And now, let us look at the consequences. From Aristotle down to the last elementary writer on Government, it has been every where, and at all times, acknowledged, that every possible kind of sway upon earth, between Despotism and Anarchy, may be resolved into three elements of power, differently combined, or combined in different proportions. These elements are: 1. The Legislative, or law-making power; 2. The Judicial, or law-expounding power; and 3. The Executive, or law-enforcing power. Taken together we have what is called the Sovereign Power. The power of making laws, of saying what they mean, and of carrying them into execution being all that is ever needed for government. And this, the Sovereign Power, may be concentrated in one person, whence we have the Czar, the Sultan, or the Autocrat; or it may be confined to a few—as in Sparta, or Genoa, or Venice, or Poland—constituting either an Aristocracy or an Oligarchy; or it may be distributed among the people equally, as at Rome or Athens at particular periods of their history, when they were a tumultuous unmanageable Democracy: or unequally, as in England, or in these United States, thereby constituting a Limited Monarchy, or a Representative Republic, pretending to a balance, by the help of a King or President, a House of Lords, or a Senate, and a House of Commons or a House of Representatives, and a Judiciary, more or less dependent upon the Executive. Of all these different systems the worst by far is an Oligarchy—or the government of a privileged few—no matter whether elective and shifting, or permanent, provided that, as a body or estate, they are allowed by common consent to make the laws—to expound the laws—and to carry the laws into execution, by holding all the offices worth having, from that of the monarch or president, down to that of a clerk or sergeant-at-arms. True it is, that by no human contrivance can the three elements of power above mentioned, be kept entirely separate—for they will run into each other—as where the Supreme Executive is allowed a veto, or required to sanction a law: and where the Senate, as a branch of the Supreme Legislative power, intermeddles with the appointing power of the Executive under the name of confirmation; and where the Supreme Judiciary, after being appointed by the Executive and confirmed by the Senate, are made dependent upon that other branch of the Supreme Legislative power for the payment of their salaries—the House originating all money bills and voting supplies—turn about, in their capacity of Supreme Judges, and are allowed to unsettle, if they please, by their interpretation, whatever the Supreme Legislative power may choose to enact for law.