Year: 1879

Two out of every three Congressmen are lawyers. We heartily wish that the propor tion might be reversed. As class, no doubt lawyers are our best legislators, but they art only single, small class, after all, and theil class peculiarities, when assembled in suct preponderating force in Congress, give quite g peculiar, and, to some extent, a misleading bias to the proceedings of that body.

 This bias is very noticeable in recent de- bates. There is need of a thorough, goed tempered discussion of the practice of tack. ing general legislation to the supply bills and further, of the special merits or demerits oi the legislation now actually sought te be at. tached to the Army and Legislative Appropri atien bills by the Democratic majority. Three good debaters on a side would say all that needs saying on both points, in days debate Why, then, were there fifty or more names on the list of speakers, and volume of talk that was in the main mere iteration, adding noth- ing te the elucidation of thequestions at issue Simply because fifty or more ''tonguey" law yers have believed that their regulations as takers would suffer with admiring constituent cies unless they took part in the "great debate'' on the Army Bill. No such difficulty embar- rasses the business of the English House of Commons, though it numbers twice as many members as our House of Representatives since, in that body, the talking members are but small proportion of the whole

 But the multitude of speakers effect ssme- thing worse than an undue expansion of the balloon of debate. They intensity partisan bitternesses and aggravate partisan differences to degree that is peculiarly injurious when parties assume sectional shape, and when ig norance and misapprehension increase to large proportions an alienation for which an ill-tem- pered advocacy is largely responsible. No one at all familiar with courts, especially jury trials, can fail to observe the same old lawyers tricks in the debates of Congress One reading the Congressional Record of the few past weeks is struck with the lawyers style of appeal that prevades that monumental heap of rubbish. Everywhere opponents are berated, friends be- lauded, motives misconstrued, truths denied, and falsehoods asserted, with all the arts and all the confidence of cunning advocate present ing his case to jury. The whole debate is in the manner and characterized by all the faults of the court room.

 Indeed many of our Congressional ''crises" are mere lawyer-made shams- Enmity in Washington is more apparent than real; the sham passion, and the sham enthusiasm of the disputant is, more than half, tricks of the pro- fession-legal fictions. Indeed we suspect that the implacable enemies who tear each other to shreds on the floor of the House meet very pleasantly after adjournment, and fraternize after the contentious of legislation just as read fly as thay fraternize after the contentious of the bar. The difficulty is, that the people are often misled by this exaggerated tone of debate into entertaining hatreds entirely unwarranted by the differences of policy or opinion out of which they arise.

 Often, as in the preliminary skirmishes of the battle of 80, now proceeding in Congress, the supposed necessities of the various parties block the whole ordinary course of legislation. Important questions of currency, tariff, civil service reform are subordinated to petty squab- bles for position in the coming political con- test Indeed, not only do petty political is- sues systematically supersede legitimate busi- ness, but they systematically engender ill-tem- per, malice and uncharitableness in the public at large. It is at such seasons that the public need to watch their lawyer legislators most care fully, and to remember that their powers are rather those of the advocate, accomplished in the art of infammatory appeal, than those of the statesman, whose chief mental characteris- tics are supposed to be calm consideration. de- liberation and decision