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 to 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 counsels, 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 reins of government; destroying, afterward,
the very engine which had lifted them to unjust dominion.

Toward 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 effect, 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 by which to test the real tendency of the
existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the
c