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 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 descriptions 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 afterwards
the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your Government, a