4590. LEGISLATURES, Division of.—[further continued].
Our legislatures are composed
of two houses, the Senate and Representatives,
elected in different modes, and for
different periods, and in some States, with a
qualified veto in the Executive chief. But to
avoid all temptation to superior pretensions of
the one over the other house, and the possibility
of either erecting itself into a privileged
order, might it not be better to choose at the
same time and in the same mode, a body sufficiently
numerous to be divided by lot into
two separate houses, acting as independently
as the two houses in England, or in our governments,
and to shuffle their names together
and redistribute them by lot, once a week for
a fortnight? This would equally give the benefit
of time and separate deliberation, guard
against an absolute passage by acclamation,
derange cabals, intrigues, and the count of
noses, disarm the ascendency which a popular
demagogue might at any time obtain over
either house, and render impossible all disputes
between the two houses, which often
form such obstacles to business.—
To M. Coray. Washington ed. vii, 321.
(M.
1823)
