varied; and cases belonging to the Judiciary department frequently drawn within Legislative cognizance and determination.
Those who wish to see the several particulars falling under each of these heads, may consult the Journals of the Council, which are in print. Some of them, it will be found, may be imputable to peculiar circumstances connected with the war; but the greater part of them may be considered as the spontaneous shoots of an ill-constituted Government.
It appears, also, that the Executive department had not been innocent of frequent breaches of the Constitution. There are three observations, however, which ought to be made on this head: First, A great proportion of the instances were either immediately produced by the necessities of the war, or recommended by Congress, or the Commander-in-chief; Secondly, In most of the other instances, they conformed either to the declared or the known sentiments of the Legislative department; Thirdly, The Executive department of Pennsylvania is distinguished from that of the other States, by the number of members composing it. In this respect, it has as much affinity to a Legislative assembly, as to an Executive Council. And being at once exempt from the restraint of an individual responsibility for the acts of the body, and deriving confidence from mutual example and joint influence, unauthorized measures would of course be more freely hazarded, than where the Executive department is administered by a single hand, or by a few hands.
The conclusion which I am warranted in drawing from these observations is, that a mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of Government in the same hands.
