both houses; Georgia followed the example of the Federal Constitution in 1798; Virginia, in 1830; North Carolina, in 1835; Vermont, in 1836; New Jersey, in 1844; and Maryland, in 1851.

With the progress of this movement to restore the system of checks in the state constitutions the governor regained his independence of the legislature and also many of the rights and prerogatives of which the Revolution had deprived him. He was made coördinate with the legislature, set over against it and generally clothed with the qualified veto power, which made him for all practical purposes the third house of that body. Georgia increased the governor's term of office to two years and gave him the qualified veto power in 1798. Pennsylvania made his term of office three years and gave him the veto power in 1790. New Hampshire conferred the veto power on him in 1792 and New York in 1821.

This tendency to make the public official less directly dependent upon the people or their immediate representatives is clearly seen in other important changes made in the state constitutions during this period. Popular control over the legislature was diminished by lengthening the terms of the members of both houses and by providing that the upper house should be elected for a longer term than the lower. Georgia established an upper house in 1789 and made the term of office of its members three years. In 1790 Pennsyl

vania also added a senate whose members were to be elected for four years, and South Carolina increased the term of its senators from one to four years. Delaware extended the term from one to two years for members of the lower house and from three to four years for members of the upper house and made the legislative sessions biennial instead of annual in 1831. North Carolina increased the term of members of both houses from one to two years and adopted biennial sessions in 1835. Maryland in 1837 extended the term of senators from five to six years, and in 1846 established biennial sessions of the legislature. The responsibility of the legislature was still further diminished by the gradual adoption of the plan of partial renewal of the senate, which was incorporated in the Revolutionary constitutions of Delaware, New York and Virginia and later copied in the Federal Constitution. This ensured the conservative and steadying influence exerted by a body of hold-over members in the upper house.

With the exception of five states in which the members of one branch of the legislature were elected for terms varying from two to five years, the Revolutionary state constitutions provided for the annual election of the entire legislature. This plan made both houses conform to the latest expression of public opinion by the majority of the qualified voters at the polls. And since neither

the executive nor the courts possessed the veto power, the system ensured prompt compliance on the part of the law-making body with the demands of the people as expressed in the results of the legislative election.

The influence of public opinion on the state governments was greatly weakened by the constitutional changes above mentioned. The lower branch of the legislature, inasmuch as all its members were simultaneously elected, might be regarded as representative of recent, if not present, public opinion, though effective popular control of that body was made more difficult by lengthening the term of office, since this diminished the frequency with which the voters could express in an authoritative manner their disapproval of the official record of its members. Under the plan adopted present public opinion as formulated in the results of the last election was not recognized as entitled to control the state senate.

These changes in the state constitutions by which the executive and judicial branches of the government acquired the veto power amounted in practice to the creation of a four-chambered legislature. By thus increasing the number of bodies which it was necessary for the people to control in order to secure the legislation which they desired, their power to influence the policy of the state government was thereby diminished. And when we reflect that not only was legislative au

thority more widely distributed, but each branch of the state government exercising it was also made less directly dependent on the qualified voters, we can see that these constitutional provisions were in the nature of checks on the numerical majority.

A consideration of the changes made in the method of amending the state constitutions leads to the same conclusion. During the Revolutionary period, as we have seen, the tendency was strongly toward making the fundamental law the expression of the will of the numerical majority. Difficulties in the way of change were reduced to a minimum. But under the influence of the political reaction which followed, and which produced the Constitution of the United States, the state governments were so organized as to make it more difficult for the majority to exercise the amending power. Georgia in 1789 changed the method of amending the state constitution by requiring a two-thirds majority in a constitutional convention, and made another change in 1798 by which a two-thirds majority in each house of the legislature and a three-fourths majority in each house of the succeeding legislature was required for the adoption of an amendment to the constitution. South Carolina in 1790 adopted a provision guarding against mere majority amendment by making the approval of a two-thirds majority in both branches of two suc

cessive legislatures necessary for any changes in the constitution. Connecticut in 1818 restricted the power of amending by requiring a majority in the house of representatives, a two-thirds majority in both houses of the next legislature, and final approval by a majority of the electors. New York in 1821 adopted a plan which required that an amendment should receive a majority in each branch of the legislature, a two-thirds majority in each branch of the succeeding legislature, and be approved by a majority of the voters. North Carolina in 1835 made a three-fifths majority in each house of the legislature and a two-thirds majority of each house of the following legislature necessary for changes in the constitution.

The judicial veto served the purpose of preventing majority amendment under the guise of ordinary legislation, while a safeguard against constitutional changes favored by a mere majority was thus provided in the extraordinary majority required in both houses of the legislature to propose or adopt amendments. This, as has been shown in the case of the Federal Constitution, is a formidable check on the majority. In view of this restriction upon the proposing of amendments the provision for ratification by a popular majority, which owing to the progress of the later democratic movement has now been gen