Liberty Letters, James Madison, 1788
No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that … [t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system.
_____________________
Source: James Madison, The Federalist Papers: No. 47, January 30, 1788.
