Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)

[I]t 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 everywhere 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 further, our confidence may go. ... In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

In protest of the Alien and Sedition Acts

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