"The care of human life and happiness, not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
He also said:
"The opinion which gives to the Judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what are not, not only for themwelves in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
The writer of the Declaration's worst fears have now been realized.
God help us all...
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 any one 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
The Founders must be spinning in their graves over this. It's beyond belief!