of the ‘National Council,’ entitled The Council Manual for a Congregational Church (Boston, 1896). A good sketch of the chief representative body of American Congregationalism and of the occasional conventions that preceded it, is that of Rev. E. Lyman Hood, Ph.D., The National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States (Boston, 1901). English and American Congregational statistics are given in the Year-Books annually published on either side of the Atlantic.
CONGREGATIONAL METHODIST CHURCH, The. A body formed in May, 1852, in Monroe County, Ga., by ministers and laymen who had withdrawn from the Methodist Episcopal Church and wished to establish a church with Methodistic doctrines, but giving the people a voice in their own government. In 1852 the first district conference was held and a Book of Discipline adopted; in 1855 the first general convention was held. Since 1881 many churches have joined the Congregational body, but in 1901 the Congregational Methodists reported 350 churches and 21,000 members. In government it is not strictly Congregational, since it has semi-annual district conferences, annual State conferences, and quadrennial general conferences, and it is admissible to carry an appeal from one to another. It admits both white and colored persons, the latter being separately organized.
CONGRESS (Lat. congressus, conference, from congredi, to meet together, from com-, together + gradi, to step). In international affairs, an assembly either of sovereign princes or of delegates of sovereign States for the purpose of considering matters of common interest. In the United States, where the term has now a specific meaning as applied to the National Legislature (see United States), it had a similar origin, the first Congress being that of the delegates from the various British colonies, who met on October 7, 1765, for the purpose of considering their grievances. Previous to signing a treaty of peace, a meeting of plenipotentiaries usually takes place, to which the name of a congress is sometimes applied, though the term seems more properly to be reserved for those more important meetings at which extensive schemes of future policy are determined. The period of secular diplomatic congresses opened with the Congress of Münster and Osnabrück, which closed the Thirty Years' War by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (q.v.). Since then, omitting those diplomatic bodies whose object was simply to arrange terms of peace at the close of a war, the most important European congresses have been those of Vienna (1814-15), Paris (1856), Berlin (1878), and the Internation Peace Conference at The Hague (1899). An international ‘Pan-American’ congress, to discuss industrial and commercial questions, was held at Washington, from October, 1888, to April, 1890. In the winter of 1901-02 a similar congress assembled at Mexico and discussed at great length the question of international arbitration. See Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Congress of.
CONGRESS, United States, The legislative branch of the Federal Government of the United States. It was instituted by the Constitution, which prescribes its membership and defines its powers. It has no general legislative power, such as is enjoyed by the British Parliament, and, in a lesser degree, by the legislatures of the several American States; but it has only such functions and authority as the Constitution, expressly or by necessary implication, has conferred upon it. Acting in conjunction with the President and the Federal judiciary, it exercises the sovereign power of the people of the United States, in so far as that power has been committed to the Central Government.
Congress is composed of two ‘houses,’ or chambers—a Senate and a House of Representatives. It is not, however, as is generally assumed to be the case, modeled upon the British Parliament, with its House of Lords and House of Commons, nor is its bicameral form due to any general agreement on the part of the framers of the Constitution that that type of legislature was theoretically preferable to a legislature of a simpler type. The Continental Congress, under whose direction the War of the Rebellion was waged, had after the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, as before, only a single chamber. But this was not of a popular character, and it is not the House of Representatives, but the Senate, which represents it in the present Congress. These first American congresses represented not the people of the Colonies and States, but the Colonies and States themselves, and it was to preserve the weight and dignity of the States among themselves and especially of the smaller and less populous States as against the larger and more influential ones, that the Senate was instituted as a counterweight to the popular branch of the National Legislature.
The Senate is composed of two Senators from each State, and its membership has accordingly varied from twenty-two in the first Congress (when eleven States constituted the Union) to ninety at the present time (1902). The Constitution prescribes that Senators shall be chosen by the legislatures of the several States for a term of six years, and constitutes them a permanent and continuing body by providing a method of classification, whereunder the term of one class shall continuously overlap that of another, the terms of one-third of the members expiring every two years. Senators must be thirty years of age and residents of the State for which they shall be chosen. The presiding officer of the Senate is the Vice-President of the United States, but he has no part in its deliberations and no vote unless the Senators are equally divided. The rule of the Congress of the Confederation which preceded the Constitution, that the voting should be by States, each State represented having one vote, was not retained in the creation of the Senate, it being provided by the Constitution that each Senator shall have an individual vote. Senators receive a compensation fixed by Congress, of $5000 a year, with a small allowance for stationery and mileage.
The House of Representatives is not a permanent or continuing body, but its entire membership is renewed simultaneously every second year. Its members are chosen by popular vote, and it is provided that they shall be apportioned among the several States included in the Union acccording to their respective numbers. The Constitution, as adopted, provided that for the purpose of apportionment the popu-
