§. 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.
