so 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 common-wealth.

Sect. 153. It is not necessary, no, nor so much as convenient, that the
legislative should be always in being; but absolutely necessary that the
executive power should, because there is not always need of new laws to
be made, but always need of execution of the laws that are made. When
the legislative hath put the execution of the laws, they make, into
other hands, they have a power still to resume it out of those hands,
when they find cause, and to punish for any maladministration against
the laws. The same holds also in regard of the federative power, that
and the executive being both ministerial and subordinate to the
legislative, which, as has been shewed, in a constituted common-wealth
is the supreme. The legislative also in this case being supposed to
consist of several persons, (for if it be a single person, it cannot but
be always in being, and so will, as supreme, naturally have the supreme
executive power, together with the legislative) may assemble, and
exercise their legislature, at the times that either their original
constitution, or their own adjournment, appoints, or when they please;
if neither of these hath appointed any time, or there be no other way
prescribed to convoke them: for the supreme power being placed in them
by the people, it is always in them, and they may exercise it when they
please, unless by their original const