Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/293

 CH. XXXVI.] in any common enterprise, or pursuit, there is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be a public trust, or office, in which they are clothed with equal dignity and authority, there are peculiar dangers arising from personal emulation, or personal animosity; from superior talents on one side, encountering strong jealousies on the other; from pride of opinion on one side, and weak devotion to popular prejudices on the other; from the vanity of being the author of a plan, or resentment from some imagined slight by the approval of that of another. From these, and other causes of the like nature, the most bitter rivalries and dissensions often spring. Whenever these happen, they lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans and operations of those, whom they divide. The wisest measures are those often defeated, or delayed, even in the most critical moments. And w hat constitutes even a greater evil, the community often becomes split up into rival factions, adhering to the different persons, who compose the magistracy; and temporary animosities become thus the foundation of permanent calamities to the state. Indeed, the ruinous effects of rival factions in free states, struggling for power, has been the constant theme of reproach by the admirers of monarchy, and of regret by the lovers of republics. The Guelphs and the Ghibelins, the white and the black factions, have been immortalized in the history of the Italian states; and they are but an epitome of the same unvarying scenes in all other republics.

§ 1418. From the very nature of a free government, inconveniences resulting from a division of power must