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 pretexts. 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 cannot 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 changes, from the endless variety of
hypothesis and opinion."

While, in the nature of things, each generation must assume the task of
adapting the working of its government to new conditions of life as they
arise, it would be the folly of ignorant conceit for any generation to
assume that it can lightly and easily improve upon the work of the founders
in those matters which are, by their nature, of universal application to
the permanent relations of men in civil society.

Religion, the philosophy of morals, the teaching of history, the experience
of every human life, point to the same conclusion--that in the practical
conduct of life the most difficult and the most necessary virtue is
self-restraint. It is the first lesson of childhood; it is the quality for
which great monarchs are most highly praised; the man who has it not is
feared and shunned; it is needed most where power is greatest; it is needed
more by men acting in a mass than by individuals, because men in the mass
are more irresponsible and difficult of control than individuals. The
makers of our constitution, wise and earnest students of history and