Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/490

pendent to check usurpation, to protect public liberty, and to enforce private rights, would be as visionary and absurd, as a society organized without any restraints of law. It would become a democracy with unlimited powers, exercising through its rulers a universal despotic sovereignty. The very theory of a balanced republic of restricted powers presupposes some organized means to control, and resist, any excesses of authority. The people may, if they please, submit ail power to their rulers for the time being; but, then, the government should receive its true appellation and character. It would be a government of tyrants, elective, it is true, but still tyrants; and it would become the more fierce, vindictive, and sanguinary, because it would perpetually generate factions in its own bosom, who could succeed only by the ruin of their enemies. It would be alternately characterized, as a reign of terror, and a reign of imbecility. It would be as cor-

---

upon the encroachments, or usurpations of power, by either of the other."
"That absolute independence of the judiciary, for which we contend, is not, then, incompatible with the strictest responsibility; (for a judge is no more exempt from it, than any other servant of the people, according to the true principles of the constitution;) but such an independence of the other co-ordinate branches of the government, as seems absolutely necessary to secure to them the free exercise of their constitutional functions, without the hope of pleasing, or the fear of offending. And, as from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches, who have the custody of the purse and sword of the confederacy; and as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence, as permanency in office, this quality, therefore, may be justly regarded, as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution; and in great measure, as the citadel of the public justice, and the public security." 1 Tuck. Black. Comm. App. 354, 356 to 360.
There is also a very temperate, and, at the same time, a very satisfactory elucidation of the same subject, in Mr. Rawle's work on the Constitution, (ch. 30.) It would be cheerfully extracted, if this note had not already been extended to an inconvenient length.