concurred in the first ten articles of amendment proposed, they became valid to all intents and purposes as a part of the Constitution from Dec. 15, 1791.

§ 8. The eleventh article of amendment was proposed by the Third Congress at its first session, March 15, 1794. President Adams declared in his message to Congress, Jan. 8, 1798, that it had received the ratification of the constitutional number of States, and was therefore a part of the fundamental law of the land.

§ 9. The twelfth article of amendment was proposed at the first session of the Eighth Congress, Dec. 12, 1803, and received the ratification of the requisite number of States during the following year, and became part of the Constitution.

§ 10. The thirteenth article of amendment was proposed at the second session of the Thirty-eighth Congress. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, announced, Dec. 18, 1865, that it had been ratified by three-fourths of the States, and was therefore a part of the Constitution.

§ 11. The fourteenth article of amendment was proposed by Congress in 1866. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, announced, July 28, 1868, that it had been ratified by the requisite. number of States, and was therefore a part of the Constitution.

§ 12. The fifteenth article of amendment was proposed by Congress in 1869. Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, announced, March 30, 1870, that it had been ratified by the requisite number of States, and was therefore a part of the Constitution of the United States.

CHAPTER XIV.

DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT.

§ 1. No free government can exist on earth, in which the administration of its powers and functions is not distributed. Let one man have the power to make the laws, to interpret them, and to execute the same, and that man will become a despot, and his government a despotism. Human nature must be made anew, or such a result must follow such an investment of authority in a single individual.

§ 2. If this concentration of powers shall be vested in an indefinite number of men, whether that number be few or many, the character of the government will be the same. One or more persons might safely be trusted with any one of these high prerogatives; but the danger consists in the concentration of all in the same hands.

§ 3. All writers on free government agree, that the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers should be kept as separate and distinct as possible. It is hardly possible, however, for human wisdom to devise a plan by which they can be kept entirely separate .n the administration of government.

§ 4. This has been attempted by the wisest and best of minds, but has failed. Not one of all the American States has succeeded; though, in some instances, they may have done all that finite wisdom could accomplish. But in all cases, without a single exception, there has been a partial mixture of these powers.

§ 5. In several of the States, for instance, the Executive is elected by the legislature, if no one receives a majority-vote by the people. In one State he was formerly elected by the legislature, without any attempt at an election by the people.

In nearly all of the States, the judicial officers are impeachable by one or both branches of the legislature. In some of the States, the officers of the judiciary are appointed by the governor and the legislature, or one branch of that body.

In others, the governor may veto any act passed by the legislature; after which, in order that the act so vetoed may become a law, it must be re-passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses.

In some States, the judicial officers are elected by the people, but removable on the address of one or both branches of the legislature. In others, they are removable by one or both branches, on the address of the Executive. In still others, the judicial officers are appointed by one or both branches of the legislature, and removable by one branch on impeachment by the other.

§ 6. In fact, there is no such thing as a complete and absolute separation of the three departments from each other. And all that is intended, in speaking of the three branches being kept separate

and distinct, is, that the powers and duties properly belonging to any one branch or department shall not be interfered with or administered by either of the others; that neither shall possess a controlling influence over the others in the performance of their respective duties.

§ 7. In order that there may be official independence, it is necessary "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers shall be kept as separate from, and independent of, each other, as the nature of a free government will admit, or as is consistent with that chain of connection that binds the whole fabric of the Constitution in one indissoluble bond of unity and amity."

§ 8. The Constitution of the United States aims to separate the three departments as widely as possible, and to render them as independent, the one of the others, as the complicated nature of the subject will permit. The government of the United States is a representative government; and there is far less danger to liberty arising from the partial mixture of these powers in this country, than in a government of less direct responsibility to the people.

I.

THE following is the Declaration of Rights made by the first Continental Congress Oct. 14, 1774, — nearly two years before the Declaration of Independence. But it was not difficult to foresee that separation from the mother country was imminent, unless Great Britain or the Colonies should take an immediate backward step. Indeed, this Declaration of Rights foreshadowed the Declaration of Independence.

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.

WHEREAS, since the close of the last war, the British Parliament, claiming a power of right to bind the people of America by statutes in all cases whatsoever, hath, in some acts, expressly imposed taxes on them, and in others, under various pretenses, but in fact for the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties paya

ble in these Colonies, established a board of commissioners with unconstitutional powers, and extended the jurisdiction of admiralty, not only for collecting the said duties, but for the trial of causes merely arising within the body of a county;

And whereas, in consequence of other statutes, judges, who before held only estates at will in their offices, have been made dependent on the Crown alone for their salaries, and standing armies kept in time of peace; and whereas, it has lately been resolved in Parliament, that, by force of a statute made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, colonists may be transported to England, and tried there upon accusations for treasons, and misprisions or concealments of treasons, committed in the Colonies, and by a late statute such trials have been directed in cases therein mentioned;

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And whereas, in the last session of Parliament, three statutes were made, one entitled an Act to discontinue, in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, the Landing and Discharging, Lading or Shipping, of Goods, Wares, and Merchandise at the Town and within the Harbor of Boston, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England; and another statute was then for Making more Effectual Provisions for the Government of the Province of Quebec," &c., - all which statutes are impolitic, unjust, and cruel, as well as unconstitutional, and most dangerous and destructive of American rights;

made,

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And whereas, assemblies have been frequently dissolved, contrary to the rights of the people, when they attempted to deliberate on grievances; and their dutiful, humble, loyal, and reasonable petitions to the Crown for redress have been repeatedly treated with contempt by his majesty's ministers of State;

The good people of the several Colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Castle, Kent and Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, justly alarmed at these arbitrary proceedings of Parliament sepadministration, have severally elected, constituted, and appointed is intento meet and sit in General Congress, in the city of Phila

delphia, in order to obtain such establishment as that their religion, laws, and liberties may not be subverted. Whereupon the deputies so appointed, being now assembled in a full and free representation of these Colonies, taking into their most serious consideration the best means of attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place, as Englishmen, their ancestors, in like cases have usually done, for affecting and vindicating their rights and liberties, DECLARE,

That the inhabitants of the English Colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English Consti tution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS:

Resolved, N. C. D.,1 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property; and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent.

Resolved, N. C. D., 2. That our ancestors, who first settled these Colonies, were, at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural born subjects within the realm of England.

Resolved, N. C. D., 3. That, by such emigration, they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights; but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.

Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council; and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances can not properly be represented, in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed. But from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the natural interests of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the

1 Abbreviations for nemine contradicente; signifying, no one opposing