“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
Lord Acton, an English historian, politician, and writer
I have not edited any of the words of this letter below, however, I did add spacing since the writer (perhaps a bad student) wrote this harsh observation as a single paragraph and it was a little hard to read. DLH
THE LETTER:
At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were
supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government.
Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most
dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a
freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to
concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at
large;
That these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by
little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change
by construction, before anyone has perceived that that invisible and helpless
worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance.
In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all
liability to account.
Thomas
Jefferson: letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823
Republished by Danny Hammond. This and other posts will be placed not chronologically, but by relevance. They are in the order that I wish I would have learned the information. DLH