judiciary department by giving it an additional opportunity of defending itself against legislative encroachments. It would be useful to the executive, by inspiring additional confidence and firmness in exerting the revisionary power. It would be useful to the legislature, by the valuable assistance it would give in preserving a consistency, conciseness, perspicuity, and technical propriety in the laws-qualities peculiarly necessary, and yet shamefully wanting in our republican codes. It would, moreover, be useful to the community at large, as an additional check against a pursuit of those unwise aud unjust measures which constituted so great a portion of our calamities. If any solid objection could be urged against the motion, it must be on the supposition that it tended to give too much strength, either to the executive, or judiciary. He did not think there was the least ground for this apprehension. It was much more to be apprehended, that, notwithstanding this coöperation of the two departments, the legislature would still be an overmatch for them. Experience in all the states had evinced a powerful tendency in the legislature to absorb all power into its vortex. This was the real source of danger to the American constitutions, and suggested the necessity of giving every defensive authority to the other departments that was consistent with republican principles.

Mr. MASON said, he had always been a friend to this provision. It would give a confidence to the executive which he would not otherwise have, and without which the revisionary power would be of little avail.

Mr. GERRY did not expect to see this point, which had undergone full discussion, again revived. The object, he conceived, of the revisionary power was merely to secure the executive department against legislative encroachment. The executive, therefore, who will best know and be ready to defend his rights, ought alone to have the defence of them. The motion was liable to strong objections. It was combining and mixing together the legislative and the other departments. It was establishing an improper coalition between the executive and judiciary departments. It was making statesmen of the judges, and setting them up as the guardians of the rights of the people. He relied, for his part, on the representatives of the people, as the guardians of their rights and interests. It was making the expositors of the laws the legislators, which ought never to be done. A better expedient for correcting the laws would be to appoint, as had been done in Pennsylvania, a person or persons of proper skill, to draw bills for the legislature.

Mr. STRONG thought, with Mr. Gerry, that the power of making ought to be kept distinct from that of expounding the laws. No maxim was better established. The judges, in exercising the function of expositors, might be influenced by the part they had taken in passing the laws.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. Some check being necessary on the legislature, the question is, in what hands it should be lodged.

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On one side, it was contended, that the executive alone ought to exercise it. He did not think that an executive appointed for six years, and impeachable whilst in office, would be a very effectual check. On the other side, it was urged, that he ought to be reënforced by the judiciary department. Against this it was objected, that expositors of laws ought to have no hand in making them, and arguments in favor of this had been drawn from England. What weight was due to them might be easily determined by an attention to facts. The truth was, that the judges in England had a great share in the legislation. They are consulted in difficult and doubtful cases. They may be, and some of them are, members of the legislature. They are, or may be, members of the privy council, and can there advise the executive, as they will do with us if the motion succeeds. The influence the English judges may have, in the latter capacity, in strengthening the executive check, cannot be ascertained, as the king, by his influence, in a manner dictates the laws. There is one difference in the two cases, however, which disconcerts all reasoning from the British to our proposed Constitution. The British executive has so great an interest in his prerogatives, and such power for means of defending them, that he will never yield any part of them. The interest of our executive is so inconsiderable and so transitory, and his means of defending it so feeble, that there is the justest ground to fear his want of firmness in resisting encroachments. He was extremely apprehensive that the auxiliary firmness and weight of the judiciary would not supply the deficiency. He concurred in thinking the public liberty in greater danger from legislative usurpations than from any other source. It had been said, that the legislature ought to be relied on, as the proper guardians of liberty. The answer was short and conclusive. Either bad laws will be pushed or not. On the latter supposition, no check will be wanted; on the former, a strong check will be necessary. And this is the proper supposition. Emissions of paper money, largesses to the people, a remission of debts, and similar measures, will at some times be popular, and will be pushed for that reason. At other times, such measures will coincide with the interests of the legislature themselves, and that will be a reason not less cogent for pushing them. It may be thought that the people will not be deluded and misled in the latter case; but experience teaches another lesson. The press is indeed a great means of diminishing the evil; yet it is found to be unable to prevent it altogether.

Mr. L. MARTIN considered the association of the judges with the executive as a dangerous innovation, as well as one that could not produce the particular advantage expected from it. A knowledge of mankind, and of legislative affairs, cannot be presumed to belong in a higher degree to the judges than to the legislature. And as to the constitutionality of laws, that point will come before the judges in their official character. In this character they have a negative on the laws. Join them with the executive in the revision, and they will

have a double negative. It is necessary that the supreme judiciary should have the confidence of the people. This will soon be lost, if they are employed in the task of remonstrating against popular measures of the legislature. Besides, in what mode and proportion are they to vote in the council of revision?

Mr. MADISON could not discover in the proposed association of the judges with the executive, in the revisionary check on the legislature, any violation of the maxim which requires the great departments of power to be kept separate and distinct. On the contrary, he thought it an auxiliary precaution in favor of the maxim. If a con stitutional discrimination of the departments on paper were a suffi cient security to each against encroachments of the others, all further provisions would indeed be superfluous. But experience had taught us a distrust of that security, and that it is necessary to introduce such a balance of powers and interests as will guaranty the provisions on paper. Instead, therefore, of contenting ourselves with laying down the theory, in the Constitution, that each department ought to be separate and distinct, it was proposed to add a defensive power to each, which should maintain the theory in practice. In so doing, we did not blend the departments together. We erected effectual barriers for keeping them separate. The most regular example of this theory was in the British constitution. Yet it was not only the prac

tice there to admit the judges to a seat in the legislature, and in the executive councils, and submit to their previous examination all laws of a certain description, but it was a part of their constitution that the executive might negative any law whatever; a part of their constitution, which had been universally regarded as calculated for the preservation of the whole. The objection against a union of the judiciary and executive branches, in the revision of the laws, had either no foundation, or was not carried far enough. If such a union was an improper mixture of powers, or such a judiciary check on the laws was inconsistent with the theory of a free constitution, it was equally so to admit the executive to any participation in the making of laws; and the revisionary plan ought to be discarded altogether.

Col. MASON observed, that the defence of the executive was not the sole object of the revisionary power. He expected even greater advantages from it. Notwithstanding the precautions taken in the constitution of the legislature, it would still so much resemble that of the individual states, that it must be expected frequently to pass unjust and pernicious laws. This restraining power was therefore essentially necessary. It would have the effect, not only of hindering the final passage of such laws, but would discourage demagogues from attempting to get them passed. It has been said, (by Mr. L. Martin,) that if the judges were joined in this check on the laws, they would have a double negative, since in their expository capacity of judges they would have one negative. He would reply, that in this capacity they could impede in one case only the operation of laws. They could declare an unconstitutional law void. But with regard to every

law, however unjust, oppressive, or pernicious, that did not come plainly under this description, they would be under the necessity, as judges, to give it a free course. He wished the further use to be made of the judges of giving aid in preventing every improper law. Their aid will be the more valuable, as they are in the habit and practice of considering laws in their true principles and in all their consequences.

Mr. WILSON. The separation of the departments does not require that they should have separate objects, but that they should act separately, though on the same objects. It is necessary that the two branches of the legislature should be separate and distinct, yet they are both to act precisely on the same object.

Mr. GERRY had rather give the executive an absolute negative for its own defence, than thus to blend together the judiciary and executive departments. It will bind them together in an offensive and defensive alliance against the legislature, and render the latter unwilling to enter into a contest with them.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS was surprised that any defensive provision for securing the effectual separation of the departments should be considered as an improper mixture of them. Suppose that the three powers were to be vested in three persons, by compact among themselves; that one was to have the power of making, another of executing, and a third of judging, the laws; would it not be very natural for the two latter, after having settled the partition on paper, to observe, and would not candor oblige the former to admit, that, as a security against legislative acts of the former, which might easily be so framed as to undermine the powers of the two others, the two others ought to be armed with a veto for their own defence; or at least to have an opportunity of stating their objections against acts of encroachment? And would any one pretend, that such a right tended to blend and confound powers that ought to be separately exercised? As well might it be said that if three neighbors had three distinct farms, a right in each to defend his farm against his neighbors, tended to blend the farms together.

Mr. GORHAM. All agree that a check on the legislature is necessary. But there are two objections against admitting the judges to share in it, which no observations on the other side seem to obviate. The first is, that the judges ought to carry into the exposition of the laws no prepossessions with regard to them; the second, that, as the judges will outnumber the executive, the revisionary check would be thrown entirely out of the executive hands, and, instead of enabling him to defend himself, would enable the judges to sacrifice him.

Mr. WILSON. The proposition is certainly not liable to all the objections which have been urged against it. According to (Mr. Gerry) it will unite the executive and judiciary in an offensive and defensive alliance against the legislature. According to (Mr. Gorham) it will lead to a subversion of the executive by the judiciary influence. To the first gentleman the answer was obvious that the

joint weight of the two departments was necessary to balance the single weight of the legislature. To the first objection stated by the other gentleman, it might be answered that, supposing the prepossession to mix itself with the exposition, the evil would be overbalanced by the advantages promised by the expedient; to the second objection, that such a rule of voting might be provided, in the detail, as would guard against it.

Mr. RUTLEDGE thought the judges, of all men, the most unfit to be concerned in the revisionary council. The judges ought never to give their opinion on a law, till it comes before them. He thought it equally unnecessary. The executive could advise with the officers of state, as of war, finance, &c., and avail himself of their information and opinions.

On the question on Mr. Wilson's motion for joining the judiciary in the revision of laws, it passed in the negative.

Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, ay, 3; Massachusetts, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, no, 4; Pennsylvania, Georgia, divided; New Jersey, not present, 182

The tenth resolution, giving the executive a qualified veto, requiring two thirds of each branch of the legislature to overrule it, was then agreed to, nem. con.

The motion made by Mr. Madison, on the 18th of July, and then postponed, "that the judges should be nominated by the executive, and such nominations become appointments, unless disagreed to by two thirds of the second branch of the legislature," was now resumed.183

Mr. MADISON stated, as his reasons for the motion-first, that it secured the responsibility of the executive, who would in general be more capable and likely to select fit characters than the legislature, or even the second branch of it, who might hide their selfish motives under the number concerned in the appointment; secondly, that, in case of any flagrant partiality or error in the nomination, it might be fairly presumed that two thirds of the second branch would join in putting a negative on it; thirdly, that, as the second branch was very differently constituted, when the appointment of the judges was formerly referred to it, and was now to be composed of equal votes from all the states, the principle of compromise which had prevailed in other instances required, in this, that there should be a concurrence of two authorities, in one of which the people, in the other the states, should be represented. The executive magistrate would be considered as a national officer, acting for and equally sympathizing with every part of the United States. If the second branch alone should have this power, the judges might be appointed by a minority of the people, though by a majority of the states, which could not be justified on any principle, as their proceedings were to relate to the people rather than to the states; and as it would, moreover, throw the appointments entirely into the hands of the Northern States, a perpetual ground of jealousy and discontent would be furnished to the Southern States.