James Madison

“ Power being found by universal experience liable to abuses, a distribution of it into separate departments has become a first principle of free government. By this contrivance, the portion entrusted to the same hands being less, there is less room to abuse what is granted; and the different hands being interested, each in maintaining its own, there is less opportunity to usurp what is not granted. Hence the merited praise of governments modeled on a partition of their powers into legislative, executive, and judiciary, and a repartition of the legislative into different houses. ”

“ In bestowing the eulogies due to the partitions and internal checks of power, It ought not the less to be remembered, that they are neither the sole nor the chief palladium of constitutional liberty. The people, who are the authors of this blessing, must also be its guardians. ”

“ Their eyes must be ever ready to mark, their voice to pronounce, and their arm to repel or repair, aggressions on the authority of their constitutions, the highest authority next to their own, because the immediate work of their own, and the most sacred part of their property, as recognising and recording the title to every other. ”