It may even be
necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further
precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it
should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on
the other hand, that it should be fortified. An absolute negative on the
legislature appears, at first view, to be the natural defense with which
the executive magistrate should be armed. But perhaps it would be
neither altogether safe nor alone sufficient. On ordinary occasions it
might not be exerted with the requisite firmness, and on extraordinary
occasions it might be perfidiously abused. May not this defect of an
absolute negative be supplied by some qualified connection between this
weaker department and the weaker branch of the stronger department, by
which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of the
former, without being too much detached from the rights of its own
department?
If the principles on which these observations are founded be just, as I
persuade myself they are, and they be applied as a criterion to the
several State constitutions, and to the federal Constitution it will be
found that if the latter does not perfectly correspond with them, the
former are infinitely less able to bear such a test.
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