government under the Articles of Confederation had been
universally acknowledged and was generally thought to come in
part from throwing whatever powers the States had granted, in a
mass, into the hands of the Continental Congress. Nevertheless,
the Constitution of the United States is not framed upon the
principles of a strict tripartite division. It places the
executive power in the hands of the President, all the
legislative powers which were granted by it in Congress, and the
judicial power in certain courts; but it does not follow the
earlier State Constitutions in declaring that whatever was vested
in either of these three depositaries was and must always be
different in kind from that vested in any other of them.

On this point Virginia set the fashion, but the sonorous phrase
of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 is the most familiar,
in its declaration (Part the First, Art. XXX) that "in the
government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall
never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of
them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and
judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never
exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them;
to the end it may be a government of laws, and not of
men."[Footnote: The last declaration of purpose was taken from
Harrington's _Oceana_, in which it is said that while a
monarchy is an empire of men, "a commonwealth is an empire of
laws and not of men." Works, London ed., 35, 42, 224.]

It was from an unwillingness to commit themselves to such a
principle that the people of Connecticut and Rhode Island
preferred for many years to be governed in the old way by their