§7. Experience has shown the propriety of dividing the civil power into these three departments, and of confining the officers of each department to the powers and duties belonging to the same. Those who make the laws should not exercise the power of executing them; nor should they who either make or execute the laws sit in judgment over those who are brought before them for trial. A government in which the different powers of making, executing, and applying the laws should be united in a single body of men, however numerous, would be little better than an absolute despotism. §8. Again, the legislative department of the civil power is divided. Under all our state constitutions, the legislature consists of two branches, both of which must agree to a proposed measure before it becomes a law; and in many of the states, it must also be approved by the governor. This is making the chief executive officer a third branch of the law-making power; and is not in accordance with the principle of keeping the several departments of the civil power separate and distinct from each other. The reason for this departure from the general principle mentioned, will be stated in another chapter. (Chap. XI. §16.) Chapter IX. State Legislatures--how constituted. §1. The legislature of every state in the union is composed of two houses--a senate and a house of representatives. The latter, or, as it is sometimes called, the lower house, in the states of New York, Wisconsin, and California, is called the assembly; in Maryland and Virginia, the house of delegates; in North Carolina, the house of commons; and in New Jersey, the general assembly. In most of the states, the two houses together are called _general assembly_. §2. The senate, as well as the other house, is a representative body; its members being elected by the people to represent them. Why, then, is only one of the two branches called the house of representatives? Perhaps for this reason: Under the governments of the colonies, while yet subject to Great Britian, there was but one representative assembly. The other branch of the legislature was called a _council_, consisting of a small number of men who were appointed by the king. After the colonies became free and independent states, a senate was substituted for the old council, and although it is an elective body, the other house, being much more numerous, is called, by way of distinction, the _house of representatives_.