They will consider every institution
calculated to restrain the excess of law-making, and to keep things in
the same state in which they happen to be at any given period, as much
more likely to do good than harm; because it is favorable to greater
stability in the system of legislation. The injury which may possibly be
done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the
advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.
Nor is this all. The superior weight and influence of the legislative
body in a free government, and the hazard to the Executive in a trial of
strength with that body, afford a satisfactory security that the
negative would generally be employed with great caution; and there would
oftener be room for a charge of timidity than of rashness in the
exercise of it. A king of Great Britain, with all his train of sovereign
attributes, and with all the influence he draws from a thousand sources,
would, at this day, hesitate to put a negative upon the joint
resolutions of the two houses of Parliament. He would not fail to exert
the utmost resources of that influence to strangle a measure
disagreeable to him, in its progress to the throne, to avoid being
reduced to the dilemma of permitting it to take effect, or of risking
the displeasure of the nation by an opposition to the sense of the
legislative body.
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