l 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 o