Such a body kings generally have as a council. A
monarchy may exist without it, but it seems to be in the very
essence of a republican government. It holds a sort of middle place
between the supreme power exercised by the people, or immediately
delegated from them, and the mere executive. Of this there are no
traces in your constitution, and in providing nothing of this kind
your Solons and Numas have, as much as in anything else, discovered
a sovereign incapacity.
LET US NOW TURN OUR EYES to what they have done toward the
formation of an executive power. For this they have chosen a
degraded king. This their first executive officer is to be a machine
without any sort of deliberative discretion in any one act of his
function. At best he is but a channel to convey to the National
Assembly such matter as it may import that body to know. If he had
been made the exclusive channel, the power would not have been without
its importance, though infinitely perilous to those who would choose
to exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of facts may
pass to the Assembly with equal authenticity through any other
conveyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a direction to
measures by the statement of an authorized reporter, this office of
intelligence is as nothing.
To consider the French scheme of an executive officer, in its
two natural divisions of civil and political.
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