Bicameral Legislatures Quotes

The House Republicans are not the enemy, they’re the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.

The men of middling property and poor men can never be safe in a mixed representation with the men of over-grown property.

All free governments must consist of two councils, a lesser and a greater.

[The Senate's role was:] to correct the prejudices, check the intemperate passions, and regulate the functions of a popular assembly [The House of Representatives.]

The very existence of a bicameral legislature is itself another defense of the status quo.

How many crossbreeds between a great dane and a chuwawa have you seen? Likewise there is great difficulty with a House -- Senate conference.

No check is necessary on a Legislature composed as the national Legislature would be, with two branches—an upper and a lower House.

I think a people cannot be long free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one Assembly…. A single Assembly is liable to all the vices, follies and frailties of an individual,--subject to fits of humor,--starts of passions, flights of enthusiasm,--partialities of prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. All these errors ought to be corrected, and defects supplied by some controlling power. A single Assembly is apt to be avaricious, and in time will not scruple to exempt itself from burdens, which it will lay, without compunction, upon its constituents. A single Assembly is apt to grow ambitious, and after a time will not hesitate to vote itself perpetual.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

A plural Legislature is as necessary to good Government as a single Executive. It is not enough that your Legislature should be numerous; it should also be divided. Numbers alone are not a sufficient Barrier against the Impulses of Passion, the Combinations of Interest, the Intrigues of Faction, the Haste of Folly, or the Spirit of Encroachment. One Division should watch over and control the other, supply its Wants, correct its Blunders, and cross its Designs, should they be made up of the Portions of Sense and Knowledge which each Member brings to it.

A single branch of Legislation is a many headed Monster which without any check must soon defeat the very purposes for which it was created, and its members become a tyranny dreadful in proportion to the numbers which compose it. And possessed of power uncontrolled, would soon exercise it to put themselves free from the restraint of those who made them, and to make their own political existence perpetual.

Is it best to put the pseudo-aristoi (of wealth and birth) into a separate chamber of legislation, where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people? I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively... Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to protect themselves