Page:Congressional Government.djvu/254

 people, but indirectly and more slowly by the mediate operation of public opinion through the legislatures of the States.

In estimating the value of the Senate, therefore, as a branch of the national legislature, we should offset the committee organization, with its denial of leadership which disintegrates the Senate, and that liability to the biennial infusion of new elements which may at any time interrupt the policy and break the purpose of the Senate, against those habits of free and open debate which clear its mind, and to some extent the mind of the public, with regard to the nation’s business, doing much towards making legislation definite and consistent, and against those great additions to its efficiency which spring from its observation of “slow and steady forms” of procedure, from the mediate election which gives it independence, and from its having a rational and august cause for existing.

When we turn to consider the Senate in its relations with the executive, we see it no longer as a legislative chamber, but as a consultative executive council. And just here there is to be noted an interesting difference between the relations of the Senate with the President and its relations with the departments, which are in constitutional theory one with the President. It deals directly with the President in acting upon