es cannot of himself make a law, though he can put
a negative on every law; nor administer justice in person, though he has
the appointment of those who do administer it. The judges can exercise
no executive prerogative, though they are shoots from the executive
stock; nor any legislative function, though they may be advised with
by the legislative councils. The entire legislature can perform no
judiciary act, though by the joint act of two of its branches the judges
may be removed from their offices, and though one of its branches
is possessed of the judicial power in the last resort. The entire
legislature, again, can exercise no executive prerogative, though one of
its branches constitutes the supreme executive magistracy, and another,
on the impeachment of a third, can try and condemn all the subordinate
officers in the executive department.

The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim are a further
demonstration of his meaning. "When the legislative and executive
powers are united in the same person or body," says he, "there can be no
liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate
should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner."
Again: "Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life
and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for
THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive
power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR."
Some of these reasons are more fully explained in other passages; but
briefly stated as they are here, they sufficiently establish the meaning
which we have put on this celebrated maxim of this celebrated author.

If we look into the constitutions of the several States, we find that,
notwithstanding the emphatical and, in some instances, the unqualified
terms in which this axiom has been laid down, there is not a single
instance in which the several departments of power have been kept
absolutely separate and distinct. New Hampshire, whose constitution was
the last formed, seems to have been fully aware of the impossibility and
inexpediency of avoiding any mixture whatever of these departments,
and has qualified the doctrine by declaring "that the legislative,
executive, and judiciary powers ought to be kept as separate from,
and independent of, each other AS THE NATURE OF A FREE GOVERNMENT WILL
ADMIT; OR AS IS CONSISTENT WITH THAT CHAIN OF CONNECTION THAT BIN