tive power, and the state governments. In the fifth place, the Senate is balanced against the President in all appointments to office, and in all treaties. . . . In the sixth place, the people hold in their hands the balance against their own representatives, by biennial . . . elections. In the seventh place, the legislatures of the several states are balanced against the Senate by sextennial elections. In the eighth place, the electors are balanced against the people in the choice of the President. Here is a complicated refinement of balances, which, for anything I recollect, is an invention of our own and peculiar to us.”[1]
All of these balances are reckoned essential in the theory of the Constitution; but none is so quintessential as that between the national and the state governments; it is the pivotal quality of the system, indicating its principal, which is its federal characteristic. The object of this balance of thirty-eight States “and some territories” against the powers of the federal government, as also of several of the other balances enumerated, is not, it should be observed, to prevent the invasion by the national authorities
- ↑ Works, vol. vi., p. 467: “Letter to Jno. Taylor.” The words and sentences omitted in the quotation contain Mr. Adams's opinions as to the value of the several balances, some of which he thinks of doubtful utility, and others of which he, without hesitation, pronounces altogether pernicious.
