Congressman

“ Wherever a few faithful voters are gathered together, they can, if they present their demands vociferously, impress their own particular congressman into their service. They become, for him, "the voice of the people"; silent ones do not count. He is the servant, not of the whole American people, but of his immediate constituents. ”

“ Nearly every congressman is a political leader in his home district as well as in his state, and his activities and ambitions are quickened in the national capital. It is the place of all places to study political movement. The correspondent enjoys the personal acquaintance of presidents, cabinet officers, foreign diplomats, the makers11 of party policies, the framers of administrative measures, and from them he comes to know what they are doing. ”

“ Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can. ”

“ This is the cardinal fact which differentiates Congress from the Chamber of Deputies and from Parliament, and which puts it beyond the reach of those eminently useful functions whose exercise would so raise it in usefulness and in dignity.
An effective representative body, gifted with the power to rule, ought, it would seem, not only to speak the will of the nation, which Congress does, but also to lead it to its conclusions, to utter the voice of its opinions, and to serve as its eyes in superintending all matters of government,—which Congress does not do. ”

“ Could it be the wish of the gentleman, he asked, to establish in the very heart of the United States, and immediately under the eye of the Government, such a principle as that these rulers should be independent and entirely above the control of the people? He declared that if he should be in Congress again, and as long as he ever should be in the House, he should constantly make it his duty to exert himself for the repeal of so bad a principle, and leave the governor, the judges, and the Legislature, immediately amenable to the people. ”

“ Singularly enough, there is sharp opposition to the introduction into Congress of any such leadership on the part of the executive as the Ministers of the Crown enjoy in Parliament, on the ground of the increase of power which would accrue as a result to the legislature. It is said that such a change would, by centring party and personal responsibility in Congress, give too great a prominence to legislation; would make Congress the object of too excited an interest on the part of the people. ”

“ The elections for Congress have produced a decided majority in favor of the republican interest. They complain, you know, that the influence and patronage of the Executive is to become so great as to govern the Legislature. ”

“ SECTION 3.—No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or Elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in Insurrection or Rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. ”

“ It was carried, first, by whipping in, through Executive influence and patronage, men who acted against their own declared judgment and the known will of their constituents; secondly, by thrusting out of place, both in the Senate and House of Representatives, important business, long pending, and usurping its room; thirdly, by trampling under foot the rules of the House of Representatives, always before the safeguard of the minority; and, fourthly, by driving it to a close during the [261] present Congress, so that it might not be arrested by the indignant voice of the people. ”

“ The Constitution devolves this solemn duty upon the people’s representatives, the Congress, because the linchpin of representative democracy is public confidence in the political system, regime, and community. ”

“ Adieu, my dear wife. God bless you and yours; so wishes and prays, without ceasing,
John Adams.
27. John Adams. 9 October, 1774.
I am wearied to death with the life I lead. The business of the Congress is tedious beyond expression. This assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every man in it is a great man, an orator, a critic, a statesman; and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism, and his political abilities. The consequence of this is that business is drawn and spun out to an immeasurable length. ”

“ Here in the Congress you can demonstrate effective legislative leadership by discharging the public business with clarity and dispatch, voting each important proposal up, or voting it down, but at least bringing it to a fair and a final vote. ”

“ THE CONGRESS The largest and the most important Congress ever held has come and gone, It was the biggest demonstration ever held against the present system of Government. The President uttered the whole truth when he said that it was a Congress in which, instead of the President and the leaders driving the people, the people drove him and the latter. It was clear to every one on the platform that the people had taken the reins in their own hands. ”

“ Nothing in the elections, either for President or for Congress, showed that the people were disposed to scrutinize sharply the workings of any part of their government except the House of Representatives. ”

“ He has gone to congress to stay, and not to experiment, but for the work of life. He carries with him just the power to get the power which he shall need,—the seed-corn for the large, abundant harvest. ”

“ I allude to no particular state, nor do I mean to cast reflections upon any one of them, nor ought I, it may be said, to do so on their representatives; but, as it is a fact too notorious to be concealed, that congress is rent by party; that much business of a trifling nature and personal concernment, withdraws their attention from matters of great national moment at this critical period ”

“ They only anticipate, I believe, what you shall hear from our legislative representation, in the highest demonstration of public feeling possible under a popular government; may the historic scene of Lafayette, the liberal French soldier, the fellow-helper in American independence, being received in the American House of Representatives, find a worthy imitation in the reception of the great American Minister, the daring promoter of union in the American continent, by the two Houses of our National Congress. ”

“ Twenty, senators and a hundred representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. ”

“ We shall win this battle easier than any of the others. No State will be allowed a Representative in Congress unless under government founded on the consent of the governed and Equality before the law. ”

“ I accept the proposition that Congress is the proper branch of our Government to decide legislative policies and enact general laws and that in so doing it must of necessity deal with facts to some extent. ”

“ We shall very soon have parties formed—a court and country party—and these parties will have names given them; one party in the house of representatives will support the president and his measures and ministers—the other will oppose them—a similar party will be in the senate—these parties will struggle with all their art, perhaps with intrigue, perhaps with corruption at every election to increase their own friends, and diminish their opposers. ”

“ It has been my boast, in public and in private, that no man on the floor of Congress ever represented a constituency more distinguished for intelligence, for patriotism, for public and personal virtue. ”

“ I prefer the position of Senator or even that of a private citizen, where I would be at liberty to defend and maintain the well-defined principles of the Democratic party, to accepting a Presidential nomination upon a platform incompatible with the principle of self-government in the Territories, or the reserved rights of the States, or the perpetuity of the Union under the Constitution. ”

“ The representatives of the people in Congress are alone competent to judge of the general disposition of the people, and to what precise point of reformation they are ready to go. On this, therefore, I do not presume to give an opinion, nor to pronounce between the comparative expediency of the three propositions; but shall be ready to give whatever aid I can to any of them which shall be adopted by the Legislature. ”

“ It is proposed, sir, that this solemn assembly, the representative of the American people, the depositary of their power, and in a constitutional light, the image of their wisdom, should descend from the dignity of its legislative duties, to the task of uttering against an individual the mingled language of indignation and reproach. Not satisfied with seeing that individual prohibited the exercise of his official character, we are invited to pursue him with the joint terrors of legislative wrath, couched in terms selected to convey opprobrium and infix a stigma. ”

“ The newly-elected member, entering its doors for the first time, and with no more knowledge of its rules and customs than the more intelligent of his constituents possess, always experiences great difficulty in adjusting his preconceived ideas of congressional life to the strange and unlooked-for conditions by which he finds himself surrounded after he has been sworn in and has become a part of the great legislative machine. ”

“ In the U.S.A., Congress is a true parliament and Congressmen are legislators, i.e., free and disinterested men who are not afraid of the government, and who know their duties and dare to carry them out. ”

“ The wisdom and the discretion of congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are, in this, as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they [the people] have relied, to secure them from its abuse. ”

“ Will you advocate and vote for the election of a Speaker of the House of Representatives who shall be willing to organize the committees of that House so as to give the Free States their just influence in the business of legislation? ”

“ It is, therefore, a fact of the most serious consequence that by our system of congressional rule no such means of controlling legislation is afforded. Outside of Congress the organization of the national parties is exceedingly well-defined and tangible ”

“ Remember that for the last 40 years the Congress has been the only national institution and its pandal the chosen field of our action. Here it is that our fathers decided to give battle to the powers that be. ”

“ The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. ”

“ He has met with good success in life, in spite of circumstance, having struggled upward against bitter opposition, by the force of his own abilities, to be a member of Congress, after having been for some time the leader of his party in the State Legislature. ”

“ There is a very simple reason why a Congress of the United States should be, as they certainly are, a much more marked body of men than the English house of commons or lords, or the chamber of peers or deputies in France. ”

“ The Congress is the collected voice of individuals who form it, and if the individuals go to the Congress with a united voice, that will be the verdict you will gain from the Congress. But if we go to the Congress with no opinion because we have none or because we are afraid to express it, then naturally we wait the verdict of the Congress. ”

“ No state of parties, no objects of party policy, can excuse the individual members of a Congress from the duty of giving immediate attention to whatever suggestions the President may make in the exercise of this great function as the constitutional adviser of the legislature, and as guardian of the interests of 331the Union. ”

“ I have gone to these details, to give you a just idea of the parties in Congress. I assure you, upon my honor, sir, I have given you a candid state of facts, to the best of my judgment. The men against whom the suspicions you mention must be directed, are, in general, the most sensible, the most liberal, the most independent, and the most respectable characters in our body, as well as the most unequivocal friends to the army. ”

“ In the give and take of daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers, in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying phases of unlooked-for assault, or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our congressional history. ”

“ Our constitution seems not to be well understood with you. If the congress were a permanent body, there would be more reason in being jealous of giving it powers. But its members are chosen annually, and cannot be chosen more than three years successively, nor more than three years in seven, and any of them may be recalled at any time, whenever their constituents shall be dissatisfied with their conduct. They are of the people, and return again to mix with the people, having no more durable pre-eminence than the different grains of sand in an hour-glass. ”

“ Men elected to congress and state legislatures are the servants of the people, elected to protect their interests; hence, their will should control the action of members of congress and state legislatures. ”

“ The character and talents of delegates to Congress daily become more and more important, and I regret your declining that appointment at this interesting period. Respect, however, is due to the considerations which influence you, but as they do not oppose your accepting a place in the Legislature, I hope the State will still continue to draw advantage from your services; much remains to be done, and laborers do not abound. ”