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Updated: June 12, 2025
Article IV. proclaims the theory of the separation of powers in sweeping terms, and prescribes the constitution of the law-making department. Herein the legislative authority was vested in a General Assembly, which was organized on the bicameral plan. The members of the House of Representatives were to be chosen for two years, those of the Senate for four years.
The framers of the Constitution, chief among whom was Prince Ito, naturally took care not to make its provisions too liberal. A bicameral system was adopted. In the eyes of party politicians this property qualification was much too high; it restricted the number of franchise-holders to 460,000 in a nation of nearly fifty millions.
The tendency toward a bicameral council, the extension of the term for which members of the council were elected and the veto power of the mayor may be attributed to the influence of the Constitution rather than to any intelligent and carefully planned effort to improve the machinery of municipal government.
At any rate, early in the fourteenth century the lesser clergy dropped out, the greater prelates and nobles were fused into one body the House of "Lords spiritual and temporal," and the knights joined the burgesses to form the House of Commons. Parliament was henceforth a bicameral body, consisting of a House of Commons and a House of Lords.
Some prophets of evil who recalled the difficulties in one House of the Continental Congress predicted a double portion of woe under the new arrangement. It must not be supposed that a bicameral system was entirely a novelty. The colonies generally had such a system and, on becoming States, had adopted, with one exception, that form.
The constantly recurring "River and Harbor Bill," with its enormous sum total of appropriations, is a striking object lesson of the vicious character of such methods. In the light of what has been suggested, the wisdom displayed in the establishment of the bicameral, or two-chamber system, in our legislative scheme, is strikingly apparent.
They will not have to defend an ideal Second Chamber; they will not be able to confine themselves to airy generalities about a bicameral system and its advantages; they will have to defend this Second Chamber as it is one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee.
They are always telling us to imitate the Colonies; they are always telling us that we ought to adopt the fiscal systems and other methods employed in the self-governing Colonies; but what is their unprejudiced view of the relations which are held between the two Chambers under the bicameral system in the Colonies and as established by their own Australian Commonwealth Act in the last Parliament?
The Assembly was a representative body organized on the bicameral plan into a "Council" and a "House of Representatives." The Council consisted of thirteen members, elected biennially; while the House of Representatives had just double that number, elected annually. The members of both houses were chosen directly by the qualified voters of the Territory.
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