If, therefore, the Congress as a whole must be somewhat immediately responsive to the expressed public will, what, indeed, is the precise course of action that a representative, as a matter of policy, must pursue? He is regarded, in the first instance, as representing not his State, but rather a particular Congressional district of his State. His tenure of office runs for but two years, at the expiration of which he must submit to his constituents not a record of constructive statesmanship, based upon his fealty to measures of national or international importance, but rather one alleging the skill with which he has protected the peculiar interests of his district. That he has sought to obtain a new customs house, has opposed a tariff for revenue only, has defended the principle of bimetallism, not indeed in relation to the wider demands of the nation, but because of the particular demands of his constituency, are matters of great practical import to him, for upon these depends the approval or the rejection of his record. The Congressman who aspires to longevity of service is apt, therefore, to determine his proposal and defense of measures of legislation largely, if not wholly, by the expressed opinion of those whom he represents. Regarding the Negro Congressmen, therefore, in the light of the practices common to all Congressmen, there can be offered no valid criticism of the character of their legislation. The records of Congress show that these functionaries were, as a matter of policy, interested in their constituents, and that they promoted legislation for general advancement for the reason that the circumstances of the people whom they represented warranted legislation of that sort. For the tendency of some of the Negro Congressmen to propose legislative measures which were racial in character, two reasons are conspicuously obvious. In the first place, these men regarded themselves the official spokesmen of their race. The power conferred upon them they believed to be evidence of the expectation and confidence of the Negroes in them to secure for the race civil rights, economic opportunity and political preferment. They found, moreover, that legislation granting to Negroes their civil rights failed often to protect them in the exercise of those rights. For such protection, then, these Congressmen had often to contend. These personal, ever present, inherent duties permitted these Congressmen neither time nor energy for the preparation of legislative measures of other types.