districts in which they actually resided. The same law
once prevailed in England, but it was repealed in the time of George
III., and had been disregarded in practice since the days of
Elizabeth.[247:1] Under the Constitution of the United States it is,
however, still necessary that a member of Congress should be a resident
(or "inhabitant") of the State from which he is elected. In some States
it is the law that he must reside in the particular district of the
State which elects him, and custom has made this the rule in all. A
candidate rejected by his own constituency, therefore, cannot stand for
another; and it follows that a member who desires to continue in public
life must hold the good will of his particular locality.

So entirely is this accepted as a matter of course that any other system
(the British system for instance) seems to the great majority of
Americans quite unnatural and absurd; and it has the obvious immediate
advantage that each member does more truly "represent" his particular
constituents than is likely to be the case when he sits for a borough or
a Division in which he may never have set foot until he began to canvas
it. On the other hand, it is an obvious disadvantage that when a member
for any petty local reason forfeits the good will of his own
constituency, his services, no matter how valuable they may be, are
permanently lost to the State.

The term for which a member of the Lower House is elected in America is
only two years, so that a member who has any ambition for a continuous
legislative career must, almost from the day of his election, begin to
consider the chance of being re-elected. As this depends altogether on
his ability to hold the gratitude of his one constituency, it is
inevitable that he should become more or less engrossed in the effort to
serve the local needs; and a constituency, or the party leaders in a
constituency, generally, indeed, measure a man's availability for
re-election by what is called his "usefulness."

If you ask a politician of local authority whether the sitting member is
a good one, he will reply, "No; he hasn't any influence at Washington at
all. He can't do a thing for us!" Or, "Yes, he's pretty good; he seems
to get things through all right." The "things" which the member "gets
through" may be the appointment of residents of the district to minor
government positions, the securing of appropriations of public moneys
for such works as the dredging or