Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/187

 CH. X.] being biased by the interests or prejudices of their peculiar local position. The equal vote allowed in the senate is, in this view, at once a constitutional recognition of the sovereignty remaining in the states, and an instrument for the preservation of it. It guards them against (what they meant to resist, as improper) a consolidation of the states into one simple republic; and, on the other hand, the weight of the other branch counterbalances an undue preponderance of state interests, tending to disunion.

§ 697. Another and most important advantage arising from this ingredient is, the great difference, which it creates in the elements of the two branches of the legislature; which constitutes a great desideratum in every practical division of the legislative power. In fact, this division (as has been already intimated) is of little or no intrinsic value, unless it is so organised, that each can operate, as a real check upon undue and rash legislation. If each branch is substantially framed upon the same plan, the advantages of the division are shadowy and imaginative; the visions and speculations of the brain, and not the waking thoughts of statesmen, or patriots. It may be safely asserted, that for all the purposes of liberty, and security, of stable laws, and of solid institutions, of personal rights, and of the protection of property, a single branch is quite as good, as two, if their composition is the same, and their spirits and impulses the same. Each will act, as the other does; and each will be led by the same common influence of ambition, or intrigue, or passion, to the same disregard