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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
years, that all vacancies happening by death or otherwise, should be
filled by themselves, without any application to constituents at all.
4. A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and
absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the
executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and despatch.
5. A representative assembly is still less qualified for the judicial power,
because it is too numerous, too slow, and too little skilled in the laws.
6. Because a single assembly, posed of all the powers of government,
would make arbitrary laws for their own interest, execute all laws arbitrarily for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own
favor.
But shall the whole power of legislation rest in one assembly? Most of
the foregoing reasons apply equally to prove that the legislative power
ought to be more complex; to which we may add, that if the legislative
power is wholly in one assembly, and the executive in another, or in a
single person, these two powers will oppose and encroach upon each
other, until the contest shall end in war, and the whole power, legislative
and executive, be usurped by the strongest.
The judicial power, in such case, could not mediate, or hold the balance between the two contending powers, because the legislative would
undermine it. And this shows the necessity, too, of giving the executive
power a negative upon the legislative, otherwise this will be continually
encroaching upon that.
To avoid these dangers, let a distinct assembly be constituted, as a mediator between the two extreme branches of the legislature, that which
represents the people, and that which is vested with the executive power.
Let the representative assembly then elect by ballot, from among themselves or their constituents, or both, a distinct assembly, which, for the sake
of perspicuity, we will call a council. It may consist of any number you
please, say twenty or thirty, and should have a free and independent exercise of its judgment, and consequently a negative voice in the legislature.
These two bodies, thus constituted, and made integral parts of the legislature, let them unite, and by joint ballot choose a governor, who, after
being stripped of most of those badges of domination, called prerogatives, should have a free and independent exercise of his judgment, and