• Untitled Address
  • Elder Charles W. Penrose
  • October 1912, Pages 59-68

The government is divided into three branches: the legislative, the executive and the judicial ; the judiciary, and the President, and the Congress which is formed into two branches, one to make a balance or check upon the other. These institutions set up and established in the Constitution of our country were the product of the knowledge and the wisdom of the men who sat in council who had had the opportunity of reading about the experiences of the past, away back to the time of ancient Rome and Greece, and they saw the failures that had occurred when the populace directly had power to regulate the affairs of the community. They saw what was needed to put a check upon the passions of the multitude; they saw what was necessary to secure the rights and privileges of all the people under the Constitution which they were framing, and God gave them the wisdom to select out of the experiences of the past the things that abide, that would remain, that were imperishable in their nature because they were founded in truth, founded in the real spirit of liberty, founded in the essential spirit of freedom to secure to all people their rights and privileges so that none might intrude upon the other.

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