influences which may be
caused by special exigencies or excitements, before any change can be
made. On the contrary, ordinary acts of legislation are subject to the
considerations of expediency for the attainment of the particular objects
of the moment, to selfish interests, momentary impulses, passions,
prejudices, temptations. If there be no general rules which control
particular action, general principles are obscured or set aside by the
desires and impulses of the occasion. Our knowledge of the weakness of
human nature and countless illustrations from the history of legislation
in our own country point equally to the conclusion that if governmental
authority is to be controlled by rules of action, it cannot be relied upon
to impose those rules upon itself at the time of action, but must have them
prescribed beforehand.

The second class of limitations upon official power provided in our
constitution prescribe and maintain the distribution of power to the
different departments of government and the limitations upon the officers
invested with authority in each department. This distribution follows the
natural and logical lines of the distinction between the different kinds of
power--legislative, executive, and judicial. But the precise allotment of
power and lines of distinction are not so important as it is that there
shall be distribution, and that each officer shall be limited in accordance
with that distribution, for without such limitations there can be no
security for liberty. If, whatever great officer of state happens to be the
most forceful, skillful, and ambitious, is permitted to overrun and absorb
to himself the powers of all other officers and to control their action,
there ensues that concentration of power which destroys the working of free
institutions, enables the holder to continue himself in power, and leaves
no opportunity to the people for a change except through a revolution.
Numerous instances of this very process are furnished by the history of
some of the Spanish-American republics. It is of little consequence that
the officer who usurps the power of others may design only to advance the
public interest and to govern well. The system which permits an honest
and well-meaning man to do this will afford equal opportunity for selfish
ambition to usurp power in its own interest. Unlimited official power
concentrated in one person is despotism, and it is only by carefully
observed and jealously maint