years. In 1790 Pennsylvania 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 acqu