He accepted no pay as commander-in-chief; he accepts none as president of the United States.
After the new federal constitution was established, the state of Pennsylvania, conceiving that some parts of its own constitution required to be altered, elected a convention for that purpose.

The proposed alterations were published, and the people concurring therein, they were established.
In forming those constitutions, or in altering them, little or no inconvenience took place.

The ordinary course of things was not interrupted, and the advantages have been much.

It is always the interest of a far greater number of people in a nation to have things right, than to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open to debate, and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong, unless it decides too hastily.
In the two instances of changing the constitutions, the governments then in being were not actors either way.

Government has no right to make itself a party in any debate respecting the principles or modes of forming, or of changing, constitutions.