Members are loath to antagonize a party chairman to whom their own bills must go for approval.

Finally, Senator Hoar dared to take the risk, and with such success that on June 21, 1886, the committee reported a bill for the complete repeal of the Tenure of Office Act, the chairman--Senator Edmunds--alone dissenting.

When the bill was taken up for consideration, Senator Hoar remarked that he did not believe there were five members of the Senate who really believed in the propriety of that act.

"It did not seem to me to be quite becoming," he explained, "to ask the Senate to deal with this general question, while the question which arose between the President and the Senate as to the interpretation and administration of the existing law was pending.

I thought, as a party man, that I had hardly the right to interfere with the matter which was under the special charge of my honorable friend from Vermont, by challenging a debate upon the general subject from a different point of view." Although delicately put, this statement was in effect a repudiation of the party leadership of Edmunds and in the debate which ensued, not a single Senator came to his support.