ABSTRACT
The Senate has many contrasted characteristics, shows many faces, lends itself easily to no confident generalization. It differs very radically from the House of Representatives. The House is an organic unit; it has been at great pains to make itself so, and to become a working body under a single unifying discipline; while the Senate is not so much an organization as a body of individuals, retaining with singularly little modification the character it was originally intended to have. The Senate, like the House, prepares its business through the instrumentality of standing committees, and in 1828 it conferred upon president pro tempore the authority to appoint its committees. The formality and stiffness, the attitude as if of rivalry and mutual distrust, which have marked the dealings of the President with the Senate, have shown a tendency to increase rather than to decrease as the years have passed, and embarrassed the action of the government in many difficult and important matters.
