The Utility of the U. S. Senate.
By W. N. G.
In course of some pertinent remarks, recently, Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, expressed the following sentiment:— "What I contend for is that we should have a proper understanding of the function, duty, dignity, and authority of the Senate of the United States. I am one of those people, having spent nearly twenty years of my life with some opportunity to observe this body, who believe that the founders of this country were wise and farsighted when they created this great chamber; that it was their purpose that there should be somewhere in the government of the United States a body of men representing the great sovereignties, fitted by long experience and the confidence of their countrymen to deal wisely with great concerns, who should be expected to be the stay and resisting power against those passionate and fitful gusts of public sentiment which had wrecked every other republic that ever existed on the face of the earth." It remains to be seen how long this august body will fulfil the high trust here acknowledged. Surely it is being often assailed with "fitful gusts of public sentiment" that need the opposition of wisdom and dignity to keep them from overriding the Constitution. And the experience of the past few years has seemed to indicate a weakening of the Senate before some of these "fitful gusts;" for example, the Chicago Exposition Sunday-closing resolution, with the declaration that the first day of the week is the seventh day contemplated in the fourth commandment. Surely the tendency to yield, and the danger of yielding, to such "passionate and fitful gusts" are sufficiently ominous to warrant all that Mr. Hoar says on the subject of the necessity of a "stay and resisting power." May the Senate rise to the requirements of such a body, as it did in the days when legislation upon religious subjects and appropriations for religious purposes were emphatically ignored.