A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents | Page 3

despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and
bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient
world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through
blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the
agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful
shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by
others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every
difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by
different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans,
we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to
dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand
undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion
may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed,
that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be
strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest

patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government
which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary
fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility
want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary,
the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where
every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law,
and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal
concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the
government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of
others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?
Let history answer this question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and
Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative
government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the
exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to
endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country,
with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and
thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the
use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to
honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth,
but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign
religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of
them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of
man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by
all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here
and his greater happiness hereafter--with all these blessings, what more
is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one
thing more, fellow-citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall
restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the
sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our
felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which
comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you

should understand what I deem the essential principles of our
Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its
Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass
they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion,
religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all
nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State
governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations
for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against
antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government
in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at
home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the
people--a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the
sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute
acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of
republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and
immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best
reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may
relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the
honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
encouragement of agriculture, and of