It is of record that Senators were addressed as “Your Highness of the Senate” and Representatives as “Your Highness of the Lower House,” while it was solemnly suggested that the proper manner for the Senate to receive the Clerk of the House of Representatives was for the Sergeant-at-arms or “Usher of the Black Rod,” with the mace on his shoulder, to meet the Clerk at the door. In view of the ire aroused between the two Houses at that time, a mallet in the hands of the “Usher of the Black Rod,” when he met the Clerk of the House of Representatives at the door, would have carried out the feelings of some of the Senators better than a mace. These are some of the apings of royalty that were seriously considered by Congress and, on May 14, 1789, endorsed in the Senate by the very respectable vote of ten to eight. When the British burned some of the Federal buildings in Washington, 1814, many public records were destroyed, so there is difficulty in determining if this endorsement of monarchial forms was rescinded at any time from 1789 to 1814. Still, though one hundred and eighteen years have lapsed since 1789, it is not yet too late for the Senate to purge itself of this “dreadful” contempt of the great American people on this subject of titles. For some reason, best known to themselves, the members of the first Senate decided that their session should be held behind closed doors. House rule No. 11, as inscribed on the cover of William Maclay’s journal, reads: “Inviolable secrecy shall be observed with respect to all matters transacted in the Senate while the doors are shut or as often as the same is enjoined from the chair.” The result has been that for more than a century afterward this important chapter in our history has remained almost a blank. Fortunate it was that Maclay, who with Robert Morris represented Pennsylvania in the first Senate, kept a daily record of the doings of the Upper House for the two years he was Senator. It appears from this journal that the first great question that confronted Congress when it held its initial session in New York, April, 1789, was whether or not this “experiment” in government was to assume monarchial forms. Under date of May 1, 1789, Maclay records: “That the motives of the actors in the late Revolution were various cannot be doubted. The abolishing of royalty, the extinguishment of patronage and dependencies attached to that form of government, were the exalted motives of many revolutionists and these were the improvements meant by them to be made of the war which was forced on us by British aggression—in fine, the amelioration of government and bettering the condition of mankind. These ends and none other were publicly avowed and all our constitutions and public acts were formed in this spirit.