rect, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberations 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 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 reins 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 pretext. 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 can not 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 credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual
change from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion: and
remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common
interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much
vigour as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is
indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with
powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is,
indeed, little else than a name, where the government is to