Republicans as Frye of Maine, Hawley
of Connecticut, and Sherman of Ohio voted with Platt. Thus, any party
responsibility for the result was successfully avoided, and an issue of
great constitutional importance was laid away without any apparent stir
of popular sentiment.

CHAPTER V. PARTY POLICY IN CONGRESS

While President Cleveland was successfully asserting his executive
authority, the House of Representatives, too, was trying to assert its
authority; but its choice of means was such that it was badly beaten and
was reduced to a state of humble subordination from which it has never
emerged. Its traditional procedure was arranged on the theory that
Congress ought to propose as well as to enact legislation, and to
receive recommendations from all quarters without preference or
discrimination. Although the Constitution makes it the right and duty of
the President to "recommend to their consideration such measures as
he shall judge necessary and expedient," measures proposed by the
Administration stand on the same footing under the rules as those
proposed by the humblest citizen of the United States. In both cases,
they are allowed to reach Congress only in the form of a bill or
resolution introduced by a member of Congress, and they go on the files
without any distinction as to rank and position except such as pertains
to them from the time and order in which they are introduced. Under
the rules, all measures are distributed among numerous committees, each
having charge of a particular class, with power to report favorably
or adversely. Each committee is constituted as a section of the whole
House, with a distribution of party representation corresponding to that
which exists in the House.

Viewed as an ideal polity, the scheme has attractive features. In
practice, however, it is attended with great disadvantages. Although the
system was originally introduced with the idea that it would give the
House of Representatives control over legislative business, the actual
result has been to reduce this body to an impotence unparalleled among
national representative assemblies in countries having constitutional
government. In a speech delivered on December 10, 1885, William M.
Springer of Illinois complained: "We find ourselves bound hand and foot,
the majority delivering themselves over to the power of the minority
that might oppose any particular measures, so that nothing could be done
in the way of legislation excep