Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/170

154 is highly neceary for preerving the ballance of the contitution, that the executive power hould be a branch, though not the whole, of the legilature. The total union of them, we have een, would be productive of tyranny; the total disjunction of them for the preent, would in the end produce the ame effects, by cauing that union, againt which it eems to provide. The legilature would oon become tyrannical, by making continual encroachments, and gradually auming to itelf the rights of the executive power. Thus the long parliament of Charles the firt, while it acted in a contitutional manner, with the royal concurrence, redreed many heavy grievances and etablihed many alutary laws. But when the two houes aumed the power of legilation, in excluion of the royal authority, they oon after aumed likewie the reins of adminitration; and, in conequence of thee united powers, overturned both church and tate, and etablihed a wore oppreion than any they pretended to remedy. To hinder therefore any uch encroachments, the king is himelf a part of the parliament: and, as this is the reaon of his being o, very properly therefore the hare of legilation, which the contitution has placed in the crown, conits in the power of rejecting, rather than reolving; this being ufficient to anwer the end propoed. For we may apply to the royal negative, in this intance, what Cicero oberves of the negative of the Roman tribunes, that the crown has not any power of doing wrong, but merely of preventing wrong from being done. The crown cannot begin of itelf any alterations in the preent etablihed law; but it may approve or diapprove of the alterations uggeted and conented to by the two houes. The legilative therefore cannot abridge the executive power of any rights which it now has by law, without it’s own conent; ince the law mut perpetually tand as it now does, unles all the powers will agree to alter it. And herein indeed conits the true excellence of the Englih government, that all the parts of it form a mutual check upon each