any one
particular form. The principle is the same in all the forms under which
it can be arranged. The equal rights of the people is the root from
which the whole springs, and the branches may be arranged as present
opinion or future experience shall best direct. As to that _hospital of
incurables_ (as Chesterfield calls it), the British house of peers,
it is an excrescence growing out of corruption; and there is no more
affinity or resemblance between any of the branches of a legislative
body originating from the right of the people, and the aforesaid
house of peers, than between a regular member of the human body and an
ulcerated wen.

As to that part of government that is called the _executive_, it is
necessary in the first place to fix a precise meaning to the word.

There are but two divisions into which power can be arranged. First,
that of willing or decreeing the laws; secondly, that of executing or
putting them in practice. The former corresponds to the intellectual
faculties of the human mind, which reasons and determines what shall be
done; the second, to the mechanical powers of the human body, that puts
that determination into practice.(1) If the former decides, and the
latter does not perform, it is a state of imbecility; and if the latter
acts without the predetermination of the former, it is a state
of lunacy. The executive department therefore is official, and is
subordinate to the legislative, as the body is to the mind, in a
state of health; for it is impossible to conceive the idea of two
sovereignties, a sovereignty to _will_, and a sovereignty to _act_.
The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it
shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case; for it
can _act no other thing_ than what the laws decree, and it is _obliged_
to act conformably thereto; and in this view of the case, the executive
is made up of all the official departments that execute the laws, of
which that which is called the judiciary is the chief.

1 Paine may have had in mind the five senses, with reference
to the proposed five members of the Directory.--_Editor._.

But mankind have conceived an idea that _some kind of authority_ is
necessary to _superintend_ the execution of the laws and to see
that they are faithfully performed; and it is by confounding this
superintending authority with the official execution that we get
embarrassed about the term _executive power_. Al