The event by which the union was still more seriously threatened, has been too recent for me to say much of it on the present occasion. Yet I may be permitted to remark, without opening wounds hardly yet cicatrized, that both those who apprehend disunion and those who dread consolidation may draw salutary lessons from that event; and that each party may, by a course of imprudence, promote the very evil of which it is most apprehensive. I will add, that it affords additional evidence of the strength of the ligaments which bind us together, for if those who felt themselves aggrieved by the general government, had been less sensible of the _value_--of the _necessity_ of the union--then the master pilot,[7] who at the critical moment seized the helm, and steered the ship of state through the breakers that threatened her on either side, had interposed his consummate skill in vain. [Footnote 7: Henry Clay, who was thus thrice mainly instrumental in giving peace to his country.] But when it is considered that the continuance of the union is indispensable to our peace, prosperity, and civil liberty--that on it rest our hopes of national greatness, it would hardly seem consistent with prudence to rely altogether on the natural securities I have mentioned. We should also sedulously guard against whatever may tend to weaken our attachment to it; and should therefore confine the functions of the general government to those objects which are most indispensable to the prosperity of the whole, and to which the powers of the separate governments are incompetent. And while it should exercise no power which was not clearly beneficial, as well as constitutional, it should forbear to exercise such powers as come under this description, when they may prove sources of discontent, or of collision with local feelings and interests. The advantages of such a course will be to give the federal government greater efficacy in the execution of its remaining powers, and especially in our foreign concerns; and it will afford us the best security, not only against disunion, but the opposite danger of consolidation. The continuance of our present complex system of government--the only one in which the highest degree of civil liberty can be reconciled with the greatest extent of territory--depends on its maintaining a just equipoise between the general government and the governments of the separate states; and that equipoise may be disturbed no less by enlarging the capacity of conferring favors than that of doing mischief--of appealing to the hopes no less than to the fears of the community.