" "The
legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from
other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more
extensive and less susceptible of precise limits, it can with the
greater facility mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the
encroachments which it makes on the coordinate departments." "On the
other side, the Executive power being restrained within a narrower
compass and being more simple in its nature, and the judiciary being
described by landmarks still less uncertain, projects of usurpation
by either of these departments would immediately betray and defeat
themselves. Nor is this all. As the legislative department alone has
access to the pockets of the people and has in some constitutions full
discretion and in all a prevailing influence over the pecuniary rewards
of those who fill the other departments, a dependence is thus created in
the latter which gives still greater facility to encroachments of the
former." "We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is
to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other
departments.
Pages:
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414