Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/180

 CONDITIONS AND METHODS OF LAW MAKING rity. The business of the majority is to sup port the government and the Whips have it as their duty to bring up the members to vote for every government measure in every division which' the government chooses to consider a serious party division. If a member does not vote for the govern ment in such a division, prima facie he is against his party, and if the matter is a really serious one, he may be called to account for it by his constituents. In France the method of legislation stands half-way between the American and the English methods. The ministry studies a subject, often with great care, prepares a bill dealing with it, and launches the bill into the Chamber. There, the bill passes into the hands of a committee which amends and perhaps quite remolds it, then returning it to the Chamber with an elaborate report. In the Chamber it is in charge, not of the minister who proposed it, but of the com mittee reporter, the ministry having no more power over its fortunes than flows from the fact that they are the leaders of the majority and can speak in its support. There are also many bills brought in by private members; and these also go to the committees and have apparently a better chance than private bills in England. Switzerland, like America, but unlike France, has no ministers as voting members of either chamber, but the Federal Council (as the members of the Administration are called) are allowed to speak and defend their policy or advocate a measure, in either the House or the" Senate. The importance of the Legislature has, however, been reduced by the free use made of the popular vote or so-called Referendum. Both these intermediate systems lose something of the momentum which the responsibility of government for legislation gives in England, but they also reduce the merely party opposition which it has to encounter, while they give to the prepara tion and passing of measures the advantage of the co-operation of those whose adminis

trative experience enables them to per ceive what is really wanted and to judge how it had best be attained. Whether it is possible to establish in this country, consistently with the provisions of the Federal and the State Constitutions, any scheme by "which the Executive can be rendered more helpful to the Legislature or by which Legislatures can be more completely organized for the purposes of legislation, with a more authoritative lead ership, these are questions for you on which I can hazard no opinion. As in the British Constitution promptitude of action and concentration of power have been so fully attained that some critics think that stability is insufficiently secured, so your system in establishing stability by an elaborate system of checks and balances may have sacrified some of the motive power required to push legislation forward. Apart, however, from these large questions, which I indicate in passing, there may be improvements consistent with your Con stitutions and with our Constitution which each country may effect. It is the experi ence of all civilized countries that scientific method, which has been applied to every thing else, also needs to be applied more fully and sedulously to the details of con stitutional and political organization than is now the case. And if one may judge from the recent action of your States there are certain changes already in progress. The sittings of Legislatures have been made less frequent and shorter; and as sessions grow shorter State Constitutions grow longer. Not only many subjects but even many minor details of legislation have been withdrawn from the Legislature by being placed in the State Constitution which the Legislature cannot change. The demand is, moreover, made by some re formers that Congress shall deal with topics which formerly were left entirely to the State. Whether this be wise or not is a matter on which I cannot venture to speak. But it is another sign of the times.