[1] So called because it represents the people.

[2] The term under the confederation had been one year.  This was too short to permit any adequate study of the subjects to be legislated upon.  This longer term, two years, is still short enough to impose upon representatives the feeling of responsibility.

The term begins March 4, at noon.  The time covered by a representative’s term is called a congress; thus we speak of the fortieth congress, meaning the fortieth two years of our constitutional existence.  The name also applies to the body constituting our national legislative department during that time.  Thus we say that a certain person is a member of congress.

“A congress” includes two regular sessions and any number of extra sessions which the president may see fit to call or which may be provided for by law.  The first regular session is called “the long session,” because congress may remain in session through the summer, if it choose.  The second is called “the short session,” because it must end March 4, at noon.  Expiring thus by limitation, it lasts not more than about three months.

[3] The word people here means voters.

Each state is divided by its legislature into congressional districts equal in number to the representatives to which it is entitled, and the people of each district elect one representative.  Sometimes when a state has its representation increased after a new census, the old congressional districts are left for a time undisturbed, and the added representatives are elected “at large,” while the others are chosen by districts as before.

[4] Voters.

[5] The qualifications for voting in any state are fixed by the state itself, and different states require different qualifications.  When the constitution was framed, but not now, some states required higher qualifications in voters for the upper house of the state legislature than in voters for the lower; so that more persons could vote for members of the lower, which is always the “most numerous” branch, than for the higher.  Desiring to make the United States house of representatives as “popular” as possible, the framers of the constitution determined that all whom any state was willing to trust to vote for a member of the lower house of the state legislature, the United States could trust to vote for members of its lower house.

Clause 2.—­Qualifications.

No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained the age of twenty-five years,[1] and been seven years a citizen of the United States,[2] and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall he chosen.[3]

[1] For business and voting purposes a man “comes of age” at twenty-one years.  Four years of probation are considered the least amount of time necessary to fit him for the responsibilities of a member of the house of representatives.