§. 156. The power of assembling and dismissing the legislative, placed in the
executive, gives not the executive a superiority over it, but is a fiduciary
trust placed in him for the safety of the people in a case where the
uncertainty and variableness of human affairs could not bear a steady fixed
rule. For it not being possible that the first framers of the government should
by any foresight be so much masters of future events as to be able to prefix so
just periods of return and duration to the assemblies of the legislative, in
all times to come, that might exactly answer all the exigencies of the
commonwealth, the best remedy could be found for this defect was to trust this
to the prudence of one who was always to be present, and whose business it was
to watch over the public good. Constant, frequent meetings of the legislative,
and long continuations of their assemblies, without necessary occasion, could
not but be burdensome to the people, and must necessarily in time produce more
dangerous inconveniencies, and yet the quick turn of affairs might be sometimes
such as to need their present help; any delay of their convening might endanger
the public; and sometimes, too, their business might be so great that the
limited time of their sitting might be too short for their work, and rob the
public of that benefit which could be had only from their mature deliberation.
What, then, could be done in this case to prevent the community from being
exposed some time or other to imminent hazard on one side or the other, by
fixed intervals and periods set to the meeting and acting of the legislative,
but to entrust it to the prudence of some who, being present and acquainted
with the state of public affairs, might make use of this prerogative for the
public good? And where else could this be so well placed as in his hands who
was entrusted with the execution of the laws for the same end? Thus, supposing
the regulation of times for the assembling and sitting of the legislative not
settled by the original constitution, it naturally fell into the hands of the
executive; not as an arbitrary power depending on his good pleasure, but with
this trust always to have it exercised only for the public weal, as the
occurrences of times and change of affairs might require. Whether settled
periods of their convening, or a liberty left to the prince for convoking the
legislative, or perhaps a mixture of both, hath the least inconvenience
attending it, it is not my business here to inquire, but only to show that,
though the executive power may have the prerogative of convoking and dissolving
such conventions of the legislative, yet it is not thereby superior to it.
