Employed in the service of my country abroad during the whole course
of these transactions, I first saw the Constitution of the United
States in a foreign country. Irritated by no literary altercation,
animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read
it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads, prompted by
good hearts; as an experiment better adapted to the genius,
character, situation, and relations of this nation and country than
any which had ever been proposed or suggested. In its general
principles and great outlines, it was conformable to such a system
of government as I had ever most esteemed, and in some States, my
own native State in particular, had contributed to establish.
Claiming a right of suffrage common with my fellow-citizens in the
adoption or rejection of a constitution, which was to rule me and my
posterity, as well as them and theirs, I did not hesitate to express
my approbation of it on all occasions, in public and in private. It
was not then, nor has been since, any objection to it, in my mind,
that the Executive and Senate were not more permanent. Nor have I
entertained a thought of promoting any alteration in it, but such as
the people themselves, in the course of their experience, should see
and feel to be necessary or expedient, and by their representatives
in Congress and the State legislature, according to the constitution
itself, adopt and ordain.

Returning to the bosom of my country, after a painful separation
from it for ten years, I had the honor to be elected to a station
under the new order of things; and I have repeatedly laid myself
under the most serious obligations to support the constitution. The
operation of it has equaled the most sanguine expectations of its
friends; and from an habitual attention to it, satisfaction in its