A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary
control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the
necessity of auxiliary precautions.
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. 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. These inventions of prudence
cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of
the State.
But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of
self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority
necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide
the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by
different modes of election and different principles of action, as
little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions
and their common dependence on the society will admit.
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