its
constitutional operation.

I have said that the course proposed by the majority of the committee
is, in my judgment, not only against the letter, but the spirit of the
Constitution. The State of Kentucky, ever patriotic and conservative,
must have so regarded it, when, instead of asking Congress to propose
the amendments they desired, they requested their sister States to
unite with them in an application in the mode prescribed by the
Constitution to Congress to call a Convention for that purpose.

Our fathers, who framed that Constitution, and the people of the
United States, who ratified it, set it forth in the preamble as their
first great purpose "to form a more perfect Union." They intended to
establish thereby a Government of perpetual obligation and of
self-sustaining vigor. They did not contemplate the necessity of
amendments for any other causes than such as, after calm, deliberate,
undisturbed consideration should be judged necessary. They did not
intend that it should be exposed to the danger of hasty action under
the influence of excited passions or timid and groundless
apprehension. They would not trust the entire people even with the
right of amendment, except in the mode prescribed, with all the delays
incident to that mode; and then only by the action, in every stage of
the proceeding, of persons bound by solemn oath to support it.

The Constitution, in prescribing the modes of proposing amendments,
endeavored to provide against irregular combination of a part only of
the States to effect them. Hence it prohibited all agreements or
compacts between the States; and it made no provision for the
recognition of any action by a convention, except when called on the
recommendation of two-thirds of the States applying to Congress, by
separate action of their Legislatures, for that purpose.

Any interference with the duty of Congress by such a body as we are,
representing only a portion of the States in any form, and some of us
only the executives of the States from which we come, would be as much
at variance with the Constitution as with the counsel of that
illustrious American--I will not say Virginian--for WASHINGTON
belonged to his whole country--in the Farewell Address which he
dedicated to the people of the United States on his retirement from
the public service, and which ought to be cherished in the heart of
every patriot. In addition to what I have already read from that
address let me read th