Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/285

 CH. XXXVI.]

§ 1404. the progress of our examination of the constitution, we are now arrived at the second article, which contains an enumeration of the organization and powers of the executive department. What is the best constitution for the executive department, and what are the powers, with which it should be entrusted, are problems among the most important, and probably the most difficult to be satisfactorily solved, of all, which are involved in the theory of free governments. No man, who has ever studied the subject with profound attention, has risen from the labour without an increased and almost overwhelming sense of its intricate relations, and perplexing doubts. No man, who has ever deeply read the human history, and especially the history of republics, but has been struck with the consciousness, how little has been hitherto done to establish a safe depositary of power in any hands; and how often in the hands of one, or a few, or many, of an hereditary monarch, or an elective chief, the executive power has brought ruin upon the state, or sunk under the oppressive burthen of its own imbecility. Perhaps our own history, hitherto, does not establish, that we have wholly escaped all the dangers; and that here is not to be found, as has been the case in other nations, the vulnerable part of the republic.

§ 1405. It appears, that the subject underwent a very elaborate discussion in the convention, with much