tion was, "with regard to the particular structure and organization of the government, and the distribution of its powers among its several branches."

I have already had occasion to advert to the rule inculcating the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of government, and to remark that it had been substantially adhered to in framing our National Constitution. These different branches, however, have not, in all cases, been kept entirely distinct; and it therefore becomes necessary to ascertain, in limine, the meaning of a political apothegm, of which none is of more intrinsic value, or stamped with the approbation of more enlightened authority.

From the sense in which the maxim in question was first applied by Montesquieu to the English Constitution, as well as from the mode in which it has been practically acknowledged in several of our state constitutions, it is evident that it was never understood to require that the three departments should be wholly unconnected with each other; on the contrary, it has been satisfactorily shown by the authors of the "Federalist," that, unless they be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the rule requires cannot be maintained. It is obvious, indeed, that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the others. It is equally clear that, in reference to each other, neither branch should possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence in the execution of their respective powers. And although in our governments each department

derives its authority from the same source, and equally represents the people, yet the legislative branch, as its constitutional powers are at once more extensive and less susceptible of precise limitation than either of the others, must necessarily possess a greater preponderance in the political system, and act with greater force upon the public mind. In order, therefore, to maintain in practice the requisite partition of power, the internal structure of the government would be so contrived as to render its constituent parts, by their mutual relations, the means of keeping each other within their proper spheres of action.

The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers of government in the same hands consists in giving to those who administer them in one department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments from the others. A dependance on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience had shown the framers of our Constitution the necessity of auxiliary precautions; and the remedy they devised for the natural predominance of the legislative authority was the division of the legislative body into two branches, and rendering them, by different modes of election and principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and dependance on the people would admit. The comparative weakness of the executive branch, on the other hand, was fortified, by investing it with a qualified negative on the acts of the Legislature, and connecting it with the weaker branch of that stronger power, by allowing the latter to participate in certain executive F

duties; while the judicial department was deemed to be equally secure, from the nature of its constitutional powers, the permanency of its character, and the independent tenure by which its functionaries hold their offices. Thus the mutual participation, to a limited extent, of the several branches of the goverment in each other's power, was rendered subservient to their mutual independence, and the apparent violation of a fundamental principle of the Constitution converted into a security for its preservation.

I now proceed to examine and explain the organization of these separate departments of government, as established by the Federal Constitution, in their order, and commence with a review of the Legislative Power; under which title I shall consider,

First. The constituent parts of the Legislature, with the mode of their appointment.

Secondly. Their joint and several powers and privileges.

And, Thirdly. Their method of enacting laws, with the times and modes of assembling and adjourning.

I. All legislative powers granted by the Constitution are vested in a Congress of the United States, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. These terms, conferring the legislative authority, impart its limitation to the objects specified in the Constitution. And, besides the end already stated to have been proposed by the division of the Legislature into two separate and independent branches, another important object is accomplished by it, and that is, preventing the evil effects of excitement and precipitation, which had been found, by sad experi

ence, to exert a powerful and dangerous sway in single assemblies.

No portion of the political history of mankind, according to the elder President Adams,* is more full of instructive lessons on this subject, or contains more striking proofs of the factious instability and turbulent misery of states under the dominion of a single unchecked legislature, than the annals of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages. They arose in great numbers, and with dazzling but transient splendour, in the interval between the falls of the Western and Eastern Empires, and were all constituted with a single unbalanced legislative assembly. They were alike wretched in existence, and all ended in similar disgrace. At the commencement of the French Revolution, many of their speculative writers, pseudo-philosophers, and visionary politicians, seem to have been struck with the simplicity of a legislature consisting of a single chamber, and concluded that more was useless and expensive. This led the veteran statesman to write and publish, during his residence in Europe, his great work, entitled, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States," in which he vindicates, with great learning and ability, the advantage and necessity of dividing the Legislature into two branches, and of distributing the powers of government among distinct departments. He reviewed the history and examined the constitutions of all the mixed and free governments which had existed from the earliest records of time, in order to deduce, with more certainty and force, his great practical truth, that single legislatures, without check or

* Defence of the American Constitutions.

balance, or a government with all authority collected in one centre or department, were violent, intriguing, corrupt, and tyrannical dominations of majorities over minorities, uniformly and rapidly terminating their career in profligate despotism.

This visionary notion of a single assembly was, nevertheless, imbodied in the constitution adopted by France in 1791; and the same false and vicious principle continued for some time to prevail with the sublimated theorists of that country. A single chamber was again established in the plan of government published by the Convention in 1793. Their own sufferings, however, at length taught the French people to listen to that oracle of wisdom, the experience of other nations and other ages, which, amid the tumult and violence of the passions which influenced them, they had utterly disregarded, and which, under any circumstances, their national vanity would otherwise have led them to despise. "No people," said Boissy d'Anglas, one of their greatest orators, "no people can testify to the world, with more truth and sincerity than the French, the dangers inherent in a single legislative assembly, and the point to which faction may mislead an assembly without check or counterpoise." We accordingly find, that in the next of their ephemeral constitutions, which appeared in 1797, there was a division of the Legislature into two co-ordinate branches; and the idea of two chambers was never abandoned, either under the military despotism of the empire, or in the charters obtained upon the restoration of the monarchy, or upon the subsequent revolution and change of dynasty.