" The Senate has thus a continuous
existence and a permanent organization; whereas each House of
Representatives expires at the end of its two years' term, and is
succeeded by a "new House," which requires to be organized by electing
its officers, etc., before proceeding to business. A candidate for the
senatorship must have reached the age of thirty, must have been nine
years a citizen of the United States, and must be an inhabitant of the
state which he represents.
The constitution leaves the times, places, and manner of holding
elections for senators and representatives to be prescribed in each
state by its own legislature; but it gives to Congress the power to
alter such regulations, except as to the place of choosing senators.
Here we see a vestige of the original theory according to which the
Senate was to be peculiarly the home of state rights.
[Sidenote: Electoral districts.]
[Sidenote: "Gerrymandering."]
In the composition of the House of Representatives the state
legislatures play a very important part. For the purposes of the
election a state is divided into districts corresponding to the number
of representatives the state is entitled to send to Congress.
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