In this dangerous crisis the people of America were not abandoned by
their usual good sense, presence of mind, resolution, or integrity.
Measures were pursued to concert a plan to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty. The public disquisitions, discussions, and deliberations
issued in the present happy Constitution of Government.

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, in 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 ever 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 legislatures,
according to the Constitution itself, adopt and ordain.