Still, it must be regarded as no inconsiderable addition to the usefulness of the Senate that it enjoys a much greater freedom of discussion than the House can allow itself. It permits itself a good deal of talk in public about what it is doing,[41] and it commonly talks a great deal of sense. It is small enough to make it safe to allow individual freedom to its members, and to have, at the same time, such order and sense of proportion in its proceedings as is characteristic of small bodies, like boards of college trustees or of commercial directors, who feel that their main object is business, not speech-making, and so say all that is necessary without being tedious, and do what they are called upon to do without need of driving themselves with hurrying rules. Such rules, they seem to feel, are meant only for big assemblies which have no power of self-control. Of course the Senate talks more than an average board of directors would, because the corporations which it represents are States, made up, politically speaking, of numerous popular constituencies to which Senators, no less than Representatives, must make speeches of a sort which, considering their fellow-members alone, would be unnecessary if not impertinent and out of taste, in the Senate chamber, but which will sound best in the ears of the people, for whose ears they are intended, if delivered there. Speeches which, so to say, run in the name of the Senate's business will generally be more effectual for campaign uses at home than any speech could be which should run in the name of the proper topics of the stump. There is an air of doing one's duty by one's party in speaking party platitudes or uttering party defiances on the floor of the Senate or of the House. Of course, however, there is less temptation to such speech-making in the Senate than in the House. The House knows the terrible possibilities of this sort in store for it, were it to give perfect freedom of debate to its three hundred and twenty-five members, in these days when frequent mails and tireless tongues of telegraphy bring every constituency within easy earshot of Washington; and it therefore seeks to confine what little discussion it indulges in to the few committee-men specially in charge of the business of each moment. But the Senate is small and of settled habits, and has no such bugbear to trouble it. It can afford to do without any _cloture_ or previous question. No Senator is likely to want to speak on all the topics of the session, or to prepare more speeches than can conveniently be spoken before adjournment is imperatively at hand. The House can be counted upon to waste enough time to leave some leisure to the upper chamber.