Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/23

 CH. VII.] will can also annihilate them; and if I may be permitted the expression, the legislative power can change die constitution, as God created the light. In order, therefore, to insure stability to the constitution of a state, it is indispensably necessary to restrain the legislative authority. But, here, we must observe a difference between the legislative and executive powers. The latter may be confined, and even is more easily so, when undivided. The legislative, on the contrary, in order to its being restrained, should absolutely be divided.

§ 532. The truth is, that the legislative power is the great and overruling power in every free government. It has been remarked with equal force and sagacity, that the legislative power is every where extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex. The founders of our republics, wise as they were, under the influence and the dread of the royal prerogative, which was pressing upon them, never for a moment seem to have turned their eyes from the immediate danger to liberty from that source, combined, as it was, with an hereditary authority, and an hereditary peerage to support it. They seem never to have recollected the danger from legislative usurpation, which, by ultimately assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny, as is threatened by executive usurpations. The representatives of the people will watch with jealousy every encroachment of the executive magistrate, for it trenches upon their own authority. But, who shall watch the encroachment of these representatives themselves? Will they be as jealous of the exercise of power by themselves, as by