a p p e ndix c
The Federalist No. 47
James Madison
January 30, 1788
To the People of the State of New York.
Having reviewed the general form of the proposed government and the
general mass of power allotted to it, I proceed to examine the particular
structure of this government, and the distribution of this mass of power
among its constituent parts.
One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable
adversaries to the constitution is its supposed violation of the political
maxim that the legislative, executive and judiciary departments ought to
be separate and distinct. In the structure of the Federal government, no
regard, it is said, seems to have been paid to this essential precaution in
favor of liberty. The several departments of power are distributed and
blended in such a manner as at once to destroy all symmetry and beauty
of form, and to expose some of the essential parts of the edifice to the
danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts.
No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value or is stamped
with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on
which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or
many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be
pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the Federal Constitution
therefore really chargeable with this accumulation of power or with a
mixture of powers having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system. I persuade myself, however, that it will be made
apparent to every one that the charge cannot be supported, and that the
maxim on which it relies has been totally misconceived and misapplied.
In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper
371