the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive
proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in
the general government and in the Atlantic states unfriendly to their interests
in regard to the MISSISSIPPI; they have been witnesses to the formation of two
treaties, that with Great-Britain and that with Spain, which secure to them
every thing they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming
their prosperity.  Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation
of these advantages on the UNION by which they were procured?  Will they not
henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them
from their burthen and connect them with aliens?

    To the efficacy and permanency of your union, a government for the whole
is indispensable--No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an
adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions
which all alliances in all times have experienced.  Sensible of this momentous
truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a
constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate
union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns.  This
government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted
upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles,
in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing
within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence
and your support.  Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws,
acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of
true liberty.  The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to
make and to alter their constitutions of government.--But, the constitution which
at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole
people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.  the very idea of the power and the
right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual
to obey the established government.

    All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations,
under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control,
counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities,
are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.  They
serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force--to put
in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a
small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to
the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the
mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the
organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils, and
modified by mutual interests.

    However combinations or associations of the above description may now and
then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to
become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will
be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the
reigns of government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted
them to unjust dominion.

    Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your
present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular
oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with
care the spirit of innovation upon its principles however specious the pretexts.--
One method of assault may be to elect in the forms of the constitution alterations
which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what
cannot be directly overthrown.  In all the changes to which you may be invited,
remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character
of governments, as of other human institutions--that experience is the
surest standard, bu which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of
a country--that facility in changes upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion,