chamber depends upon the weight of the critic who utters it, deriving little if any addition to its specific gravity from connection with the designs of a purposeful party organization. I cannot insist too much upon this defect of congressional government, because it is evidently radical. Leadership with authority over a great ruling party is a prize to attract great competitors, and is in a free government the only prize that will attract great competitors. Its attractiveness is abundantly illustrated in the operations of the British system. In England, where members ot the Cabinet, which is merely a Committee of the House of Commons, are the rulers of the empire, a career in the Commons is eagerly sought by men of the rarest gifts, because a career there is the best road, is indeed the only road, to membership of the great Committee. A part in the life of Congress, on the contrary, though the best career opened to men of ambition by our system, has no prize at its end greater than membership of some one of numerous Committees, between which there is some choice, to be sure, because some of them have great and others only small jurisdictions, but none of which has the distinction of supremacy in policy or of recognized authority to do more than suggest. And posts upon such Committees are the highest posts in the Senate just as they are in the House of Representatives.
