Chapter XII
The Legislative, Executive, and Federative Power
of the Commonwealth
143. THE legislative power is that which has a right to direct how
the force of the commonwealth shall be employed for preserving the
community and the members of it. Because those laws which are
constantly to be executed, and whose force is always to continue,
may be made in a little time, therefore there is no need that the
legislative should be always in being, not having always business to
do. And because it may be too great temptation to human frailty, apt
to grasp at power, for the same persons who have the power of making
laws to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby
they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and
suit the law, both in its making and execution, to their own private
advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the
rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and
government. Therefore in well-ordered commonwealths, where the good of
the whole is so considered as it ought, the legislative power is put
into the hands of divers persons who, duly assembled, have by
themselves, or jointly with others, a power to make laws, which when
they have done, being separated again, they are themselves subject
to the laws they have made; which is a new and near tie upon them to
take care that they make them for the public good.
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