he sphere of its action than
either of the other two branches of the Government, and especially in
the exercise of the veto power conferred upon it by the Constitution. It
should be remembered, however, that this power is wholly negative and
conservative in its character, and was intended to operate as a check
upon unconstitutional, hasty, and improvident legislation and as a means
of protection against invasions of the just powers of the executive and
judicial departments. It is remarked by Chancellor Kent that--

To enact laws is a transcendent power, and if the body that possesses
it be a full and equal representation of the people there is danger of
its pressing with destructive weight upon all the other parts of the
machinery of Government. It has therefore been thought necessary by the
most skillful and most experienced artists in the science of civil
polity that strong barriers should be erected for the protection and
security of the other necessary powers of the Government. Nothing has
been deemed more fit and expedient for the purpose than the provision
that the head of the executive department should be so constituted as
to secure a requisite share of independence and that he should have a
negative upon the passing of laws; and that the judiciary power, resting
on a still more permanent basis, should have the right of determining
upon the validity of laws by the standard of the Constitution.

The necessity of some such check in the hands of the Executive is shown
by reference to the most eminent writers upon our system of government,
who seem to concur in the opinion that encroachments are most to be
apprehended from the department in which all legislative powers are
vested by the Constitution. Mr. Madison, in referring to the difficulty
of providing some practical security for each against the invasion of
the others, remarks that "the legislative department is everywhere
extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its
impetuous vortex." "The founders of our Republic * * * seem never to
have recollected the danger from legislative usurpations, which by
assembling all power in the same hands must lead to the same tyranny as
is threatened by Executive usurpations." "In a representative republic,
where the executive magistracy is carefully limited both in the extent
and the duration of its power, and where the legislative power is
exercised by an assembly which is i