Chains Of The Constitution

Resolved [...] that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go; [...]. In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), political philosopher, third President of the United States, The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798