Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/144

128 An inspection of this table will supply the place of commentaries on it. It will appear at once that nineteen thousand men, living below the falls of the rivers, possess half the Senate, and want four members only of possessing a majority of the House of Delegates; a want more than supplied by the vicinity of their situation to the seat of Government, and of course the greater degree of convenience and punctuality with which their members may and will attend in the Legislature. These nineteen thousand, therefore, living in one part of the country, give law to upwards of thirty thousand, living in another, and appoint all their chief officers, executive and judiciary. From the difference of their situation and circumstances, their interests will often be very different.

3. The Senate is, by its constitution, too homogeneous with the House of Delegates. Being chosen by the same electors, at the same time, and out of the same subjects, the choice falls of course on men of the same description. The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles. Thus in Great Britain it is said their constitution relies on the House of Commons for honesty, and the Lords for wisdom, which would be a rational reliance if honesty were to be be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary. In some of the American States the delegates and senators are so chosen, as that the first represent the persons, and the second the property of the State. But with us wealth and wisdom have equal chance for admission into both houses. We do not therefore derive from the separation of our Legislature into two houses, those benefits which a proper complication of principles is capable of producing, and those which alone can compensate the evils which may be produced by their dissensions.

4. All the powers of Government, legislative, executive and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers