Offices once established for the impartial execution of justice become, in such circumstances, instruments whereby friends are rewarded, adversaries harassed, and independent judgment is replaced with obedient servility.
Thus the law, ordained to restrain power, becomes itself the servant of power.
History furnishes abundant instruction.
The Commonwealth of Rome did not perish because one ambitious citizen declared himself king in a single day. Rather, the ancient forms remained standing whilst their substance gradually disappeared. Offices survived. Elections continued. The Senate assembled. Yet each institution yielded a little more to the will of one man until the people discovered that they retained the appearance of liberty whilst its reality had quietly departed.
Liberty consists not merely in choosing governors, but in preventing governors from becoming masters. The division of powers was contrived precisely because the framers of free governments understood that virtue alone cannot forever restrain ambition. Institutions must accomplish what character may someday fail to do.
It is therefore no sufficient reply to say that a magistrate enjoys the affection of many citizens, or that his policies have yielded prosperity to some. The question deserving examination is of another nature altogether.
Would we willingly entrust these same powers to the next ambitious man?
If the answer be no, then prudence demands that such powers should not remain in the hands of the present one either.
For laws are not established for good men only, but likewise against those who shall hereafter prove less scrupulous.
Some imagine that corruption consists solely in the receiving of unlawful coin concealed within dark chambers. Such notions are too narrow. Corruption begins whenever public authority creates private opportunity; whenever the advancement of a family becomes entwined with the advancement of the state; whenever men conclude that prosperity depends less upon industry than upon proximity to power.
A republic cannot long endure when men learn that law is for enemies, power is for friends, and wealth is for the household of the magistrate. For then corruption ceases to be an offence. It becomes the method of government.
Some will say: The people chose him.
So they did.
But election is not absolution. A free people may choose a magistrate;