Otter's Rock

"The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all
to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one
exactly the function he is competent to. Let the National
Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation and its
foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the
civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns
the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the
counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It
is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great
national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends
in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing
under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will
be done for the best…

"What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every
government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing
and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter
whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the
aristocrats of a Venetian Senate."

--Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C.
Cabell, 1816.