He would hook up House and Senate as a coachman hooks up his team, and driving them tandem or abreast as the exigencies of the hour suggested, see how far two such powerful agencies might take him on his White House road.
It was on the side of Senator Hanway a brilliant thought and a daring one, this plan to seize a Speakership and apply it to his personal fortunes; for your Speakership is that office second only to a Presidency, and comes often to be the latter's superior in practical force.

Those wise ones who designed the government intended the House of Representatives to be a republic.

Through its own groveling abjections, however, it long ago sunk to an autocracy with the Speaker in the role of autocrat.

It sold its birthright for no one knows what mess of pottage to pass its slavish days beneath a tyranny of the gavel.

The Speaker settles all things.