The people are the safest depository of power

[This is from a letter to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820, regarding the dangers of judges with lifetime appointments, and that, ultimately, power belongs to the people.]

The constitution, in keeping the three departments distinct & independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive & legislative, to executive and legislative organs. The judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws of meum et tuum [mine and yours], and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department. When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.