionate interest in the artist’s management of its difficulties. The Abraham Lincoln of future generations was to be created. In the selection of the artist a national fame was either to be conferred or enhanced. Congress assigned this work to a girl who had the rudiments of her art still to learn, and who had given no proof of her capacity to acquire those rudiments. She exhibited a model. It was about to be overlooked. She burst into tears. The results to her were, a ten - thousand - dollar commission, a universal celebrity, and two years in Europe, — three immense boons, either of which had been a fit requital for long-tried excellence. And, as if this were not enough, a room was given her in the Capitol itself in which to execute and exhibit her work. Congress bestowed upon this unknown and untried child honors which it has persistently withheld from artists who have conferred upon the country whatever name it has in the world of art, but who hardly know what the word “lobbying" means. Recognition one tenth as distinct and emphatic as this, how it would have cheered the early years of the excellent sculptors of whom the country is proud ! Such caprice does not harm them; for when Congress confers distinction thus, it parts with its power to confer honor, and sensibly lessens its own.

Five minutes’ conversation with Miss Vinnie Ream explains this ridiculous behavior of Congress. She is one of those graceful, animated, bright-eyed, picturesque, undaunted, twinkling little women, who can make men say Yes to anything they ask. She also wore a pretty blue, turban-like covering for her hair, which was killing at five paces ; and there is that in her manner which puts men in the humor of uttering badinage, and at the same time gives them the idea that she is a helpless little body who would cry if she could not have her own way. The visitor to her room in the Capitol had but to stand apart and see the modest audacity of her demeanor, and observe the assured, lively manner in which she held a circle of men in conversation, in order to comprehend why Congress, in its easy, thoughtless good-nature, should have granted to her the most signal honors it ever bestowed upon an artist.

Men are naturally susceptible to the picturesque in woman. It is natural also to feel like caressing and protecting whatever reminds us of tender, graceful childhood. Members had done well to give a private commission to this agreeable young lady by way of encouraging her to attempt acquiring some skill in modelling. But they were false to their trust when they gave her an important public work to execute. Men who are charged by their fellow-citizens with the adornment of national edifices and the bestowal of national honors are much to blame in allowing a blue turban, a pair of speakingeyes, a trim waist, and a fluent tongue to carry off prizes due only to tried merit. Members can form little idea of the dishonor, nay, the contempt, which they bring upon Congress by indulging a whim of this kind. Millions witness the result ; only a few individuals see the bright excuse; and of those few only one sex admits that it is any excuse at all.

There is an impression in Washington that a great deal of legislation is influenced by female lobbyists ; and the easy success of this young lady gives countenance to the idea. A woman of attractive presence and of a certain audacity of manner, who should be able to live and entertain in handsome style, could no doubt win favor and votes for some measures. Many members come from homely homes, the ladies of which have expended their vivacity and beauty in that American phase of “the struggle for life” which Fanny Fern style, “ grappling with Erin.” Such members, when they find themselves in a drawing-room next to a lady who expends her vivacity in entertaining them, and arrays her beauty in all the charms of novel costume and bewitching decoration, are only too apt to surrender to the fascinating influence. But such women cannot be hired to go lobbying. It occasionally happens that a circle interested in a scheme contains one such who will render the service required. Generally speaking, however, the female lobby is small and insignificant. A lady informed me last winter that she had defeated international copyright; and, indeed, she was the Washington agent of the weak opposing influence. But a pebble can stop a sixhorse coach when it is going up a steep hill, and the horses are tired, the driver indifferent, and the passengers asleep.

Of all the smaller sins of Congress, there are none, perhaps, which excite so much odium as that multitude of petty transgressions covered by the words “Contingent Expenses.” The mere running expenses of Congress, including its share of the public printing, amount to about twice the revenue of the government under President Washington. I have tried in vain to get at the total cost of a session of Congress. The mere list of the Contingent Expenses of the House fills a volume of two hundred and twenty pages, and there is no hint anywhere of the sum total. It is certain, however, that a session of Congress costs the country as much as four millions of dollars, including pay, postage. printing, and contingent expenses. “Will the honorable member from Ohio allow me five minutes to make an explanation?” asks an honorable member from Somewhere Else. If that request is granted it costs the people of the United States a little over six hundred dollars. The chaplain’s prayer, which usually lasts one minute, consumes one hundred and thirty-eight dollars’ worth of time every morning. Calling the Yeas and Nays, an operation of half an hour, comes to over four thousand dollars. Allowing six months for an average session, and twenty days a month as the average number of meetings, Congress costs us something more than thirty-three thousand dollars a day. Who would begrudge his share of this great expense, if it were necessary ? It is not necessary. A vigorous man of business, who should have the contract for running Congress, could save enough in the three items of printing, postage, and contingencies to double the salaries of members, give a decent compensation to the justices of the Supreme Court, the judges of the Court of Claims, and heads of departments, and have a handsome surplus for himself. Nothing is so extravagant and undemocratic as to pay Such salaries to the judges, cabinet ministers, and members of Congress as to exclude from those high and honorable posts the great body of able men who are neither rich nor reckless. A fraction of the mere waste of Washington would support them all respectably, and render it possible for men of talent who have little property to serve the government.

This book of the Contingent Expenses of the House of Representatives is amusing literature indeed. There is an air of candor about it that edifies the mind. It looks so very honest, the publication of such items as “ 2 micetraps, 50 cts.” “ Repairing 3 chairs, $ 1.50.” “ Easing drawer, 25 cts.’’ “ I paper of needles, 10 cts. “One long poker, $ 3.00” ; and “ 2 pounds of putty, 25 cts.”It is such a satisfaction to know that the poker which cost so much was long 1 It is also interesting to note, that to clean and polish that extremely absurd relic of barbarism, the “ mace,”cost three dollars ; and that, during one session of Congress, the people paid for “ hauling ” more than ten thousand cartloads of documents ! There are many items, however, which excite interest of another kind. When we find two hundred “ porte-monnaies ” charged at prices ranging from $ 1.20 to $ 4.25 each, we cannot help feeling that each and every one of those articles is a petty fraud. The United States has not undertaken and is not bound to supply any portion of its servants with porte-monnaies. What a scandal, too, is that annual penknife business! One thousand and ninety-eight penknives, at prices averaging about three dollars each, ! find after a few minutes’ search charged among the “Contingent Expenses’’ of the second session of the Fortieth Congress ! I could probably make up the amount to two thousand by going through the book, in which the items are apparently published, but are really interred and covered up. There are charges also of “ Half dozen Martinique snuff, $ 25.00,” “50 lbs. of tobacco, $25.00,” “ 2 doz. pocket-scissors, $ 28.00,” “ 2 doz. hair-brushes, $48.00,” “ 12 cotton stay-laces, $ 6.00,” “ 5 extra morocco desks, $ 67.00,” and endless charges for inkstands, newspapers, and periodicals ; stationery by the mountain, of course. I spend my whole time, from January to December, in one unending, unchanging task of spoiling white paper ; but I cannot get through more than three reams per annum, which costs about twelve dollars. Knowing how far a little stationery will go, I read of the inconceivable quantities consumed about the Capitol with amazement.

It is to be hoped that none but men in sound health will be sent to Congress, for it costs a great deal to get a member home if he should happen to die in Washington. The following is the bill paid to the Sergeant-at-arms of the House for transporting the body of a deceased member from Washington to Easton in Pennsylvania :-

Hack hire, assistance in care of remains, and arranging for the funeral in the House of Representative $50.00

18 white silk sashes for officers of House and Senate 254.00

8 black silk sashes for committee of arrangements 36.00

20 1/2 dozen kid gloves 15.00

2 dozen kid gloves 54.00

2 dozen kid gloves 60.00

1 dozen kid gloves 33.00

200 black crape scarfs 300.00

Travel of messenger to New York and return 47.00

Hacks to carry escort and friends to depot 16.00

Fare and expenses of escort and remains from Washington, D. C., to Easton, Pa. 245.00

Hotel bills and hacks at Easton 42.65

Fare and expenses on return to Washington 194.00

Travel of assistant sergeant-at-arms and messengers, Washington to Easton and return, 460 miles each 138,00

$2,144.65

The fee system, it appears, is still employed to compensate some of the officers of Congress. If there is a “call of the House,” i. e. a general hunting up of absent members, the Sergeant-atarms is permitted to charge five dollars and twenty cents for “arresting, bringing before the House, and discharging ” each absentee. If a hundred members are absent, which is not unfrequently the case, a cail of the House costs the country five hundred and twenty dollars. If witnesses are summoned to testify before a committee, the Sergeantat-arms charges a fee and mileage for each. Thus every person summoned from New Orleans to testify with regard to the negro massacre cost us three hundred and seventeen dollars, and the cost of merely summoning the witnesses in that affair was $ 2,392. It

cost three hundred and seventeen dollars to summon “General Hamlin” to testify before a committee. The object of the committee could no doubt have been accomplished for three cents and a half, —half a cent for stationery and three cents for postage. Now, If money is to be thrown away in this reckless manner, if the Capitol is to remain the scene of waste and profusion we find it now, then I say the people have a choice with regard to the persons who shall be benefited by it. They do not see any justice or any propriety in Henry Wilson’s being compelled to pinch on five thousand dollars a year, while servants of the body to which he belongs retire rich after four years’ service. It brings a blush to the cheek of every properly constituted person to think that a justice of the Supreme Court should be compelled to expend his whole salary for two rooms and the board of his family, while a man who gets stationery contracts sets up his carriage and buys pictures. If the government is to be plundered at every point by every hand, it is time the spoils were more fairly divided.

There is only one remedy for this profusion at the Capitol. Congress has honestly attempted to cut off the opportunities for petty larceny. It has attempted it many times, but never with much success. The mileage system, the franking-privilege, the wild and wondrous waste of stationery, the pocketing of French inkstands and costly pen-holders, the lugging home of halfreams of paper, and all the small stealings of committee-rooms, have been, by turns, the theme of ridicule and the object of legislation. Some leaks have been stopped; but others have been immediately opened, and the same thieves who pilfered under the old law have plundered under the new. We ought to know by this time that a privilege is a thing which is always and everywhere abused. We ought to know that a perquisite is always and everywhere a means of corruption. We ought to know that nearly every one in the world who is compensated by fees gets much too much or much too little, or riots in abundance now, to be starved to-morrow. Let Congressmen simply abolish fees, perquisites, and privileges, and accept in lieu thereof a proper increase to their salaries, — say, double what they now receive. Let members pay their own postage, charge no mileage, subscribe for their own newspapers, buy their own envelopes and writing paper, and compensate all their officers by salaries.

Nothing short of this will ever answer the purpose. If Congress should permit only so much as a bottle of ink to be furnished to each committee-room, once a week, and charged to Contingent Expenses, a widening crevice would be established through which a torrent of colored fluids would continually pour. Add pens to the ink, and you would see exquisite pen-holders, fitted with the most costly diamond-pointed gold pens, and huge cases of the finest products of Gillott, heaped high in the store-rooms of the Capitol. Complete the list with paper, and you have a thick volume of wonderful items, and run up a stationery bill the mere clippings and extras of which build houses and found estates. The sole remedy is to pay each member a decent compensation, — not less than ten thousand dollars a year, — and allow neither to members nor to committees so much as a sheet of foolscap or a penny pen-holder.

The completion of the Pacific Railroad antiquates the system of mileage, by destroying the necessity for it. Indeed, ever since railroads brought two thirds of Congress within forty-eight hours’ ride of Washington, a system of mileage which gives to one member eight dollars for his travelling-expenses, to another several hundred dollars, and to another several thousands, has been growing ridiculous. But now that a member from Oregon can get to the capital in eleven days, it is too absurd to pay him fifteen times as much mileage as Henry Clay used to get for his six weeks’ horseback ride from Kentucky. Away with Congressional mileage ! The honorable member from Oregon will, of course, have to incur a little more expense in getting to Washington than the honorable member from Baltimore ; but he will not find this an insupportable burden. He will be pretty sure to have free tickets to most places presented him a few hours after his election, and I am afraid he will be weak enough to accept them until Congress makes it unlawful for him to do so. More than that, a palace-car will be assigned to his exclusive use, as long as the Pacific Railroads have favors to ask, or retribution to fear, from the body of which he is a member.

The surrender of the franking-privilege, besides being the most popular act which Congress could do, would be also one of the most beneficial to itself. It would operate as a tonic. The flow of buncombe speech would be checked, millions of infinitesimal frauds would be prevented, and a source of demoralization would be annihilated.

Abolish perquisites, abolish fees, abolish privileges, and double salaries. There would be a little buncombe opposition from members and editors who set up as champions of economy, but their buncombe could be triumphantly refuted if Congress saved the million and a half additional pay out of the running expenses of the Capitol, the postoffice, and the public printing-house.

I believe I express the opinion of all the gentlemen who have held the office of public printer, when I say that half a million dollars per annum is worse than wasted at the public printing-office. Having examined the office, the reports of the superintendent, and several of the more expensive volumes issued, I see clearly enough that if there were such an officer as National Editor, with the usual editorial power to select, cut down, and exclude, he could save the country much more than half a million a year by merely drawing his pencil through useless matter. What havoc he would have made, for example, in the gorgeous quarto (962 pages) in which are preserved the letters, resolutions, and addresses of condolence called forth by Mr. Lincoln’s assassination! In that huge and splendid work, which cost us eighteen thousand dollars, there may be ten pages worth saving ; and those the National Editor would have forwarded per boy to Newspaper Row, opposite Willard’s, at a cost of two car tickets. The saving on that one item would have made the Supreme Bench comfortable for a whole year. In the Agricultural Report for 1867, which fills five hundred and twenty-two “ large octavo pages ” handsomely illustrated, of which two hundred and twenty-four thousand five hundred copies were given away, at a total expense of a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, what gashes an intelligent National Editor would have made ! or rather, would he not have selected the valuable portions and sent copies to each of the agricultural newspapers and periodicals ? They would give to matter really valuable all the publicity that could be desired. The Patent-Office Report has annually swollen, until it now makes over two thousand pages,—four large octavos, of which one half the space is occupied by engravings. Of this most expensive work sixty thousand copies are given away. The Reports of the Commissioners to the Paris Exposition of 1867 will fill several profusely illustrated volumes, which will of course be given away profusely. When we read the names of some of the Commissioners, we know very well what a gifted National Editor would do with their contributions.

In the last report of Mr. John Defrees, Congressional printer, a gentleman who knew the precise value of the mountains ot books which Congress ordered him to manufacture, we find this interesting paragraph : —

“The Army Register of Volunteers has also been completed in eight volumes. Fifty thousand copies were ordered to be printed, for sale at cost, by the joint resolution of June 30, 1864. An edition of five thousand copies of the first four volumes was printed, but finding very little demand for the work, the edition of the residue of the volumes was reduced to one thousand.”

For sale at cost! That is the true method, if Congress must manufacture books. Observe how the enormous error of this publication was rebuked and corrected by bringing it to the test of sale at cost. If the people want a book, they will buy it at cost; if they will not buy it at cost, it is proof positive that they do not want it enough to justify an appropriation of their money. It was an amiable idea to preserve the name of every man who fought for his country during the war ; but to preserve such a catalogue did not necessitate its publication in eight volumes. Such extravagance keeps alive in the general mind the false, pernicious idea, that the government may properly expend money on principles which would be absurd and ruinous in an individual.

Do members of Congress sell West Point and Annapolis cadetships? I am afraid I must confess that it has been done. Not often ; for members are abundantly blessed with nephews, and friends who have nephews, and they are generally besought for those appointments as soon as it is rumored that they intend to run for Congress. Not often : for members generally want all their small change of that nature during the canvass. Not often ; for few men of an infinitesimal calibre have yet found their way to Congress. And still I fear that the member who gave a cadetship to the son of a person who presented his wife with a grand piano was in some degree influenced by the circumstance. There are lobbyists who profess to be able to procure cadetships for money, but most of them are strikers. Some members find their election expenses a heavy burden, and I believe that, occasionally, a distinct arrangement has been entered into between a member of the lobby and an anxious father, to this effect : the anxious father agrees to send a check for two thousand dollars to the chairman of the member’s committee, as a contribution to the expenses of the election, and the man of the lobby agrees to induce the member to give the anxious father’s son a cadetship in one of the national academies. In a very few instances such an arrangement may have been fulfilled. Some members, I fear, regard the duty of making these important appointments in the light of a perquisite, and, as just remarked, the word “perquisite” is generally synonymous with corruption. Congress will perform an act as wise as it will be noble when it relinquishes a privilege that has always been abused, and always must be, by men who have sons, nephews, and election committees.

Before leaving this small branch of a large subject, I must not fail to remark that many of us seem to be unduly alarmed at the corruptions and abuses of the government. The American people are so accustomed to honesty in their dealings with one another, and to a certain frugality of ordinary expenditure, that they start back affrighted from the scene of profusion, and worse than profusion, of government offices. Let us see then how it is with other governments. Let us see if government by the people for the people is less or more profuse, less or more corrupt, than the vaunted governments by a class for a class.

That is a pretty piece of scandal which advocate Mathieu Marais relates in his Mémoires, of the dissolute Regent of France and the Abbé de Broglie. The Abbe having warmly commended a certain wine, the Regent said he would like to have some of it, and the Abbé sent him three hundred bottles. The prince insisted on paying for them, and accordingly the priest handed him a bill in proper form, like this : —

His Royal Highnest, the Prince Regent Dr. To the Abbé de Broglie.

60 gallons of wine, 400 francs.

300 bottles, 60”

300 corks, 15”

Twine, 4”

Sealing-wax, Spanish, 9”

Baskets, 25”

Carriage, 7”

Total: The Abbey of Mount St. Michael.

The prince paid the bill. The governorship of an abbey, and a handsome income for life of other people’s money, was the reward which this man, entrusted with the revenues of church and state, felt to be due to a profligate young ecclesiastic who had given him a moment’s amusement. This was in 1721. fifty years later, the young Abbé de Talleyrand won his first preferment, which consisted of two abbeys, by saying a good thing to Madame Dubarry, the king’s mistress. He. the most licentious young man in Paris, had sat silent while others amused the mistress with tales of intrigue and gallantry. She asked him at length why he did not favor the company with one of his numberless amorous adventures. “ Because,” said he, assuming a melancholy tone, “ in Paris, at present, it is so much easier to win the favor of ladies than to get preferment in the Church.” This small joke made the king laugh,when it was told to him, and it was worth to the youth who uttered it the two abbeys just referred to.

On similar principles the church benefices of every established church on earth have been usually bestowed. That is to say, the appointing power does not usually so much as think of appointing the fittest attainable man, but gives or sells benefices, abbeys, bishoprics, archbishoprics, solely for its own pleasure and purposes.¹ If the Archbishop of Canterbury should die to-day, Mr. Gladstone would bestow the vacancy upon that man in England who, in that place, could do most to help him retain and increase his majority in the House of Commons ; unless, perchance, the services have already been rendered which give to some person, family, club, or clique a claim to the appointment. No one could blame him. The system requires it of Iiim. He could not be Prime-Minister, and act on any other principle.

A French gentleman resident in Nw York related to me the other evening the particulars of a case which he thought showed advantageously for the government of the present usurper. A custom-house officer at a French seaport, after many years of faithful service, was dismissed from his place for accepting two gifts from an importer, of the value of one dollar and thirtv cents. Respectable merchants petitioned for his restoration, but the minister replied that he had not the power to restore him ; there was no provision in the system of the government for the pardon of such an offence. It simply could not be done. This was supposed to be extremely virtuous. But, surely, we cannot call that system pure in which the great thieves want so much that they will not and cannot permit the little people to steal at all, — which loads with plunder the men who help steal all the revenues of France, and covers with diamonds the women who assist to dazzle and delude the people. At the very time when this poor old man was thrust out into hopeless destitution for a momentary weakness or inadvertence, the woman of one of the head plunderers was selling off some hundreds of thousands of francs’ worth of diamonds merely because she had so many jewels that she did not know what to do with them.

In England, too, they are rigid in dealing with petty corruption. — as they ought to be. An instance occurred recently. A navy clerk caused to be conveyed to a timber merchant an intimation that for thirty pounds he would get for him a certain contract to supply timber to one of the navy-yards. Both the clerk and his messenger were tried for conspiracy to obtain money by false pretences, and on being convicted were sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment at hard labor. This was just. But, on the other hand, there is in this same England an amount and variety of political immorality, particularly among great lords, capitalists, and corporations, which leaves the United States stainlessly pure in comparison. We all know what English elections are. The reason why we all know is, because the corruption at those elections has become an established jest, which the national humorists, such as Hogarth, Dickens, Thackeray, and Bulwer, have found available for their art. Through the works of these great authors we have become perfectly familiar with that corruption, and with the national average of moral feeling which joyfully accepts the bribing and debauching of free citizens as a legitimate source of fun. Englishmen urge foreigners to stay over another steamer on purpose to witness “ the humors of an English election.”as Spaniards detain their guests for the Sunday bullfight.

We may also pass lightly over that long period in the history of England when every minister bought an essential portion of his majority by banknotes put into the hands of members in the House of Commons. “The sums varied,” as we learn from Wraxall, “ from five hundred to eight hundred pounds a year,” which sums were “conveyed” to gentlemen of the House of Commons “in a squeeze of the hand” as they passed the ministerial agent. It was the business of that agent in Lord Chatham’s time “to distribute with art and policy, amongst the members who had no ostensible place, sums of money for their support during the session, besides contracts, lottery-tickets, and other douceurs. It is no uncommon circumstance at the end of a session for a gentleman to receive five hundred or a thousand pounds for his service.” ²There has been published a letter from an English minister to Cardinal Henry, who was minister of Louis XV. of France at the beginning of his reign. Here is an edifying extract: “ I pension half the Parliament to keep it quiet; but as the king’s money is not sufficient, they to whom I give none clamor loudly for a war. It would be expedient for your Eminence to remit me three millions of French liyres in order to silence the barkers. Gold is a metal which here corrects all ill qualities in the blood. A pension of two thousand pounds a year will make the most impetuous warrior in Parliament as tame as a lamb.” ³ There is also a letter extant, in which Louis XIV. authorizes his minister to offer the Duke of Marlborough four millions of francs for a peace on certain conditions. With regard to the peace of 1703, against

which Lord Chatham so eloquently protested, it is known to have been accomplished by the most lavish expenditure of money and promotion. “ The Royal household had been increased beyond all former example. The lords and grooms of the bedchamber were doubled. Pensions were thrown about indiscriminately. Five - and - twenty thousand pounds were issued in one day, in bank - notes of one hundred pounds each. The only stipulation was, Give us your vote! .... The city of London refused to address (in favor of peace), although the sum of fourteen thousand pounds was offered to complete the bridge.The Lord-Lieutenants had begging-letters sent to them to use their influence ; and five hundred pounds, secret service, were added to each letter. The sum of five hundred pounds was the notorious price of an address. Some addresses cost a much larger sum. The sum was regulated according to the importance and magnitude of the place from which the address was obtained.” ⁴ We also read, in the memoirs of that time, of men holdingoffices of which they only drew halt the salary, “ being rode for the other half" ; and these individuals, both the riders and the ridden, were not cityclerks and contractors, but men of rank and influence.

But these things occurred a long time ago, — one hundred and six years,— when all the world, except Prussia, was corrupt; and Prussia is an empire today because she was not corrupt then. Since that time England has nobly grappled with many a hoary abuse, has made important advances toward free trade and purity of government, and is still pressing onward. And yet we read astounding things of the venality of the present generation of her ruling class. The history of railroads in Great Britain appears to be little more than a history of giant frauds, from the day of honest George Stevenson to that of collapsed Morton Peto. The English biographer of the Stevensons tells us of a great duke who caused the defeat of a railroad bill in Parliament, because the engineer had laid out the line too near one of his Grace’s fox covers ; of a “ party ” in a committee of lords offering to withdraw opposition to a projected road for ten thousand pounds ; of opposition “got up mainly for the purpose of being bought off” ; of railway directors boasting of the number of votes they could “ command " in the House of Commons ; of parliamentary log-rolling in the “Yankee” style of “ You help' me roll my log, and I ’ll help yon roll yours ” ; of a railway bill which it cost the directors eighty-two thousand pounds to get passed ; of another, the total cost of passing which was four hundred and thirty-six thousand, two hundred and twenty-three pounds, about three million dollars of our present currency ; of needy members “conciliated” by being paid five thousand pounds for a strip of land worth five hundred ; of members who “ systematically sold their parliamentary interest for money considerations ” ; of an “ impoverished nobleman ” receiving thirty thousand pounds for a narrow strip of his estate, the whole of which was not worth more than that sum, and then selling another corner to another company for a second thirty thousand pounds, thus getting sixty thousand pounds “ damages ” for what greatly increased the value of his property. “Of course,” remarks Mr. J. C. Jeafferson, “it was well understood that the two sums of thirty thousand pounds did not represent the price of the land, but the price of the peer’s parliamentary interest.”

It seems, too, that many of the petty infamies incident to the infancy of popular government — infamies which we are about to abolish — are in full activity in England. English politicians have not yet discovered the puerility of bribing obscure and utterly uninfluential newspapers by lavish advertising. Advertisements for navy rum were inserted by the last Tory administration in a little weekly paper, circulating a few hundred copies among clergymen of conservative politics. Comic papers of the same politics were subscribed for in considerable numbers for distribution in government asylums. Advertisements were paid for at rates three or four times higher than the regular price. At the time of the last general election, as we learn from the Pall Mall Gazette, “an advertising-agent was instructed by a government department to send advertisements to a certain provincial journal. This journal was so excellent a medium for the purpose that the agent, whose business it is to know these things, was quite unaware of its existence. He had to make inquiries as to whether there was such a newspaper or not. His investigations were successful. It turned out that the influential and widely circulated print had been started a few weeks previously to serve the interest of the Tory candidate for the borough in which it was published. Accordingly, the government advertisements were sent for the support of the paper; and there we have seen them, column after column, week after week.”

The same journal informs mankind that this extremely primitive, provincial, and generally useless form of bribery is “rampant” in England, as well as that of giving exclusive news for fulsome laudation. “ In short,” adds this able newspaper, “ it comes to this : it is the custom of ministers in England, as well as in foreign parts, to subsidize the press for their own benefit.” But how stupidly they do it ! During the recent general election in England, there was a certain “industrious literary compilers,”named Townsend, who wrote on the D'Israeli side with great diligence and small effect. He was promised by Mr. D'Israeli, not a petty office in the custom-house for four years, but a post in the mint for life, worth a thousand pounds a year; or, if that should not fall vacant, he was to have the still more lucrative place in the inland revenue held by a brother of the Premier, whose death was daily expected. But before the vacancy occurred, Mr. D’Israeli had lost the power to confer such munificent rewards for services so trifling, and the new ministry, upon the death of Mr. James D'Israeli, had the virtue to abolish the sinecure he had held so long. The disappointment was too much for the unhappy writer, who stabbed himself to the heart ; an occurrence which led to the disclosure of the facts. All this is very much in what Englishmen flatter themselves is the American style : only, more so.*

Indeed, they have in England most of the small sins of popular government as well as all of the great ones. I read in the London papers, at the close of a session, that the House of Commons, like the House of Representatives, is idle during the first half of a session ; which obliges it to hurry bills through with such velocity at last, that members can hardly catch their titles, but merely ascertain whether an act is favored or opposed by the ministry, and vote accordingly. It appears, also, that ministers cram the public offices with superfluous clerks, and that absurd and fraudulent charges are covered by that convenient word, “contingencies.” Dr. Russell was in the Crimea lately, and wrote home to the Times, that “ the French and Russian dead have been reverently gathered together, but the English cemetery on Cathcart’s Hill is in a shameful state, notwithstanding the thirteen thousand pounds paid by the government for its proper maintenance. The Russian government has done more than could be expected of it, but all the monuments in the cemetery are being chipped to pieces, and no attempt has been made to gather the remains of our fallen soldiers in one spot.” There is, also, in England, a “pardon lobby,” which can sometimes get a man of rank released from prison before his term has expired ; as in the United States a forger of wealthy family can occasionally (though very rarely) procure a similar favor.

Mr, Fronde’s recent utterance with regard to the prevalence of fraud in England would surely be an exaggeration if applied to the United States. It could not be truly said of the business of America that it is “ saturated with fraud.” “ So deep has it gone,” added the historian, “that a strictly honest tradesman can hardly hold his ground against competition. You can no longer trust that any article that you buy is the thing which it pretends to be. We have false weights, false measures, cheating, and shoddy everywhere. Yet the clergy have seen all this grow up in absolute indifference ; and the great question which at this moment is agitating the Church of England is the color of the ecclesiastical petticoats.” This is not true of the United States, where, as a rule, men of business comprehend well, and act upon their belief, that the sole possible basis of a business permanently great is to give a good dollar’s worth for a dollar. Probably Mr. Froude, like Mr. Carlyle, lives very much among his books, and does not possess personal knowledge of anything which cannot be learned in a library. As to the clergy, their existence as a privileged order is in peril ; they are engaged in Mr. Darwin’s “struggle for life.” Clergymen of ability, who have several strings to their bow, do not meddle with the petticoat question.

There is a poem by Mrs. Browning, written before we had emancipated ourselves from slavery, in which she told us that the penalty we paid for consenting to remain under that shameful yoke was that we forfeited the right to glow with indignation, and hurl the sharp rebuke, at atrocious deeds done anywhere on earth. In the presence of our own giant iniquity, we must remain silent when we heard of distant outrage. But the principle to which she gave expression in this fine poem is, perhaps, of universal application. No nation is so pure that it can with propriety point the finger of reproach at another ; because, if the sins of one are different from those of the other, it does not follow that they are less. I do firmly believe that the people of the United States are the most honest people in the world ; but I do not know that we should be such if it were as hard to live in the United States as it is in the densely peopled and entirely appropriated countries of the Old World. There was no stealing in the California mining-region when every man was making his pile. Considering how much our virtues and our vices are produced by circumstances, it is as ridiculous to boast as it is vulgar to taunt.

Why then parade those examples of the weakness and corruption of other governments ? For several reasons. It is comforting to have companions in misfortune, and it is reassuring to know that governments that were once wholly corrupt are now but partially so. The court of Louis XIV. and their servants numbered three thousand persons, and the king carried on his war by the sale of places. There were lieutenant-colonels then in the French army ten years of age, and archbishops under twentyone. It is not so bad as that in France now ; and in England several entire species of corrupt practice have been extirpated. The tendency of governments to become corrupt is powerful and constant, and they can be kept endurably honest only by eternal vigilance. Besides, a year or two since, when the North American Review exposed the government of New York, the English tories seized the articles with avidity, and caused them to be republished in England, and circulated as “campaign documents.” All the Tory organs commented upon them, and drew inferences unfavorable to government by the people for the people ; omitting to mention that the corrupt governments of our three largest seaports are sustained by voters whom the Tory system of Europe had kept in brutal ignorance. If New York aldermen steal, it is because Great Britain has been governed by a class. Send us intelligent, educated emigrants, ye supercilious Tories ! Send us men trained in the duties of citizenship, and we will soon expel the thieves from city-hall and lobby. We shall do it, as it is ; but not as soon as we should like.

After all, we are but serving an apprenticeship in the art of government by the whole people. We have done very well hitherto. Evils have arisen, but they have been grappled with and suppressed. Evils exist, but there is no reason to think that the recuperative energy of the system is near exhaustion. It is only people who do not know much about the period of Washington and John Adams, who think the government was better then than it is now. It is better now, upon the whole, than it was then; and much better, considering how difficult a task governments now have. In its worst estate, it was better than the best despotism. Congress, I am sure, will repent of its small sins ; and by and by it will so reorganize the public service that the temptation to commit many of them will be removed.