The House of Representatives at Washington, which is now strongly
democratic, and pulls against the Senate like the divergent horses in Plato's Chariot of the Soul, declared, on Wednesday, by a vote of 332 to 18, that a Presidential " third term " would be " unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with peril to free institutions." We doubt whether this was a wise democratic move. Hitherto the "third term" has been very unpopular even in Repub- lican eircles, but if the Democrats make a party question of it in this way, it may cease to be so. The House of Representatives voting one thing is rather a reason why the Senate should vote the contradictory, though we do not suppose that in this case it will. But the anomalous period in which a change of national opinion tells on one House of the Legislature, but not on the other, must be a period of great temptation to the natural con- tentiousness of human nature. It must be a very real satisfaction for assemblies united in so ill-assorted a marriage to snub each other by powerful majorities, and perhaps even to consider these snubs acts of homage to the genius of a unique Constitution.
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