“I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe.” Almost ignoring foreign politics, Jefferson recommended Congress to abolish the slave-trade, begin a system of national roads and canals, found a national university, fortify the coasts, and organize the national militia; and had Congress been able or willing to follow promptly his advice, many difficulties would have been overcome before the year 1810 which seemed even twenty years later to bar the path of national progress. Congress, indeed, never succeeded in rising to the level of Jefferson’s hopes and wishes; it realized but a small part of the plan which he traced, and what it did was done with little system. The slowness with which political movement lagged behind industrial and social progress could be measured by the fate of President Jefferson’s scheme of 1806 for crowning the fabric of Republican government. Not by means of the government, or by virtue of wisdom in the persons trusted with the government, were Jefferson’s objects destined at last to be partially attained. Notwithstanding the favor shown to internal improvements, John Randolph exulted in the President’s Message, which he regarded as expressing his own views. He scoffed at the Smiths, Crowninshields, and other orators who in the last session had talked loudly of war.[248] “The Message,” he wrote to Nicholson, “was, as you supposed, wormwood to certain gentry. They made wry faces, but in fear of the rod and in hopes of sugarplums swallowed it with less apparent repugnance than I had predicted.” General Smith and the politicians who wanted armaments were annoyed. “We have established theories,” wrote Smith,[249] “that would stare down any possible measures of offence or defence. Should a man take a patriotic stand against those destructive and seductive fine-spun follies, he will be written down very soon. Look at the last Message! It is such that the President cannot recommend (although he now sees the necessity) any augmentation of the army. Nay I, even _I_, did not dare to bring forward the measure until I had first obtained his approbation. Never was there a time when Executive influence so completely governed the nation!”