encroachment of the legislature upon the executive, in spite of the former's division into two houses, has in fact been effected, and instead of being deplored as an evil, is extolled as one of the chief excellences of the British Constitution. In America such encroachment would be impossible, even if we had but one chamber, on account of the written constitution. Yet this argument has been used here-by Daniel Webster, for instance, and others.1

Both the lines of argument are vitiated by nonrecognition of this distinction. When Lecky writes, "The necessity of a second Chamber, to exercise a controlling, modifying, retarding, and steadying influence, has acquired almost the position of an axiom"; and again when he says, "The experience of the past abundantly corroborates the views of those who dread government by a single chamber"2; the force of his words is greatly lessened by the fact that what is axiomatic in the one set of conditions may not be in the other, and that experience in the one set of countries may teach no lesson for the other. But let us examine these arguments separately.

Webster's Works, iii., 10-11, where he mentions Adams's Defense without citing his chief reason, and says: "If all legislative power rested in one house, it is very problematical whether any proper independence could be given, either to the executive or the judiciary. . . . If all legislative power be in one popular body, all other power, sooner or later, will be there also." Thus this "Defender of the Constitution" likewise overlooked the constitution! Again, ib., iv., 110 and 122-3, he associates the separation of the branches with the separation of the departments, upon the maintenance of which boundaries "the continuance of liberty depends," (cf. ib., iii., 27 where the departments are spoken of as "branches"). Also Professor Burgess, reviving this argument, forgets the constitution by speaking of historical cases (not cited) of single-chambered legislatures encroaching upon the executive and through anarchy ending in despotism, Political Science and Constitutional Law, ii., 107–8. 1 Op. cit., i., 363, 364.

The a priori or rational argument really should be twofold. In countries without a written constitution superior to the legislature, it should be the familiar one that the second chamber, representing a privileged estate in the country, is needed to prevent the excesses feared from an omnipotent purely democratic assembly -"to oppose," in the words of a Netherlandish commission, "in difficult times, a dyke to the passions" and "to surround the throne with a barrier against which factions shall shatter themselves." The counterargument which we Americans ought to raise to this, is that the privileged second chamber is not the only and necessary means of preventing the excesses of a single assembly, deprived of omnipotence: that education of the people, and a fixed constitution containing a properly drawn-up bill of rights, and establishing a judiciary independent of the legislature, will accomplish the purpose. Having these things ourselves, we may leave the privileged second chamber to surround the thrones and dyke-in the preserves of the aristocrats in the countries which delight in those things.

For us is applicable only another form of the a priori argument, which is, that two chambers are needed to prevent hasty and ill-considered legislation—“to provide the safety which lies in sober second thoughts,' "to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober,

"'2 etc.,

1 Rapport présenté au Roi par la Commission chargée de la révision de la loi fondamentale des Pays-Bas Unis, July, 1815, in Dufan, Duvergier, and Guadet's Collection des Constitutions, Chartes, et Lois fondamentales des Peuples de l'Europe et des deux Amériques, Paris, 1823, vol. iii., p. 159. (This Report is reviewed and criticized by Bentham, Works, iv., 427-9.)

2

J. A. R. Marriott, Second Chambers, Oxford, 1910, pp. 4-5. The last simile had been apologetically used by A. Helps, Thoughts upon Government, p. 41.

etc. This service of foiling precipitancy is pronounced by Woolsey "the true view of the use of two houses." Yet this reason ignores innumerable other devices, less expensive and less dangerous, which can equally well secure this object. We may point out later that bicameralism improper secures it as effectually as bicameralism proper. Here we should note that this modified a priori reason is contained within the preceding absolute form of the a priori reason; for if two legislative bodies represent two different interests or classes in society, they will retard legislation and thus have the desired effect of producing deliberation. But that reason contains much more; and to produce deliberation it is not necessary to overdo the matter by granting to the upper chamber more power than is sufficient for this purpose2; and especially it is not necessary to grant to one class or to one assembly the power of blocking the deliberate will of the majority of the whole people. Those, therefore, who favor the minor reason without approving the larger one, should be on their guard lest the protection of privilege be effected through desire for deliberateness, and should be suspicious of the insidious machinations of persons who urge the former alone while secretly desiring the latter also.3

1 Political Science, ii., 311-12. It was also employed by Webster, Works, iii., 10, 487; and again by Burgess, op. cit., ii., 106-7.

2

Certainly, to exert restraint upon "the sudden impulses and violent passions" of the popular body, there is no need of the senate having a right to initiate legislation, other than repeals, or to amend tax- and appropriation-bills otherwise than by lowering them.

3 An instance of this may be seen in the argument employed in favor of the bill for revising the Chamber of Peers in France in 1831, both in the Exposé of the minister, Casimir Périer, and in the speech of Thiers. This was, that the second chamber is not intended merely for the trifling advantage of correcting the oversights of the other, but "to represent another principle"( or "interest," Thiers said), whereby alone it avoids

At bottom the a priori recommendation of bicameralism seems to be its capacity to satisfy clashing claims and to quiet distracted minds. For the essence of bicameralism is compromise. It conciliates opposing theories by making room for both, giving a place to each in each of the halves into which it divides the legislature. The number of diversities that may in this way be reconciled, is truly surprising. If you hesitate between wide and narrow suffrage, you may with Madison stop your embarrassment by leaving the franchise wide for the lower house and restricting it for the upper. If you are equally impressed by the allegations that the representation of districts should be according to their population and according to their wealth, you may solve the problem, as was done in the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, by distributing the so-called representatives on the first principle and the senators on the other. If in the economic world you are undecided between the pretensions to power of opposing interests, as between those of agriculturists and of the mercantile and manufacturing classes, between labor and capital, between free and slaveholding communities, or between the sections of the country occupied by them (as between the hill-dwellers with the small farm system and the plain-dwellers with the large plantation system, between west and east, or north and south), you may end the trouble, as you think (though you may be only renewing it), as Calhoun, Denis, and others would have being "a useless repetition;" which other principle, or interest, is stability, while that of the first chamber is progress; wherefore the first chamber must itself be mobile (by frequent election by the people) and the other itself permanent (by appointment for life by the king). See Thiers' Discours parlementaires, i., 149–50, 158–62. Here the "principles" evidently are the "interests" of the upper and lower classes, though named differently.

liked to do, by giving representation to the one set of interests in the one house and to the other in the other. Or if you generalize more and like Adams are so enraptured with the respective merits of democracy and of aristocracy that you cannot decide which you prefer to see all-powerful, and if also you have a hankering after monarchy, you may put each of the former in a house by itself, and over them set an executive chief with legislative power equal to theirs and affect to believe him a monarch (which indeed he may become, unless one of the others makes itself predominant first). If you do not go so far, or are not so outspoken about your desires, which still are to reserve a place for aristocracy while giving a place to democracy in the legislature, with something of monarchy in the executive, you may copy our Federal Constitution-makers, who did their best in a country without well-marked and hardened classes to fit the one house for aristocracy though leaving the other democratic; and you may go even further, as they could not do all that they desired: you may render the lower house democratic by widening its franchise, making low or no property or other qualification for its members, small and numerous districts, one for each representative, who must be a resident thereof, with short term, small salary, preferably with enforced vacation after every term, all the members coming in and going out together, and so forming a large, heterogeneous, ill-assorted, inexperienced, amateurish assemblage, with open sessions; and you may render the upper house attractive to aristocrats (if there are any, or to plutocrats), and oligarchic in its character, by narrowing its franchise or making the election indirect, raising the property qualification for its members, enlarging the districts, preferably using the general