hief magistrate of the state, criticized that constitution as not
making such separation effectual. In his "Notes on Virginia" he wrote
of it: "All the powers of government, legislative, executive and
judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in
the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It
will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a
plurality of hands and not by a single one. One hundred and
seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those
who doubt it turn their eyes on the republic of Venice. As little
will it avail us that they are chosen by ourselves. An elective
despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should
not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of
government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of
magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without
being effectually checked and restrained by the others. For this
reason the convention which passed the ordinance of government laid
its foundation on this basis, that the legislative, executive and
judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that no
person should exercise more than one of them at the same time. But no
barrier was provided between these several powers." It was this
defect, this lack of barriers, that Jefferson lamented.

When the draft of the Federal Constitution of 1787 was submitted to
the states, one of the principal objections urged against it was that
in its structure sufficient regard was not paid to keeping the three
departments of government separate and distinct. In reference to this
objection Madison wrote in the "Federalist": "No political truth is
certainly of greater intrinsic value or is stamped with the authority
of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which this
objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative,
executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, few, or
many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly
be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the Federal
Constitution therefore really chargeable with this accumulation of
powers, or with a mixture of powers having a dangerous tendency to
such an accumulation, no further argument would be necessary to
inspire a universal reprobation of the system." He elsewhere declared
the maxim to be a "fundamental article of liberty."