Thomas Jefferson
"…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
- Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree. This indeed is not all that is necessary, though it be essentially necessary. An amendment of our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe; because the corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth: and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price. The government of Great-Britain has been corrupted, because but one man in ten has a right to vote for members of parliament. The sellers of the government therefore get nine-tenths of their price clear. It has been thought that corruption is restrained by confining the right of suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the people: but it would be more effectually restrained by an extension of that right to such numbers as would bid defiance to the means of corruption."
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia.
Federalist Papers
"In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters."
-"The Federalist Papers : No. 10," James Madison, 1787
James Madison
“The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. … In a just & a free, Government, therefore, the rights both of property & of persons ought to be effectually guarded. Will the former be so in a case of universal suffrage? Will the latter be so in case of a suffrage confined to holders of property?”
- James Madison, 1821