governed; and in the next place oblige it to
control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary
control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the
necessity of auxiliary precautions.

This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect
of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human
affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in
all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to
divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may
be a check on the other--that the private interest of every individual
may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence
cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of
the State.

But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of
self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority
necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to
divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them,
by different modes of election and different principles of action, as
little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions
and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be
necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further
precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that
it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on
the other hand, that it should be fortified. An absolute negative on the
legislature appears, at first view, to be the natural defense with
which the executive magistrate should be armed. But perhaps it would be
neither altogether safe nor alone sufficient. On ordinary occasions it
might not be exerted with the requisite firmness, and on extraordinary
occasions it might be perfidiously abused. May not this defect of an
absolute negative be supplied by some qualified connection between this
weaker department and the weaker branch of the stronger department, by
which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of
the former, without being too much detached from the rights of its own
department?

If the principles on which these observations are founded be just, as
I persuade myself they are, and they be applied as a criterion to the
several State constitutions, and to the federal Constitution it will be
found that if the latter does not perfect