For these reasons I return
the bill to the Senate, in which House it originated, for the further
consideration of Congress which the Constitution prescribes. Insomuch as
the several parts of the bill which I have not considered are matters
chiefly of detail and are based altogether upon the theory of the
Constitution from which I am obliged to dissent, I have not thought
it necessary to examine them with a view to make them an occasion of
distinct and special objections.
Experience, I think, has shown that it is the easiest, as it is
also the most attractive, of studies to frame constitutions for the
self-government of free states and nations. But I think experience has
equally shown that it is the most difficult of all political labors to
preserve and maintain such free constitutions of self-government when
once happily established. I know no other way in which they can be
preserved and maintained except by a constant adherence to them through
the various vicissitudes of national existence, with such adaptations
as may become necessary, always to be effected, however, through the
agencies and in the forms prescribed in the original constitutions
themselves.
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