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274 [Governor's Message] their voluntary suffrages, to perform for their benefit certain duties in a manner pointed out by the Constitution having performed these duties our agency will expire our powers cease and public opinion will decide upon our public conduct. On that opinion depends not merely who shall administer government, but the form and even the very existence of government itself. To perpetrate in this free country that form of government which our ancestors established with great toil and unexampled wisdom, must be the ardent wish of every enlightened philanthropist To secure to the people the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty and there just rights a knowledge of those rights, of their value and importance to themselves and their posterity is indispensably necessary. Nor should this knowledge be confined to a few; the more universal its diffusion the greater the security. It may