evidence: —Thomas Jefferson, 1788 "I know of 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 inform their discretion." —Thomas Jefferson, 1820 "That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part." [...] —James Madison, 1822 "The general question must be between a republican government in which the majority rule the minority, and a government in which a lesser number or the least number rule … no government … can be perfect. … The abuses of all other governments have led to the preference for republican government as the best of all governments, because the least imperfect that the vital principle of republican government is the lex majoris partis, the will of the majority."