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only special privilege attaching to the public purse which the Lower House enjoys over the Upper. Amendments to such bills can be moved in the Senate; and all such bills must pass the Senate before they become law. I am inclined to think that individual members of the Senate work harder than individual Representatives. More is expected of them, and any prolonged absence from duty would be more remarked in the Senate than in the other House. In our Parliament this is reversed. The payment made to members of the Senate is 3000 dollars, or 600l., per annum, and to a Representative, 500l. per annum. To this is added certain mileage allowance for traveling backward and forward between their own State and the Capitol. A Senator, therefore, from California or Oregon has not altogether a bad place; but the halcyon days of mileage allowances are, I believe, soon to be brought to an end. It is quite within rule that the Senator of to-day should be the Representative of to-morrow. Mr. Crittenden, who was Senator from Kentucky, is now a member of the Lower House from an electoral district in that State. John Quincy Adams went into the House of Representatives after he had been President of the United States. Divisions in the Senate do not take place as in the House of Representatives. The ayes and noes are called for in the same way; but if a poll be demanded, the Clerk of the House calls out the names of the different Senators, and makes out lists of the votes according to the separate answers given by the members. The mode is certainly more dignified than that pursued in the other House, where during the ceremony of voting the members look very much like sheep being passed into their pens. I heard two or three debates in the House of Representatives, and that one especially in which, as I have said before, a chapter was read out of the Book of Joshua. The manner in which the Creator's name and the authority of His Word was banded about the house on that occasion did not strike me favorably. The question originally under debate was the relative power of the civil and military authority. Congress had desired to declare its ascendency over military matters, but the army and the Executive generally had demurred to this,--not with an absolute denial of the rights of Congress, but with those civil and almost silent generalities with which a really existing power so well knows how to treat a nominal power. The ascendant wife seldom tells her husband in so many words that his opinion in the house is to go for nothing; she merely resolves that such shall be the case, and acts accordingly. An observer could not but perceive that in those days Congress was taking upon itself the part, not exactly of an obedient husband, but of a husband vainly attempting to assert his supremacy. "I have got to learn," said one gentleman after another, rising indignantly on the floor, "that the military authority of our generals is above that of this House." And then one gentleman relieved the difficulty of the position by branching off into an eloquent discourse against slavery, and by causing a chapter to be read out of the Book of Joshua. On that occasion the gentleman's diversion seemed to have the effect of relieving the House altogether from the embarrassment of the original question; but it was becoming manifest, day by day, that Congress was losing its ground, and that the army was becoming indifferent to its thunders: that the army was doing so, and also that ministers were doing so. In the States, the President and his ministers are not in fact subject to any parliamentary responsibility. The President may be impeached, but the member of an opposition does not always wish to have recourse to such an extreme measure as impeachment. The ministers are not in the houses, and cannot therefore personally answer questions. Different large subjects, such as foreign affairs, financial affairs, and army matters, are referred to Standing Committees in both Houses; and these committees have relations with the ministers. But they have no