lies to
their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator
who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of
promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the
wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually
are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the
ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who
possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who
seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When occasions present
themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance
with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have
appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the
temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more
cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct
of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their
own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude
to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the
peril of their displeasure.

But however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded
complaisance in the Executive to the inclinations of the people, we can
with no propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the
legislature. The latter may sometimes stand in opposition to the
former, and at other times the people may be entirely neutral. In either
supposition, it is certainly desirable that the Executive should be in a
situation to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and decision.

The same rule which teaches the propriety of a partition between the
various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition ought
to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other.
To what purpose separate the executive or the judiciary from the
legislative, if both the executive and the judiciary are so constituted
as to be at the absolute devotion of the legislative? Such a separation
must be merely nominal, and incapable of producing the ends for which
it was established. It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and
another to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports
with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government;
and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power
in the same hands. The tendency of the legislative authority to a