observation that our legislature, instead of being served, is ruled by its committees; that those committees prepare their measures in private; that their number renders their privacy a secure secrecy, by making them too many to be watched, and individually too insignificant to be worth watching; that their division of prerogatives results in a loss, through diffusion, of all actual responsibility; and that their co-ordination leads to such a competition among them for the attention of their respective houses that legislation is rushed, when it is not paralyzed. It is thus that, whilst all real power is in the hands of Congress, that power is often thrown out of gear and its exercise brought almost to a standstill. The competition of the committees is the clog. Their reports stand in the way of each other, and so the complaint is warranted that Congress can get nothing done. Interests which press for attention in the nation are reported upon by the appropriate committee, perhaps, but the report gets pushed to the wall. Or they are not reported upon. They are brought to the notice of Congress, but they go to a committee which is unfavorable. The progress of legislation depends both upon the fortunes of competing reports and upon the opinions held by particular committees. The same system of committee government prevails in our state legislatures, and has led to some notable results, which have recently been pointed out in a pamphlet entitled _American Constitutions_, contributed to the Johns Hopkins series of Studies in History and Political Science by Mr. Horace Davis. In the state legislatures, as in Congress, the origination and control of legislation by standing committees has led to haphazard, incoherent, irresponsible law-making, and to a universal difficulty about getting anything done. The result has been that state legislatures have been falling into disrepute in all quarters. They are despised and mistrusted, and many States have revised their constitutions in order to curtail legislative powers and limit the number and length of legislative sessions. There is in some States an apparent inclination to allow legislators barely time enough to provide moneys for the maintenance of the governments. In some instances necessary powers have been transferred from the legislatures to the courts; in others to the governors. The intent of all such changes is manifest. It is thought safer to entrust power to a law court, performing definite functions under clear laws and in accordance with strict judicial standards, or to a single conspicuous magistrate, who can be watched and cannot escape responsibility for his official acts, than to entrust it to a numerous body which burrows toward its ends in committee-rooms, getting its light through lobbies; and which has a thousand devices for juggling away responsibility, as well as scores of antagonisms wherewith to paralyze itself.