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The Particular Structure of the New Government and the
Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts
For the Independent Journal.
Wednesday, January 30, 1788.
MADISON
To the People of the State of New York:
HAVING reviewed the general form of the proposed government and the
general mass of power allotted to it, I proceed to examine the
particular structure of this government, and the distribution of this
mass of power among its constituent parts.
One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable
adversaries to the Constitution, is its supposed violation of the
political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary
departments ought to be separate and distinct. In the structure of the
federal government, no regard, it is said, seems to have been paid to
this essential precaution in favor of liberty. The several departments
of power are distributed and blended in such a manner as at once to
destroy all symmetry and beauty of form, and to expose some of the
essential parts of the edifice to the danger of being crushed by the
disproportionate weight of other parts.
No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is
stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than
that on which the objection is founded.
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