Madison's Federalist 51 is, quite literally, a control-system design. Each branch of government tends by its nature to accumulate power — its officers are ambitious. Left alone, any one wheel would spin up until it dominated the others: tyranny.
The remedy is not virtue but feedback. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." Each branch is given the constitutional means to resist encroachment by the others — the veto, the override, judicial review, appointments, impeachment. Overreach by any wheel invites a stronger push-back from the belts that check it.
Tuned well, the machine hums: the three powers hold each other in a bounded, self-correcting balance, and it can absorb a sudden shock and settle again.
Break the feedback and you get the two failure modes Madison feared. Loosen or cut the belts on one wheel and it runs away — the accumulation of all powers in the same hands. Or over-tighten every belt and nothing can move at all: total gridlock, a government unable to act. Liberty lives in the narrow band between.
The governor jammed mid-run. The lesson continues without it — everything you have already done is safe.