Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus: Letter From the Attorney General, Transmitting, in Answer to a Resolution of the House of the 12th Instant, an Opinion Relative to the Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
Hence, keeping the sovereignty always out of sight, they adopted the plan of checks and balances, forming separate departments Of government, and giving to each department separate and limited powers. These departments are coordinate and coequal - that is, neither being sovereign, each is independent in its sphere, and not subordinate to the others, either of them or both of them together. We have three of these co-ordinate departments. Now, if we allow one of the three to determine the extent of its own powers, and also the extent of the powers of the other two, that one can control the whole government, and has in fact achieved the sovereignty.
We ought not to say that our system is perfect, for its defects (per haps inevitable in all human things) are Obvious. Our fathers, having divided the government into co-ordinate departments, did not even try (and if they had tried would probably have failed) to create an arbiter among them to adjudge their con icts and keep them within their respective bounds. They were left, by design, I suppose, each independent and free, to act out its own granted powers, without any ordained legal superior possessing the power to revise and reverse its action. And this with the hope that the three departments, mutually coequal and independent, would keep each other within their proper Spheres by their mutual antagonism - that is, by the system of checks and balances, to which our fathers were driven at the beginning by their fear of the unity of power.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."
