nghuysen,
Simon Cameron, Anthony, Logan--would have received as a personal
affront a private message from the White House expressing
a desire that they should adopt any course in the discharge
of their legislative duties that they did not approve. If
they visited the White House, it was to give, not to receive
advice. Any little company or coterie who had undertaken
to arrange public policies with the President and to report
to their associates what the President thought would have
rapidly come to grief. These leaders were men, almost all
of them, of great faults. They were not free from ambition.
Some of them were quite capable of revenge, and of using
the powers of the Government to further their ambition or
revenge. But they maintained the dignity and the authority
of the Senatorial office. Each of these stars kept his own
orbit and shone in his sphere, within which he tolerated no
intrusion from the President, or from anybody else.

The reform of the civil service has doubtless shorn the office
of Senator of a good deal of its power. I think President
McKinley, doubtless with the best and purest intentions,
did still more to curtail the dignity and authority of the
office. I dare say the increase in the number of Senators has
had also much to do with it. President McKinley, with his
great wisdom and tact and his delightful individual quality,
succeeded in establishing an influence over the members of
the Senate not, I think, equalled from the beginning of the
Government, except possibly by Andrew Jackson. And while
the strong will of Jackson subjugated Senators, in many cases,
as it did other men, yet it roused an antagonism not only
in his political opponents, but in many important men of his
own party, which would have overthrown him but for his very
great popularity with the common people. President McKinley
also made one serious mistake, of which indeed he did not
set the example. Yet he made what was before but an individual
and extraordinary instance, a practice. If that practice
continue, it will go far, in my judgment, to destroy the independence
and dignity of the Senate. That is, the appointment of members
of the Senate to distinguished and lucrative places in the
public service, in which they are to receive and obey the
command of the Executive, and then come back to their seats
to carry out as Senators a policy which they have adopted
at the command of another power, without any opport