§. 152. The executive power placed anywhere but in a person that has also a
share in the legislative is visibly subordinate and accountable to it, and may
be at pleasure changed and displaced; so that it is not the supreme executive
power that is exempt from subordination, but the supreme executive power vested
in one, who having a share in the legislative, has no distinct superior
legislative to be subordinate and accountable to, farther than he himself shall
join and consent, so that he is no more subordinate than he himself shall think
fit, which one may certainly conclude will be but very little. Of other
ministerial and subordinate powers in a commonwealth we need not speak, they
being so multiplied with infinite variety in the different customs and
constitutions of distinct commonwealths, that it is impossible to give a
particular account of them all. Only thus much which is necessary to our
present purpose we may take notice of concerning them, that they have no manner
of authority, any of them, beyond what is by positive grant and commission
delegated to them, and are all of them accountable to some other power in the
commonwealth.
