d the adoption by you of the
amendment to the Constitution proposed by the Conference of
Commissioners, as best fitted to give security and ensure peace to the
country.

Among the measures strenuously enforced by some of the Commissioners,
in lieu of that adopted by a majority, was the calling of a General
Convention. To this measure your Commissioners opposed their most
earnest and determined resistance. As a measure of peace, if for no
other reason, because of the long delay which it implied, it would be
utterly fruitless. But the possible danger of exposing a Constitution,
framed and adopted in the earlier and more conservative days of the
Republic, to be torn in pieces in these times of lawless irreverence
and change, is too great for any wise man willingly to encounter. The
very equality of the States in the Senate, which was won by the
revolutionary sacrifices and valor of the smaller States, now almost
forgotten, would, in the judgment of your Commissioners, be thereby
greatly endangered; and your Commissioners earnestly represent to your
Honorable body that under no circumstances should this State consent
to a measure which might lead to her own extinction. The Constitution
of a great country, adopted, as this was, on account of diversity of
interests and views, with great difficulty, should be sacred. It may
and should from time to time be amended to suit a change of
circumstances, but never exposed to the danger of being uptorn. It is
the symbol of our strength, because the ligament of our Union. It has
collected about it the reverence of three generations of our people.
It is the only rallying point now for the loyalty of the remaining
States; the only hope of the restoration of the States which have left
us; and, in its main features, it should be, as it was designed to be,
perpetual. At no time should a General Convention be invited to invade
it; and, of all times, this, in the judgment of your Commissioners,
would be the most dangerous.

Finally, it will be found upon an inspection of the Journal of the
late Conference of Commissioners, that the undersigned voted against
many propositions in themselves just and expressive of _their_
sentiments and _yours_, because inopportune and useless; and against
others, because introduced for the very purpose of sowing dissension
among the Commissioners and to prevent an agreement by majority upon
any thing. In this they must ask your candid construction of their
c