The fact of the overtopping power of Congress, however, remains. The houses create all governmental policy, with that wide latitude of ‘political discretion’ in the choice of means which the Supreme Court unstintingly accords them. Congress has often come into conflict with the Supreme Court by attempting to extend the province of the federal government as against the States; but it has seldom, I believe, been brought effectually to book for any alleged exercise of powers as against its directly competing branch, the executive. Having by constitutional grant the last word as to foreign relations, the control of the finances, and even the oversight of executive appointments, Congress exercises what powers of direction and management it pleases, as fulfilling, not as straining, the Constitution. Government lives in the origination, not in the defeat, of measures of government. The President obstructs by means of his ‘No;’ the houses govern by means of their ‘Yes.’ He has killed some policies that are dead; they have given birth to all policies that are alive. But the measures born in Congress have no common lineage. They have not even a traceable kinship. They are fathered by a score or two of unrelated standing committees: and Congress stands godfather to them all, without discrimination. Congress, in effect, parcels out its great powers amongst groups of its members, and so confuses its plans and obscures all responsibility. It is a leading complaint of Sir Henry Maine’s against the system in England, which is just under his nose, that it confers the preliminary shaping and the initiation of all legislation upon the cabinet, a body which deliberates and resolves in strict secrecy,--and so reminds him, remotely enough, of the Spartan Ephors and the Venetian Council of Ten. He commends, by contrast, that constitution (our own, which he sees at a great distance) which reserves to the legislature itself the origination and drafting of its measures. It is hard for us, who have this commended constitution under our noses, to perceive wherein we have the advantage. British legislation is for the most part originated and shaped by a single committee, acting in secret, whose proposals, when produced, are eagerly debated and freely judged by the sovereign legislative body. Our legislation is framed and initiated by a great many committees, deliberating in secret, whose proposals are seldom debated and only perfunctorily judged by the sovereign legislative body. It is impossible to mistake the position and privileges of the Brutish cabinet, so great and conspicuous and much discussed are they. They simplify the whole British system for men’s comprehension by merely standing at the centre of it. But our own system is simple only in appearance. It is easy to see that our legislature and executive are separate, and that the legislature matures its own measures by means of committees of its own members. But it may readily escape superficial