ives is shamefully
small. This is a great injustice, not only to members of
the two Houses, but it is a great public injury, because the
country cannot command the service of able men in the prime
of life, unless they have already acquired large fortunes.
It cannot be expected that a lawyer making from $25,000 to
$50,000 a year, or a man engaged in business, whose annual
income perhaps far exceeds that amount, will leave it for
$5,000 a year. In that way he is compelled not only to live
frugally himself, but what is more disagreeable still, to
subject his household to the live in the humblest style in
a costly and fashionable city, into which wealthy persons
are coming from all parts of the country.

The members of Congress have a great many demands upon them,
which they cannot resist. So a Senator or Representative
with $5,000 a year, living in Washington a part of the year
and at home the other part, cannot maintain his family as
well as an ordinary mechanic or salaried man who gets $2,500
or $3,000 a year, and spends all his time in one place.

The English aristocracy understand this pretty well. They
give no salary at all to the members of their House of Commons.
The result is that the poor people, the working people and
people in ordinary life, cannot get persons to represent them,
from their own class. That will soon be true in this country,
if we do not make a change. I suppose nearly every member
of either House of Congress will tell you in private that
he thinks the salary ought to be raised. But the poor men
will not vote for it, because they think the example will
be unpopular, and the rich men do not care about it.

CHAPTER XXVI
PROPRIETY IN DEBATE

The race of demagogues we have always with us. They have
existed in every government from Cleon and the Sausage-maker.
They command votes and seem to delight popular and legislative
assemblies. But they rarely get very far in public favor.
The men to whom the American people gives its respect, and
whom it is willing to trust in the great places of power,
are intelligent men of property, dignity and sobriety.

We often witness and perhaps are tempted to envy the applause
which many public speakers get by buffoonery, by rough wit,
by coarse personality, by appeal to the vulgar passions. We
are apt to think that grave and serious reasonings are lost
on the audiences that receive them, half asleep, as if listening
to a tedious sermon, and who c