placed in the crown, consists in the power of _rejecting_, rathar
[Transcriber's Note: rather] than _resolving_; this being sufficient
to answer the end proposed. For we may apply to the royal negative, in
this instance, what Cicero observes of the negative of the Roman
tribunes, that the crown has not any power of _doing_ wrong, but
merely of _preventing_ wrong from being done[p]. The crown cannot
begin of itself any alterations in the present established law; but it
may approve or disapprove of the alterations suggested and consented
to by the two houses. The legislative therefore cannot abridge the
executive power of any rights which it now has by law, without it's
own consent; since the law must perpetually stand as it now does,
unless all the powers will agree to alter it. And herein indeed
consists the true excellence of the English government, that all the
parts of it form a mutual check upon each other. In the legislature,
the people are a check upon the nobility, and the nobility a check
upon the people; by the mutual privilege of rejecting what the other
has resolved: while the king is a check upon both, which preserves the
executive power from encroachments. And this very executive power is
again checked, and kept within due bounds by the two houses, through
the privilege they have of enquiring into, impeaching, and punishing
the conduct (not indeed of the king, which would destroy his
constitutional independence; but, which is more beneficial to the
public) of his evil and pernicious counsellors. Thus every branch of
our civil polity supports and is supported, regulates and is
regulated, by the rest; for the two houses naturally drawing in two
directions of opposite interest, and the prerogative in another still
different from them both, they mutually keep each other from exceeding
their proper limits; while the whole is prevented from separation, and
artificially connected together by the mixed nature of the crown,
which is a part of the legislative, and the sole executive magistrate.
Like three distinct powers in mechanics, they jointly impel the
machine of government in a direction different from what either,
acting by themselves, would have done; but at the same time in a
direction partaking of each, and formed out of all; a direction which
constitutes the true line of the liberty and happiness of the
community.

[Footnote p: _Sulla--tribunis plebis sua lege injuriae faciendae
potestatem ademit, auxilii