Catalogue Of The Library Of The United States Senate Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Origin and Development of the United States Senate In the following study an effort has been made to trace the development of the United States senate from the time that a second house was first proposed in the convention of 1787 to the present. In this discussion especial attention has been paid to the way in which the senate has exercised the powers granted to it by the constitution, and to the ways in which, either by an increase or a decrease of those powers, it has deviated from the purpose of the framers of the constitution. In doing this the three functions exercised by that body, legislative, executive and judicial, have been separately treated. It has been impossible to obtain a full knowledge of the proceedings of the senate during its early days, as the debates were not reported and the sessions, for some time, were held in secret. Our chief sources of information regarding the period are the "Annals of Congress" and the "Senate Journal." These are supplemented by the "Journal of Maclay," covering the period of the First Congress, and the writings of the early statesmen, especially those of Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison. The same difficulty exists throughout for the executive proceedings, as the executive sessions are still held in secret, and none of the debates have been made public, except in the few instances in which the injunction of secrecy has been removed from them. As the "Executive Journal" since 1869 has not been published, it is still more difficult to obtain an adequate knowledge of the executive proceedings since that date. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.