"To cool it," replied Jefferson.
"Exactly," replied Washington. There-
fore, I think, if you will allow me a collo-
quialism, one of the purposes of the bi-
cameral General Assembly is to cool it a
bit, to see to it that so-called hasty and
ill-conceived legislation is not too swiftly
passed before the passions of the moment
are spent and before proper and full, calm
deliberation can take place.
So it is quite true, therefore, that in
addition to having bicameralism in our
State's history and tradition, by and large
throughout our entire expanse from 1634,
that we maintain opportunity to cool pas-
sion.
As was suggested in the Commission re-
port, the two houses provide a technical
review and tend to minimize careless legis-
lation. A two house system also permits
the graduation of a member from one house
to the other, and I might say on some occa-
sions the demotion from the Senate to the
House.
It is not improper for me at this time to
observe that in Dr. Michener's paper which
you had laid before you, it is said that the
Maryland Senate was supposed to be com-
pared somewhat to the House of Lords. I
think those of us who have served with
former or present members of the Senate
at this particular Convention can well at-
test to the strength of that principle, as has
been shown in the testimony and the Com-
mittee debate here.
It is said that a bicameral legislature is
more difficult to corrupt than a unicameral
legislature, the theory being, I suppose,
that it is more costly to corrupt two houses
than one.
With a bicameral legislature, and pre-
sumably with the larger number of persons
who would be represented when adding
both houses together, one would presume
that there would be more legislators for
the populace to know, so that the oppor-
tunity for personal contact on the part of
the constituents with those who represent
them, both in the upper house and the
lower, would be greater than if one had a
unicameral body, which had an aggregate
body less than the total number of both
the House and the Senate in the bicameral
General Assembly.
Another argument made for bicamer-
alism is it allows for differentiation in two
chambers of different interests, such as
rural and economic interests. In this respect
I might say, anticipating a further section |
of the report, that it was the desire of the
Committee on the Legislative Branch not
to have the Senate district serve geograph-
ically as an identical base with that of the
Legislative District. You will see in the
structuring of the General Assembly that
what we have provided is a Senate district,
within which are located three whole House
districts. This would mean that within a
single Senate district one would have three
members of the House, one from each of
the three House districts, and one member
of the Senate. The purpose would be to
have the Senator represent three times the
population that an individual Delegate
representative would represent and thus
enable him-to have a broader outlook and
a larger, regional approach to the particu-
lar subjects of controversy or legislation
which might lie before him.
I think that the arguments presented in
the Michener Report are summed up more
fully and completely in the report of the
Commission draft, which begins on page
125.
As you will see from the Committee rec-
ommendation, and I do not plan to go into
what has been presented rather fully, it is
perfectly plain that bills which pass from
the House to the Senate and vice versa are
reconsidered, are amended and on many
occasions are killed. If one should adopt
the point of view, as many people do, that
one of the purposes of a State legislature
is to legislate selectively and well rather
than too profusely and quantitatively, then
certainly the operation of the second house
which might eliminate bad legislation and
correct legislation that might be bad if
passed in the form in which it was enacted
in the first House, in all respects acts not
only to clear up technical difficulties, but
also gives one an opportunity to offer sub-
stantive amendments, and on occasion,
when necessary, to kill a bill which should
not have been passed at all.
I might say here, too, that 49 of the 50
States of the Union use the bicameral sys-
tem. It is true that there was some early
experimentation in the New England States
with the unicameral system through 1838,
but by and large, with the exception of the
State of Nebraska, the bicameral system
has been a tradition in State legislatures.
Admittedly, the bicameral house has been
done away with in most of the urban com-
munities and the large metropolitan cities
of the United States, but with the excep-
tion of Nebraska which went from bicam-
eral to unicameral in 1937, the States of |
