It is good to visit Jefferson sometimes and get an insight as to how great he was and the evil he saw could happen without due dilligece by the people.


Jefferson himself favored a small, weak central government. To strong a central government, he believed, would trample the very rights it was meant to protect
**How true this turns out to be?


"[We] should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this as in the country from which we derive our origin will have seized the heads of government and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic and will be alike influenced by the same causes." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782. ME 2:164

Even in this, the birth of our government, some members [of the Legislature] were found sordid enough to bend their duty to their interests and to look after personal rather than public good." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1818. ME 1:271

'When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.'" --Thomas Jefferson: copied into his Commonplace Book.