After all, the President concludes that possibly there may be some great objects of improvement which cannot be effected by tonnage duties, and which it therefore may be expedient for the General Government to take in hand.  Accordingly he suggests, in case any such be discovered, the propriety of amending the Constitution.  Amend it for what?  If, like Mr. Jefferson, the President thought improvements expedient, but not constitutional, it would be natural enough for him to recommend such an amendment.  But hear what he says in this very message: 

“In view of these portentous consequences, I cannot but think that this course of legislation should be arrested, even were there nothing to forbid it in the fundamental laws of our Union.”

For what, then, would he have the Constitution amended?  With him it is a proposition to remove one impediment merely to be met by others which, in his opinion, cannot be removed, to enable Congress to do what, in his opinion, they ought not to do if they could.

Here Mr. Meade of Virginia inquired if Mr. Lincoln understood the President to be opposed, on grounds of expediency, to any and every improvement.

Mr. Lincoln answered:  In the very part of his message of which I am speaking, I understand him as giving some vague expression in favor of some possible objects of improvement; but in doing so I understand him to be directly on the teeth of his own arguments in other parts of it.  Neither the President nor any one can possibly specify an improvement which shall not be clearly liable to one or another of the objections he has urged on the score of expediency.  I have shown, and might show again, that no work—­no object—­can be so general as to dispense its benefits with precise equality; and this inequality is chief among the “portentous consequences” for which he declares that improvements should be arrested.  No, sir.  When the President intimates that something in the way of improvements may properly be done by the General Government, he is shrinking from the conclusions to which his own arguments would force him.  He feels that the improvements of this broad and goodly land are a mighty interest; and he is unwilling to confess to the people, or perhaps to himself, that he has built an argument which, when pressed to its conclusions, entirely annihilates this interest.

I have already said that no one who is satisfied of the expediency of making improvements needs be much uneasy in his conscience about its constitutionality.  I wish now to submit a few remarks on the general proposition of amending the Constitution.  As a general rule, I think we would much better let it alone.  No slight occasion should tempt us to touch it.  Better not take the first step, which may lead to a habit of altering it.  Better, rather, habituate ourselves to think of it as unalterable.  It can scarcely be made better than it is.  New provisions would introduce new difficulties, and thus create and increase appetite for further change.  No, sir; let it stand as it is.  New hands have never touched it.  The men who made it have done their work, and have passed away.  Who shall improve on what they did?