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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