![]() But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.Ī dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. ![]() It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of the legislature in this particular, their independence in every other would be merely nominal. It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices. In the constitution of the judiciary department in particular, it might be inexpedient to insist rigorously on the principle: first, because peculiar qualifications being essential in the members, the primary consideration ought to be to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications secondly, because the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them. ![]() Some deviations, therefore, from the principle must be admitted. Some difficulties, however, and some additional expense would attend the execution of it. Perhaps such a plan of constructing the several departments would be less difficult in practice than it may in contemplation appear. Were this principle rigorously adhered to, it would require that all the appointments for the supreme executive, legislative, and judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain of authority, the people, through channels having no communication whatever with one another. In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others.
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