senex CHAPTER III SENATES SENATES are among the oldest of human institutions. Their name reveals their history. The Latin senatus comes from old man. First the aged head of the family ruled, then the aged members of the tribe. When leadership passed over to individuals, they naturally consulted the venerable. Doubtless there had been innumerable councils of such before "the Lord said unto Moses, Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel," and before "Moses went out, and told the people the words of the Lord, and gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them round about the tabernacle." From that day to this, the "elders" have played a conspicuous part in church history. They have even given to a great sect its name, for "Presbyterian" comes from a Latin word for "elder." In secular affairs another name tells the same tale, for "Aldermen" were once "Ealdor (elder) men." 1 It is among the Greeks that we can first trace the development of the Council of Elders into something approaching a modern Senate. The Homeric poems show us a Council of chiefs or old men, and occasional meetings of a listening Agora - the assembly of the people. The next step was the defining of this Council under the Constitution Lycurgus is supposed to have given to Sparta not later than 825 B.C. The number of the Council was then fixed at thirty the two Kings and twentyeight ancient men, not appointed until sixty years old and holding office for life. These limitations appear to have given historians warrant for speaking henceforward of a "Senate." Plutarch ranks its establishment as the most important change Lycurgus made. Having a power equal to that of the Kings in matters of great consequence, and, as Plato expresses it, allaying and qualifying the fiery genius of the royal office, the Spartan Senate gave safety and steadiness to the commonwealth. The twenty-eight always adhered to the Kings so far 2 George Grote, History of Greece, passim. 1 Numbers, XI, 17, 24. as to resist democracy, and on the other hand supported the people against the establishment of absolute monarchy. It came to pass that the assembly of the people merely accepted or rejected what had been previously determined in the Senate. This they did without open discussion or power of amendment, and, if they decided crookedly, the Senate with the Kings could reverse their decision. Solon modified and improved the Spartan idea for Athens. He enlarged the powers of its ancient Council, known as the Senate of the Areopagus from the place where it sat. He gave it an ample supervision over the execution of the laws, and imposed on it the censorial duty of inspecting the lives and occupations of the citizens, as well as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. Its judicial powers are most mentioned. The nine Archons passed into it and sat for life. Down to the time of Pericles it was the most important body in the State. The novelty Solon devised was a second Senate, the proboleutic or preconsidering Senate, with intimate and especial reference to the public assembly to prepare matters for its discussion, to convoke and superintend its meetings, and to insure the execution of its decrees. As first constituted by Solon, this Senate had four hundred members, taken in equal proportions from the four tribes. They were not chosen by lot as in the more advanced stage of the democracy, but were elected by the people. Members of the fourth or poorest class, though sharing in the election, were not themselves eligible. Grote finds in the era of Solon (594 B.C.) "the first known example of a genuine and disinterested constitutional reform, and the first foundation stone of that great fabric which afterwards became the type of democracy in Greece." Solon is said to have contemplated that, by means of the two Senates, the State would be held fast, as if it were with a double anchor, against all shocks and storms. While Solon was yet alive, though very old, Peisistratus usurped the power in Athens and much of Solon's work seemed for the time to be undone. The forms of government persisted, however, after a fashion, and revived after the fall of the Peisistratid dynasty in 510 B.C., fifty years after the first usurpation of its founder. Cleisthenes was the new leader of constitutional government. The annually changed Senate, instead of being composed of four hundred members taken in equal proportion from each of the old four tribes, was enlarged to five hundred, taken equally from each of the new ten tribes. It comes before us, under the name of "Senate of Five Hundred," as an active and indispensable body throughout the whole Athenian democracy; and the practice now seems to have begun of selecting the Senators by lot. From the time of Cleisthenes, the Senate of Five Hundred steps far beyond its original duty of preparing matters for the discussion of the ecclesia; it embraces, besides, a large circle of administrative and general superintendence, that hardly admits of any definition. Its sittings become constant, with the exception of special holidays, and the year is distributed into ten portions called Prvtanies, the fifty Senators of each tribe taking by turns the duty of constant attendance during one prytany. The remaining Senators, not belonging to the prytanizing tribe, may of course attend if they choose; but the attendance of nine among them, one from each of the remaining nine tribes, is imperatively necessary to constitute a valid meeting, and to insure a constant representation of the collective people. In Rome likewise the ancient Council of Elders grew into a Senate. Tradition has it that originally the Council was made up of the heads of families or clans. After the clan-elders ceased to exist, the King selected, but probably was bound by custom to see that each clan was represented. When a member died, the King would name another from the same clan. Out of this grew the life tenure of the Senators, subject to termination by the Censors. About 351 B.C. the filling of vacancies was transferred from the Consuls (who had succeeded the Kings) to the Censors. Certain classes of magistrates on completing their terms of office became Senators, and the Censors chose others enough to fill up the ranks. From three hundred in number they grew to six hundred under the Emperors. Originally when the King had a proposal to submit to the people, he first took the advice of the Council of Elders. After the Council had been transformed into the Senate, that body kept and never lost its formal character of being a council of advisers. Nominally it had no legislative authority. Really it ruled, until well into the last century of the Republic. Up to that time it controlled by the force of custom, which prescribed that no magistrate should submit any important matter to the people without the advice of the Senate, and that no magistrate should decline to submit such a matter if the Senate requested. The veto was to be exercised by a magistrate only if the Senate so advised, and was to be withheld when it so counseled. If any magistrate balked, the Senate had for a weapon of last resort the veto of some more friendly or submissive magistrate. At first it also had the duty of what was virtually the passing upon the constitutionality of measures after the people had acted, but this was withdrawn about 339 B.C. Another curtailment of power came in 286 B.C., with the Lex Hortensia, providing that the resolutions of the Assembly of the Plebs might receive the sanction of law even without ratification by the Senate. When Sulla seized power, he took from the Assembly the right to discuss laws without authorization from the Senate, but in the general undoing of Sulla's work a few years later Pompey gave back to the tribunes the power to initiate legislation. With the turmoils that changed Rome from republic to empire, the Senate lost such of its authority as had survived the usurpations of the demagogues, and under the Emperors it was little more than a sham. The House of Lords is another Senate that traces its origin to a council. It succeeded the Great Council of Norman times, and that in turn had succeeded the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, a comparatively small body of councilors, made up for the most part of Bishops, Abbots, Ealdormen or Earls, and King's Thegns. When Parliaments came, peers and prelates are known to have deliberated on at least some occasions apart from the King's Council, but presently they came to control and then to be the Great Council, combining in themselves the work of advising the Crown and of sharing in legislation. They were not, however, known as the House of Lords until the time of Henry VIII. Up to the period of the Reformation, the spiritual Lords generally made a majority of the upper House. Then their number fell to twenty-six. The two archbishops and twentyfour bishops now have seats; a junior bishop has to wait until he holds the see of Durham, Winchester, or London. Judges have been among the members and the upper House has exercised judicial functions from the time Parliament began. At present there are four salaried lords-of-appeal in ordinary. On retirement they hold their peerages during life. The four, presided over by the Lord Chancellor, compose the supreme tribunal of the kingdom. Technically speaking, all the other members have a right to join with them, and some of those with legal training occasionally so do, but in most instances they work alone. The House of Lords has grown something more than fourfold in six centuries. To the model Parliament of 1295 were summoned less that one hundred forty. By the time of Henry VII the number had fallen to eighty or less. To the first Parliament of Charles II were summoned almost precisely the same number as in 1295. With the eighteenth century began the lavish creation of peers. More than half the peerages of to-day have been created within the last half-century, and only a few of the rest can be called ancient. The total membership has now gone beyond seven hundred. COLONIAL COUNCILS AMERICAN Colonial upper chambers were commonly spoken of as "Councils," but neither in origin nor in character were they like the councils from which sprang the Senates of ancient times or the English House of Lords. The earliest of them were substantially boards of directors of trading companies. In the older New England colonies the fact that they were not appointed by the Crown, but were elected, till just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, clearly distinguishes them from what has been more generally meant by "Council." Furthermore, some of the fundamental characteristics of the English parliamentary framework were never embodied in any colonial organization actually put into effect. "Estates" were not recognized as such; the clergy had no seats; judges did not sit as such. There were no inherited memberships in the upper House. Life memberships were exceptional and temporary. Only in Massachusetts was carried out an attempt to transplant these features of aristocracy from England. Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, and other peers with Puritan sympathies sought changes that would encourage them to come to America, and with other things an acknowledgment of hereditary right to a seat in the upper House. The colonists began to make appointments for life; but, as for the establishment of hereditary dignity, they answered by the hand of Cotton: "Where |