The true protectors of our liberty are our state-governments

This is from my letter to Destutt de Tracy, January 26, 1811:

I am not conscious that my participations in Executive authority have produced any bias in favor of the single executive; because the parts I have acted have been in the subordinate, as well as superior stations, and because, if I know myself, what I have felt, and what I have wished, I know that I have never been so well pleased as when I could shift power from my own, on the shoulders of others; nor have I ever been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

I am still however sensible of the solidity of your principle, that, to ensure the safety of the public liberty, it’s depository should be subject to be changed with the greatest ease possible, and without suspending or disturbing for a moment the movements of the machine of government. You apprehend that a single Executive, with eminence of talent, and destitution of principle, equal to the object, might, by usurpation, render his powers hereditary. Yet I think history furnishes as many examples of a single usurper arising out of a government by a plurality, as of temporary trusts of power in a single hand rendered permanent by usurpation. I do not believe therefore that this danger is lessened in the hands of a plural Executive. Perhaps it is greatly increased by the state of inefficiency to which they are liable from feuds & divisions among themselves.

The Conservative body you propose might be so constituted as, while it would be an admirable sedative in a variety of smaller cases, might also be a valuable centinel and check on the liberticide views of an ambitious individual. I am friendly to this idea. But the true barriers of our liberty in this country are our state-governments: and the wisest Conservative power ever contrived by man is that of which our revolution and present government found us possessed. Seventeen distinct states, amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns, but single and independent as to their internal administration, regularly organised with a legislature and Governor resting on the choice of the people, and enlightened by a free press, can never be so fascinated by the arts of one man as to submit voluntarily to his usurpation. Nor can they be constrained to it by any force he can possess. While that may paralyse the single state in which it happens to be encamped, sixteen others, spread over a country of two thousand miles diameter, rise up on every side, ready organised, for deliberation by a constitutional legislature, & for action by their Governor, constitutionally the commander of the militia of the state, that is to say, of every man in it, able to bear arms; and that militia too regularly formed into regiments & battalions, into infantry, cavalry & artillery, trained under officers general & subordinate, legally appointed, always in readiness, and to whom they are already in habits of obedience.