If it should produce a full meeting in May, and
a broader reformation, it will still be well. To make us one nation as
to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives
the outline of the proper division of powers between the general and
particular governments. But to enable the federal head to exercise
the powers given it, to best advantage, it should be organized, as the
particular ones are, into legislative, executive, and judiciary. The
first and last are already separated. The second should be. When last
with Congress, I often proposed to members to do this, by making of
the committee of the States an executive committee during the recess of
Congress, and during its sessions to appoint a committee to receive and
despatch all executive business, so that Congress itself should meddle
only with what should be legislative. But I question if any Congress
(much less all successively) can have self-denial enough to go, through
with this distribution. The distribution, then, should be imposed
on them. I find Congress have reversed their division of the western
States, and proposed to make them fewer and larger.
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