The bicameral system of legislation was due to a happy accident, the preference of the English clergy to vote their supplies in convocation rather than in Parliament.2 The three or four estates which gained the right to assemble on the continent of Europe were more subject to division and less capable of co-operation than the Lords and Commons, and so were unable to maintain their position against the court. The gentlemen of England in both houses usually stood together as long as the aggression of the king was to be feared; and their success made that legislative form the admiration of the philosophers of the eighteenth century.

The colonial governors were aided by appointed councils, or in a few cases by a body of elected assistants, who reviewed the measures passed by the assemblies. They at first sat together, but a dispute over the ownership of a pig caused in Massachusetts a separation in 1644 which was imitated by the other colonies; and the lower houses used their studies of English history to assert that they were entitled to all the privileges of the House of Commons, including the control of bills of supply, and to insist that the councils had in that respect and as regards impeachments the same powers as the House of Lords. At the formation of the first State constitutions, the natural course was usually adopted: a continuance in imitation of the practice in the mother country and the colonies. The praise by Montesquieu of this part of the British Constitution and the recollection of the conduct of the Long Parliament during the suppression of the House of Lords, made the division of the legislative power popular.7

2 Supra, § 47.

See May, Constitutional History of England (Am. ed.), vol. i; ch. v. 4 Supra, § 47.

5 Moran, Rise and Development of the Bicameral System in America, Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. xiii, pp. 211, 216. Chalmers, Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the American Colonies; supra, § 47, over note 27.

6 Poore's Charters and Constitutions.

7 "Several States, since the war, have experienced the necessity of a division of the legislature. Maryland was saved from a most pernicious measure by her Senate. A rage for paper money, bordering on madness, prevailed in their House of Delegates -an emission of £500,000 was proposed; a sum equal to the circulating medium of the State. Had the sum been emitted, every shilling of specie would have been driven from circulation, and most of it from the State.

Pennsylvania, Georgia and Vermont were the only States to establish legislatures with single chambers; and the action of the former was due to the personal preference and influence of Franklin. His remark that a legislature with two branches was like a wagon driven by a horse before and a horse behind, in opposite directions, is said to have carried the measure through the constitutional convention. The subsequent repetition by the French

National Convention of the abuses of the Long Parliament, combined with far greater excesses, so deeply impressed mankind with the need of some check upon a popular assembly that the bicameral system is now almost universal.9

As the nineteenth century approaches its close, we see criticisms of second chambers similar to those which were rife at the end of the eighteenth century.10 "If a second chamber," said Siéyès, "dissents from the first, it is mischievous; if it agrees, it is superfluous." 11 The two principal advantages of such a system are the prevention of tyranny and self-seeking by a single house, and the check to rash, ill-considered measures which may be demanded by the people.12 The former, men have now learned to prevent by

The only single legislative chambers now in existence which the researches of the writer have been able to discover are in Servia, Bulgaria, Greece, the Orange Free State, San Domingo, Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and the Colony of British Columbia; and the history of most of them has not tended to commend the institution. The councils of Montenegro and Andorra seem to belong to the earlier type, where the voters have an immediate share in legislation. In Finland representatives of the four estates are still occasionally convoked.

10 Milton, in his Ready and Easy Way to Establishe a Free Commonwealth, Sir James Mackintosh, in Vindiciae Gallicae (§ iv), and Franklin in the first Pennsylvania Convention (supra, over note 8), all men of deep learning and broad political experience, were believers in the advantages of a single legislative chamber. So also were Turgot (letter to Dr. Price on the American Revolution) and the leaders of the French Revolution. John Stuart Mill expressed a preference for a single chamber with minority representation (Representative Government, ch. xiii). See also the remarks of Goldwin Smith in

the Bystander for May, 1880, quoted by Doutre, Constitution of Canada, p. 66; infra, note 11; and the debates in the committee on the French Constitution of 1848, Souvenirs d'Alexis de Tocqueville, Paris, 1893, p. 368.

11 See Maine's criticism of this epigram in Popular Government, p. 178. "Nominated Senates are nullities with a latent possibility for mischief," said Goldwin Smith in the Bystander (Toronto, May, 1880, quoted by Doutre, Canadian Constitution, p. 67).

12 I attach little weight to the argument oftenest urged for having two Chambers-to prevent precipitancy, and compel a second deliberation; for it must be a very ill-constituted representative assembly in which the established forms of business do not require many more than two deliberations. The consideration which tells most to my judgment, in favor of two Chambers (and this I do regard as of some moment), is the evil effect produced upon the mind of any holder of power, whether an individual or an assembly, by the consciousness of having only themselves to consult. It is important that no set of persons should be able, even temporarily, to make their sic volo prevail

means of the powers vested by written constitutions in the executive and the courts. The latter has seemed less important to those who have been accustomed for more than a century to see the people govern themselves without resulting injury; and the stubborn opposition of the House of Lords to almost every salutary measure of reform, whether social, religious or political, has aroused storms of public indignation which have destroyed its influence and greatly weakened its powers. It is now usually conceded to be a rule of the Constitution in Great Britain and its colonies where the Crown has the power to appoint members of the upper chamber, that the House of Lords, Senate or Council, must pass a bill which it has once rejected, if in the meantime the leaders of the lower branch have appealed to the people by a dissolution, and a new house of representatives has been elected and passed the same measure a second time.13 In case of a refusal the Crown, at the request of the leaders of the elective assembly, will appoint enough members to overcome the opposition.14 The elective upper chambers in other countries have little hold on popular respect; and on any difference of importance with the lower houses they are nearly always brought to terms by a threat to cut off the supplies, which they know will produce a crisis wherein the people will take sides with their more immediate representatives. The bicameral system was at one time in favor for cities in the United States, but is now generally abandoned there. It persists in full vigor in the State legislatures, but few if any instances have

without asking any one else for his consent. A majority in a single assembly, when it has assumed a permanent character when composed of the same persons habitually acting together, and always assured of victory in their own House- easily becomes despotic and overweening if released from the necessity of considering whether its acts will be concurred in by another constituted authority" (Mill, Representative Government, ch. xiii).

13 See Lord Salisbury's Speech on the Irish Church Bill, cited by Maine, Popular Government, p. 117.

14 Such an appointment of twelve peers was made once in Great Britain, by Queen Anne in 1712, in order to create a Tory majority in the House of Lords; but the threat of a similar proceeding secured the passage of the Reform Bill by the peers in 1832, and has undoubtedly prevented the defeat of other salutary measures. In May, 1894, a similar threat secured the passage of the Civil Marriage bill by the Hungarian House of Magnates, which had previously rejected it. (New York Sun, Oct. 6, 1895.)

occurred in recent years where State senates have withstood strong currents of public opinion; 15 while since they are smaller they are usually more easily purchased than the houses of assembly. The Senate of the United States alone preserves the public respect, and has in numerous cases done public service by its defeat of mischievous measures, pushed through the House of Representatives by waves of popular excitement, which have subsequently subsided, leaving the bills without further support,16 while until recent years at least the confidence in the beneficial effects of the institution has not been shaken.17 The reason

for this lies in the fact that the Senate represents the Federal system in the Constitution, and that faith in such a representation has been a habit of the people since the opening of the Revolution, so that the custom is so strong that it would require a great shock for its destruction.18

15 The earlier State Senates usually represented property, more especially than the lower houses.

16 See infra, § 80.

17 See infra, § 80.

18 See Maine, Popular Government, Essay III; and again Essay IV, p. 229: "Nothing but an historical principle can be successfully opposed to the principle of making all public powers and all parliamentary assemblies the mere reflection of the average opinion of the multitude."

In Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Bavaria, Hungary, Saxony, Baden and Wurtemberg, the upper chambers are composed chiefly of hereditary - members or those appointed for life or elected to represent an hereditary class; although in Portugal and Hungary a few members seem to be chosen by a method of election which indirectly represents the people. In Germany members of the upper house are appointed for each session by the governments of the members of the empire. In most of the other countries and the British colonies members of the upper chambers are appointed

for life or elected for a term longer than the assembly, either immediately or indirectly by the people; with in some countries the requirement of a property qualification. In Italy the senators have a limited choice of new members. The practice in New Zealand and Japan also presents some peculiarities. (See The Parliaments of the World, Nineteenth Century for 1894, p. 708.) John Stuart Mill was in favor of a single chamber with minority representation; but considered that the best second chamber would be a body of men who had held important offices, or employments, legal, political, military or naval: —

"Of all principles on which a wisely conservative body, destined to moderate and regulate democratic ascendency, could possibly be constructed, the best seems to be that exemplified in the Roman Senate, itself the most consistently prudent and sagacious body that ever administered public affairs. The deficiencies of a democratic assembly, which represents the general public, are the deficiencies of the public itself, want of special train