ch support a large number of voters, labour unions,
and all sorts of societies and organisations of various kinds--they one
and all assert their right to advise the Congressman in his policies or
to call for his assistance in furthering their particular ends, under
threat, tacit or expressed, of the loss of their support when he seeks
re-election. The English member of Parliament thinks that he is
subjected to a sufficiency of pressure of this particular sort; but he
has not to bear one-tenth of what is daily meted out to his American
_confrere_, nor is he under any similar necessity of paying attention to
it.

Under such conditions it is evident that a Congressman can have but a
restricted liberty to act or vote according to his individual
convictions. It is only human that, in matters which are not of great
national import, a man should at times be willing to believe that his
personal opinions may be wrong when adherence to those opinions would
wreck his political career. So the Congressman too commonly acquires a
habit of subservience which is assuredly not wholesome either for the
individual or for the country; and sometimes the effort to trim sails to
catch every favouring breeze has curious oblique results. As an
instance of this may be cited the action taken by Congress in regard to
the army canteen. A year or more back, the permission to army posts to
retain within their own limits and subject to the supervision of the
post authorities, a canteen for the use of soldiers, was abolished. The
soldiers have since been compelled to do their drinking outside, and, as
a result, this drinking has been done without control or supervision,
and has produced much more serious demoralisation. The action of
Congress was taken in the face of an earnest and nearly unanimous
protest from experienced army officers--the men, that is, who were
directly concerned with the problem in question. The Congressmen acted
as they did under the pressure of the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union, and with the dread lest a vote for the canteen should be
interpreted as a vote for liquor, and should stand in the way of their
own political success.

From what has been said it will be seen that the member of Congress is
compelled to give a deplorably large proportion of his time and thought
to paltry local matters, leaving a deplorably small portion of either to
be devoted to national questions; while in the exercise of his functions
as a legisl