The Separation of Powers in the Eighteenth Century

“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.” Thus the authors of The Federalist defined the purposes of the government created by the Federal Convention. But they reached this definition as the conclusion to a discussion of the factious nature of mankind. Madison had already remarked that the causes of faction could not be removed without abolishing the liberty which is essential to political life. He believed, however, that the control of its effects was within human power. To the mind of the Virginian the vital political forces in the state should be tied up in a nice poise through the clauses of a written constitution. A government so contrived would, as Madison believed, “secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation.”The ideal which Madison envisaged was one of dynamic equilibrium. He thought that by deriving the various branches of the government from different sources all positive action to the detriment of established order and guaranteed rights would be checked from the outset. Every safeguard against “the mutability of public councils” was to be embodied in the interior structure of the government itself. It was not enough that government should have a dependence upon the people; “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”The political experience to which Madison referred was fresh in the minds of all the men who assembled at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. It was afforded by the thirteen states, in none of which did political practice square with the expressed provisions of its constitution.