The mission, in Jefferson’s words, was to “form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity, and individual happiness are so much to depend.”46 He invested the enterprise with the highest of stakes, writing: “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 to inform their discretion by education.47 This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
