State of the Union Addresses (1790-2008)United States. Presidents
History
State of the Union Addresses (1790-2008)
United States. Presidents
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The receipts into the Treasury during the year ending on the 30th of
September last have exceeded $16.5 millions, which have been sufficient
to defray all the demands on the Treasury to that day, including a
necessary reimbursement of near $3 millions of the principal of the
public debt. In these receipts is included a sum of near $5.85 millions,
received on account of the loans authorized by the acts of the last
session; the whole sum actually obtained on loan amounts to $11
millions, the residue of which, being receivable subsequent to the 30th
of September last, will, together with the current revenue, enable us to
defray all the expenses of this year.
The duties on the late unexpected importations of British manufactures
will render the revenue of the ensuing year more productive than could
have been anticipated.
The situation of our country, fellow citizens, is not without its
difficulties, though it abounds in animating considerations, of which
the view here presented of our pecuniary resources is an example. With
more than one nation we have serious and unsettled controversies, and
with one, powerful in the means and habits of war, we are at war. The
spirit and strength of the nation are nevertheless equal to the support
of all its rights, and to carry it through all its trials. They can be
met in that confidence.
Above all, we have the inestimable consolation of knowing that the war
in which we are actually engaged is a war neither of ambition nor of
vain glory; that it is waged not in violation of the rights of others,
but in the maintenance of our own; that it was preceded by a patience
without example under wrongs accumulating without end, and that it was
finally not declared until every hope of averting it was extinguished by
the transfer of the British scepter into new hands clinging to former
councils, and until declarations were reiterated to the last hour,
through the British envoy here, that the hostile edicts against our
commercial rights and our maritime independence would not be revoked;
nay, that they could not be revoked without violating the obligations of
Great Britain to other powers, as well as to her own interests.
To have shrunk under such circumstances from manly resistance would have
been a degradation blasting our best and proudest hopes; it would have
struck us from the high rank where the virtuous struggles of our fathers
had placed us, and have betrayed the magnificent legacy which we hold in
trust for future generations. It would have acknowledged that on the
element which forms three-fourths of the globe we inhabit, and where all
independent nations have equal and common rights, the American people
were not an independent people, but colonists and vassals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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