than the president
of our federal senate is the president of the United States. The
powers of the governor were really vested in the council, which was
an executive as well as a legislative body, and the president was
its chairman. Indeed, the title "president" is simply the Latin for
"chairman," he who "presides" or "sits before" an assembly. In 1775
it was a more modest title than "governor," and had not the smack of
semi-royalty which lingered about the latter. Governors had made so
much trouble that people were distrustful of the office, and at first
it was thought that the council would be quite sufficient for the
executive work that was to be done. Several of the states thus
organized their governments with a council at the head instead of
a governor; and hence in reading about that period one often comes
across the title "president," somewhat loosely used as if equivalent
to governor. Thus in 1787 we find Benjamin Franklin called "president
of Pennsylvania," meaning "president of the council of Pennsylvania."
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. There was a higher property
qualification for senators than for representatives, and generally
their terms of service were longer. In some state