I would have all this massive masonry about us taken down, and the chamber brought to the windows. This change would make ventilation easy, and secure all that the Senator so anxiously recommends. It is more revolutionary than his plan. It will be expensive, very expensive, I fear; for the very completeness of the original work is an impediment to change. This Capitol, as we all see, is built for immortality. Its disadvantages will not be less permanent than its advantages, unless we apply ourselves resolutely to their revision. Without legislation and positive effort on our part, this chamber will continue uncomfortable for generations and long centuries. Senators after us, in thickening ranks, will sit here as uncomfortable as ourselves. If not for ourselves, then for those who come after us, we should initiate a change. Besides bringing this chamber to the windows, its proportions should be reduced,--I am disposed to say one half. A chamber of one half the size would answer every purpose of business, and not fail essentially even on occasions of display. Everything is now sacrificed to the galleries. Senators are treated as the gladiators of the ancient amphitheatre, not to make “a Roman holiday,” but a Washington show. As many as fourteen or fifteen hundred people are constantly gathered in these galleries. But such surrounding multitudes are plainly inconsistent with the quiet transaction of business and the simple tone which belongs to legislation. I am reminded of the testimony attributed to Sir Robert Peel, whose protracted parliamentary life made him an expert. Interrogated by the Committee of the House of Commons with regard to the proper size for the new chamber, he replied, that, though the House consisted of six hundred and fifty-eight members, yet that full number was rarely in attendance, so that on common occasions even a small house would not be filled, and in his judgment the chamber should be constructed with a view to the daily business rather than to the infrequent occasions when it would be crowded. His compendious conclusion was, that the House should be comfortable every day, at the risk of a tight squeeze now and then. The same idea had been expressed before by one of the best of early English writers, Thomas Fuller, who in his proverbs says: “A house had better be too little for a day than too great for a year”:[43] houses ought to be proportioned to ordinary, and not extraordinary occasions. In these concurring sayings I find practical sense.