so frequently afflict
neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which
their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which
opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate
and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those
overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government,
are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as
particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that
your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and
that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the
other.

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and
virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary
object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government
can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to
mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope
that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of
governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue
to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With
such powerful and obvious motives to union affecting all parts of our
country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its
impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism
of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

* * * * *

To the efficacy and permanency of your union a government for the whole
is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be
an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions
and interruptions which all alliances in all 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, acqu