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and in each State and in the federal government they are again divided 

 among several departments. Hence the power of each political commu- 

 nity, and of each department, is limited by that of the others ; and not 

 merely is this so in theory, but the courts are empowered to pass upon the 

 validity of every legislative or executive act, either of the general gov- 

 ernment or the States, and to declare them void if they transcend the 

 limits of power imposed by the constitution. 



So also, we were taught in our younger days that under the English 

 constitution the sovereign power was vested in the king, the lords and 

 the Commons, and that the participation of each of these was necessary 

 to the validity of all legislation ; and this was not only the doctrine of 

 English lawyers and statesmen, but also of foreign publicists, who saw in 

 it the peculiar excellence of the British constitution. Hobbes, indeed, 

 had asserted that the sovereign power was vested in the king only, and 

 that the doctrine that his single power could be resisted by Parliament was 

 anarchical in its tendencies and therefore untenable, {p) and in the same 

 way, the modern English jurists, or some ot them, blindly assert tliat the 

 sovereign power is vested in the Commons ; but in fact the whole history of 

 England is but an illustration of the practical workings of the theory, 

 uniformly asserted by the lawyers, that the legislative power is equally 

 vested in the three coordinate departments, and that neither has any 

 power to act without the participation of the others. The relative power of 

 each has, indeed, at diMerent periods, varied extremely. In early ages the 

 power of the king was most formidable ; afterwards, the lords, and finally 

 the Commons ; but even now, it is simply an absurdity to say that any 

 independent power is vested in the latter, for even in tiie last year or two 

 we have seen it actually overridden and nullified by the lords ; and so it 

 must always be, until a revolution is effected. 



But the most conspicuous illustration of the historical fallacy of the 

 doctrine is presented by the constitution of the Roman Republic — the 

 most famous, and one of the two or three most efficient and successful 

 constitutions that ever existed ; and a somewhat detailed examination of 

 the provisions of this constitution will perhaps serve, better than any 

 other, to illustrate the subject. 



Under the monarchical government, the whole executive and judicial 

 power was vested in the king, who held for life, and the legislative 

 power, in the people. The actual power of the king was, in theory, not 

 to be resisted by any citizen, and, in practice, it was as nearly irresistible 

 aa it was possible to be. But he had no power of legislation, and any act 

 of his that went beyond the existing law was regarded simply as an exer- 

 cise of unlawful power, (^g) On the other hand, the people, in whom the 

 legislative power was vested, could not act of their own motion, but only 

 upon a law proposed by the king ; or, in other words, the initiative of leg- 

 islation was vested in the king. Nor was every legislative act of the peo- 

 ple on the initiative of the king necessarily valid ; there was still an- 

 other department in the State, viz., the Senate, in whom was vested the 



