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LEGISLATIVE POWER OF THE STATE.
Division of the Legislative Body into two Houses.—Senate.—House of Representatives.—Different functions of these two Bodies
The legislative power of the state is vested in two assemblies, the first of which generally bears the name of the senate.
The senate is commonly a legislative body; but it sometimes becomes an executive and judicial one. It takes a part in the government in several ways, according to the constitution of the different states;[1] but it is in the nomination of public functionaries that it most commonly assumes an executive power. It partakes of judicial power in the trial of certain political offences, and sometimes also in the decision of certain civil cases.[2] The number of its members is always small. The other branch of the legislature, which is usually called the house of representatives, has no share whatever in the administration, and only takes a part in the judicial power inasmuch as it impeaches public functionaries before the senate.
The members of the two houses are nearly everywhere subject to the same conditions of election. They are chosen in the same manner, and by the same citizens.
The only difference which exists between them is, that the term for which the senate is chosen, is in general longer than that of the house of representatives. The latter seldom remain in office longer than a year; the former usually sit two or three years.
By granting to the senators the privilege of being chosen for several years, and being renewed seriatim, the law takes care to preserve in the legislative body a nucleus of men already accustomed to public business, and capable of exercising a salutary influence upon the junior members.
The Americans, plainly, did not desire, by this separation of the legislative body into two branches, to make one house hereditary and the other elective; one aristocratic and the other democratic. It was not their object to create in the one a bulwark to power, while the other represented the interests and passions of the people
