President James Monroe in his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817, that when people become ignorant, the government usurps power away from them:
“Under this Constitution … the States, respectively protected by the National Government under a mild, parental system against foreign dangers, and enjoying within their separate spheres, by a wise partition of power …
It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.
Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found.
The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.”