The continuous administration of Washington and John Adams had closed under a cloud which had thrown a broad, dark shadow over the future; the nation was deeply indebted at home and abroad, and its credit was prostrate. The revolutionary factions had given place to two inveterate parties, divided by a gulf which had been worn by the conflict in which the Constitution was adopted, and made broader and deeper by a war of prejudices concerning the merits of the belligerents in the great European struggle that then convulsed the civilized world. Our extraordinary political system was little more than an ingenious theory, not yet practically established. The union of the states was as yet only one of compact; for the political, social, and commercial necessities to which it was so marvelously adapted, and which, clustering thickly upon it, now render it indissoluble, had not then been broadly disclosed, nor had the habits of acquiescence and the sentiments of loyalty, always slow of growth, fully ripened. The bark that had gone to sea, thus unfurnished and untried, seemed quite certain to founder by reason of its own inherent frailty, even if it should escape unharmed in the great conflict of nations which acknowledged no claims of justice and tolerated no pretensions of neutrality. Moreover, the territory possessed by the nation was inadequate to commercial exigencies and indispensable social expansion; and yet no provision had been made for enlargement, nor for extending the political system over distant regions, inhabited or otherwise, which must inevitably be acquired. Nor could any such acquisition be made, without disturbing the carefully-adjusted balance of powers among the members of the confederacy. These difficulties, Mr. President, although they grew less with time and by slow degrees, continued throughout the whole life of the statesman whose obsequies we are celebrating. Be it known, then, and I am sure that history will confirm the instruction, that conservatism was the interest of the nation, and the responsibility of its rulers, during the period in which he flourished. He was ardent, bold, generous, and even ambitious; and yet, with a profound conviction of the true exigencies of the country, like Alexander Hamilton, he disciplined himself and trained a restless nation, that knew only self-control, to the rigorous practice of that often humiliating conservatism which its welfare and security in that particular crisis so imperiously demanded.