"
But this arrangement did not prove satisfactory and did not last long.
It soon appeared that for executive work one man is better than a
group of men. In Massachusetts, in 1780, the old charter was replaced
by a new written constitution, under which was formed the state
government which, with some emendations in detail, has continued to
the present day. Before the end of the eighteenth century all the
states except Connecticut and Rhode Island, which, had always been
practically Independent, thus remodelled their governments.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Senates.]
These changes, however, were very conservative. The old form of
government was closely followed. First there was the governor, elected
in some states by the legislature, in others by the people. Then there
was the two-chambered legislature, of which the lower house was the
same institution after the Revolution that it had been before. The
upper house, or council, was retained, but in a somewhat altered
form. The Americans had been used to having the acts of their popular
assemblies reviewed by a council, and so they retained this revisory
body as an upper house. But the fashion of copying names and titles
from the ancient Roman republic was then prevalent, and accordingly
the upper house was called a Senate.
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