A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Against the Attack of M. Turgot in His Letter to Dr. Price, Dated the Twenty-second Day of March, 1778: In Three Volumes

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Budd and Bartram, 1797
 

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Página 157 - ... than of that of the rest of their countrymen. The members, therefore, of the legislature should not be chosen from the general body of the nation; but it is proper that in every...
Página 154 - Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control ; for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.
Página 104 - People, yet they generally concluded in that of a single person ; so that a usurping populace is its own dupe, a mere underworker, and a purchaser in trust for some single tyrant, whose state and power they advance to their own ruin, with as blind an instinct as those worms that die with weaving magnificent habits for beings of a superior nature to their own.
Página 155 - ... yet the people feel the effects of it every moment. Hence it is, that many of the princes of Europe^ whose aim has been levelled at arbitrary power, have constantly set out with uniting in their own persons all the branches of magistracy, and all the great offices of state.
Página 153 - When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty ; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
Página 166 - And if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among them that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the interposition of force) is a commonwealth.
Página 245 - In scandal busy, in reproaches bold : With witty malice studious to defame ; Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim.
Página 132 - To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits.
Página 161 - If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people, for example, three parts in four, he is Grand Seignior; for so the Turk is called from his property, and his empire is absolute monarchy. If the few or a nobility, or a nobility with the clergy, be landlords, or overbalance the people to the like proportion, it makes the Gothic balance...
Página 153 - In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law. By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against...

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