declare, in their capacity as
judges, that an act was void, which, as legislators, they had declared
should be valid. And this is probably the reason why Blackstone admitted
that he knew of no power in the ordinary forms of the (British)
constitution, that was vested with authority to control an act of
parliament that was unreasonable, (against natural justice.) But in the
United States, where the judicial and legislative powers are vested in
different bodies, and where they are so vested for the very purpose of
having the former act as a check upon the latter, no such inconsistency
would occur.

The constitutions that have been established in the United States, and
the discussions had on the formation of them, all attest the importance
which our ancestors attached to a separation of the judicial, from the
executive and legislative departments of the government. And yet the
benefits, which they had promised to liberty and justice from this
separation, have in slight only, if any degree, been realized.--Although
the legislation of the country generally has exhibited little less than
an entire recklessness both of natural justice and constitutional
authority, the records of the judiciary nevertheless furnish hardly an
instance where an act of a legislature has, for either of these reasons,
been declared void by its co-ordinate judicial department. There have
been cases, few and far between, in which the United State's courts have
declared acts of state legislatures unconstitutional. But the history of
the co-ordinate departments of the same governments has been, that the
judicial sanction followed the legislative act with nearly the same
unerring certainty, that the shadow follows the substance. Judicial
decisions have consequently had the same effects in restraining the
actions of legislatures, that shadows have in restraining the motions of
bodies.

Why this uniform concurrence of the judiciary with the legislature? It
is because the separation between them is nominal, not real. The
judiciary receive their offices and salaries at the hands of the
executive and the legislature, and are amenable only to the legislature
for their official character. They are made entirely independent of the
people at large, (whose highest interests are liberty and justice,) and
entirely dependent upon those who have too many interests inconsistent
with liberty and justice. Could a real and entire separation of the
judiciary from the othe