State of the Union Addresses (1790-2008)United States. Presidents
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State of the Union Addresses (1790-2008)
United States. Presidents
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Pressures on certain interests, it is admitted, have been felt; but
allowing to these their greatest extent, they detract but little from
the force of the remarks already made. In forming a just estimate of our
present situation it is proper to look at the whole in the outline as
well as in the detail. A free, virtuous, and enlightened people know
well the great principles and causes on which their happiness depends,
and even those who suffer most occasionally in their transitory concerns
find great relief under their sufferings from the blessings which they
otherwise enjoy and in the consoling and animating hope which they
administer.
From whence do these pressures come? Not from a Government which is
founded by, administered for, and supported by the people. We trace them
to the peculiar character of the epoch in which we live, and to the
extraordinary occurrences which have signalized it. The convulsions with
which several of the powers of Europe have been shaken and the long and
destructive wars in which all were engaged, with their sudden transition
to a state of peace, presenting in the first instance unusual
encouragement to our commerce and withdrawing it in the second even
within its wonted limit, could not fail to be sensibly felt here. The
station, too, which we had to support through this long conflict,
compelled as we were finally to become a party to it with a principal
power, and to make great exertions, suffer heavy losses, and to contract
considerable debts, disturbing the ordinary course of affairs by
augmenting to a vast amount the circulating medium, and thereby
elevating at one time the price of every article above a just standard
and depressing it at another below it, had likewise its due effect.
It is manifest that the pressures of which we complain have proceeded in
a great measure from these causes. When, then, we take into view the
prosperous and happy condition of our country in all the great
circumstances which constitute the felicity of a nation--every
individual in the full enjoyment of all his rights, the Union blessed
with plenty and rapidly rising to greatness under a National Government
which operates with complete effect in every part without being felt in
any except by the ample protection which it affords, and under State
governments which perform their equal share, according to a wise
distribution of power between them, in promoting the public
happiness--it is impossible to behold so gratifying, so glorious a
spectacle without being penetrated with the most profound and grateful
acknowledgments to the Supreme Author of All Good for such manifold and
inestimable blessings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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