may conduce to a more distinct express that i should now apprise you the resolution i have formed. to decline being considered out of whom a choice is to be made. i beg you at the same time to do me the justice to be assures that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations pertaining to the dutiful citizen to his country. and that withdrawing the tender of service that silenced in my situation might imply, i am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest. no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both. the acceptance of and continue hit they are hithered to for

your suffer rages have twice called have been a sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and a deference for your desires. i constantly hope that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives i was not at liberty and to return to that retirement to which i have been drawn. the strength of my inclination to do this previous to the last election had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you. mature reflection on the then perplexed and posture of our affairs with foreign nations and the advice of persons entitled to my confidence to a band on the idea. i rejoice that the state of your concerns external as well as internal no longer renders it incompatible with duty or propriety and i am persuaded whatever may be retained that in the present circumstances of our country, you will not disapprove my determination to retire. the impressions with which i undertook the trust were

explained on the proper occasion and the discharge of this trust, i will only say i have with good intentions contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. not unconscious in the out set of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others has strengthened the motives to dissidence of myself and every day the increasing weight of the years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcomed. satisfied if circumstances have been given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary. i have the conilation to believe while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it. in looking forward to the moment which is to terminate the career of my political life, my feelings do not permit me to

suspend the deep acknowledgement of that debt the gratitude which i oh, to my beloved country. for the honors conferred upon me, still more for the steadfast confidence with which it supported me and the opportunities i have enjoyed of manifesting attachments by services faithful in persevering though unusefulness unequal to my we will have, if benefits resulted from the services, let it always be remembered to your praise and as an instructive example of our annuals that under circumstances in which the passions agitated in every direction were liable to mislead and missed appearances sometimes dubious and fortune often discouraging in situations in which not infrequently one of success with the spirit of criticism. the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts and a guarantee of the plans by which they were affected. profoundly penetrated with this idea, i shall carry it with me

to my grave as a strong insightment to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual and the free constitution, the work of your hands may be maintain and the administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue that in finding the happiness of people in the states and under liberty may be made complete by careful preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as the glory of respecting it to the applause and affection and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it. here perhaps i ought to stop. but a solicitude for your welfare that cannot end but with my and the apprehension of danger natural to that urge me

on an occasion like the present offer to contemplation and to recommend to your frequent review, sentiments which are the result of much reflection and no considerable observation and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. these will be offered with the more freedom as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend who can possibly have no personal

motive to this counsel. nor can i forget as an encouragement, your reception of sentiments on not dissimilar occasion. as is the love of liberty we every ligament of your hearts, no recommend of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment. the unity of government that constitutes you people is also now dear to you. it is justly so for it is the main pillar and edifice of your real independence. the support of your tranquility at home and of your safety and prosperity and of the very liberty which you so highly prize. as it is easy to foresee from

different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken. many are employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external and covertly and insidiously direct of infinite movement that you should estimate the value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness. you should cherish if and the attachment to it. as if your political stability and posterity. with jealous anxiety and discounting whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned. indignantly the dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to have the sacred ties that link together the various parts. for this you have every inducement of sympathy or interest. citizens by birth or choice of that country. that country has a right to concentrate your affections. the name of an american that belongs to you in your national capacity must always exalt the patriotism more than any appalachian revived from local discriminations.

for this you have every inducement of sympathy or interest. citizens by birth or choice of that country. that country has a right to concentrate your affections. the name of an american that belongs to you in your national capacity must always exalt the patriotism more than any appalachian revived from local discriminations. with slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principals. you have in a common cause fought and triumphed together, the independence and liberty you possess and the work of joint councils and efforts of common dangers and sufferings and successes. these considerations however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. here every portion of our country fines the most commanding motives for carefully

guarding and preserving the union of the whole. the north in an unrestrained intercourse with the south prospected by the equal laws of a common government finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing central. the south in the same intercourse benefiting by the same agency of the north sees agriculture grow and the commerce expand. turning partly into its own channels, the sea men of the north, it finds particular navigation invigorated and while it contributes in different ways to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength to which itself is unequally adapted. the east in a like intercourse with the west already finds and in the progressive improvement

of interior communications by land and water will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad or manufactures at home. the west derives from the east supplies requisite to growth and comfort and what is perhaps of greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of outlets for its own products to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the atlantic side of the union directed by an indissoluble interest of one nation. any other tenure by which the west can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from separate strength or an unnatural connection with any foreign power must be intrinsically precarious. every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union. all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass

of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionately greater security from external danger and a less frequent interruption of peace by foreign nations and what is of estimated value. they must derive from union an exemption from the broils and wars between themselves that so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same government which their own rifle ship alone would be sufficient to produce. but which opposite foreign alliances attachments and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. hence likewise they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments.

that under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty and be viewed particularly hostile to republican liberty. in this sense it is that your union ought to be a main prop of your liberty and the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other. these considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of patriotic desire. is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? let experience solve it. to listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. we are authorized to help that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary age of governments for the suspected subdivisions will afford a happy issue to the experiment. it is well worth a fair and full experiment. with such fair and powerful motives to union, while experience shall not have

demonstrated there will be reason to distress the patriotism who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken the bands. in contemplating the causes that may disturb the union, it is a matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished by characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, northern and southern, atlantic and western which designing men my endeavor to excite a belief of a local interest and view. one of the expedience of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. you cannot shield yourself too much against the jealousies and heartburnings that spring from

the misrepresentations. they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound by fraternal affection. the inhabit ants of the western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head. they have seen in the negotiation by the executive and in the unanimous ratification by the senate of the treaty with spain and in the universal satisfaction at the event throughout the united states a decisive prove how unfounded were the suspicions propagated of a policy in the general government in the atlantic states unfriendly to their

interest with regard to the mississippi, they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with great britain and that with spain. secure to them everything they could desire and with respect to confirming prosperity. will it not be the wisdom to rely on the union by which they were procured? will they not hence force be deaf to those adviser fist such they are who would serf them from the brethren and connect them with aliens. to the efficacy and permanency of your union, a government for the whole is indispensable. no alliances however strict between the parts they must experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances and all times have experienced. sensible of this moment us truth, you have improved on your first essay by the adoption of a constitution of government. better calculated than your former, forra know intimate union and the efficacious management of your common concerns. this government, the offspring

of our own choice, uninfluenced and unodd, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in principals and the distribution of powers, uniting security with energy and containing within itself a provision for their own amendment has a just claim for confidence and support. respect for authority, compliance with the laws and acquiescence in measures are duties enjoyed by the fundamental maxims of produce liberties. the basis of political systems is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of government. but the constitution which at

any time exists until changed by an explicit and optic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. the very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish a government presupposes the duty of every individual to a bay the established government. all obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations and the whatever plausible character with the real design to direct, control, counteract or awe the regular deliberations of the constituted authorities are destructive of this fundamental principal. they serve to organize faction to give it an artificial force and put into place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of party. often a small, but artful enterprising minority of the community and according to the alternate triumphs of different parties to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. however combinations or associations of the above

description may answer popular end, they are likely in the coarse of time and things to be potent engines by which cunning and unprincipled men will be unable to subvert the power of the people and to assert for themselves the reign of the government. destroying afterwards the very engine which is have lifted them to unjust dominion. towards the preservation of your government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite that you not only discount irregular opposition to acknowledged authority, but that you resist with care the spirit

upon principals however speeches are the pretext. one method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the constitution alterations that will impair the energy of the system and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. in all the changes, time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as other human institutions. that experience is the sure standard by which to test the real tendency of the constitution of a country. that facility and changes upon the mere hypothesis exposes to perpetual change from the endless variety and remember especially for the common interest in a country so extensive as ours, a government with as much vigor with the security liberty is indispensable. liberty itself will find in such

a government with powers distribute and adjusted, government is too feeble to with stand the enterprises of faction to confine each limit and maintain all within the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the person and property. i have already intimated to you the dangers of parties in the state with particular references to the founding of them on geographical discrimination. let me take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the effects of the spirit of the party generally. this spirit is inseparable from the nature. having roots in the strongest passions of the human mind, it exists under different shapes in all governments.

more or less stifled controlled or repressed and it is seen in the greatest rankness and truly their worst enemy. the natural to party dissension which has perpetrated the most horis enormities is itself a frightful thing. this leads at length to a more formal thing. the disorders and miseries that result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose to the power of an individual. sooner or later, the chief of some faction, more able or more fortunate turns the disposition to the purpose of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty. without looking forward to an extremity of this kind which

nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight, the common mischiefs are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. it serves always to distract the councils and the public administration that agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms and one part against another and foments occasional riot and insurrection and opens the door to foreign influence and corruption that finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. there is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration

of government. serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. this within certain limits is probably true. in governments of a monarchial cast, patriots may look upon the spirit of party, but in those of the popular character, governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. from their natural tendency, there will also be enough of that spirit for every purpose. being constant danger of access, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate it. a fire not to be quenched, it demands preventing it from busting into flame. it should consume. it is important likewise that

the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with the administration to confine themselves within the respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. the spirit of encroachment 10s to consolidate the powers of all the departments into one and create whatever the form of government. that love of power and proneness to predominate in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. the reciprocal checks and the exercise of political power by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and each of the guardian of the invasion of the others has been by experience yanjient and modern. some of them under our own eyes to preserve them must be as

necessary as to institute them. if in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong let it be corrected by an amendment in the way in which the constitution designates. let there be no change by usurpation for this in one instance may be the good, it is the weapon by which free governments are destroyed. the precedent must also greatly overbalance and permanent evil any partial or transient in which they can yield. of all the dispositions and habits that lead to prosperity, religion and morality of indispensable supports. in vain the man claimed the

patriotism should labor to subvert the human happiness. the props of the duties of men and citizens. the mere politician equally with the pious man out to respect and cherish them. a volume cannot trace all their connections with private and public felicity. let it be asked, where is the security for property, reputation, for life? if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths that are the instruments of

investigation in courts of justice. morality can be maintained without religion. whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of particular structure, reason, and experience, both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail an exclusion of religious principal. it is substantially true that virtue is a necessary spring of popular government. the rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. who can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric. promote them as an object of primary importance and institution of the general diffusion of knowledge and proportion as the structure. government gives force to public

opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. as a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. one method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible. avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger create much greater disbursements to repellant. avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts that a avoidable wars may occasion and not throwing upon posterity the burden that we ourselves ought to bear. the execution of these maxims

belongs to representatives. it is necessary that public opinion should couldn't to facilitate performance of their duty. it is essential that you should bear in mind towards the payments of debt there must be revenue. to have revenue there must be taxes. that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant. that the intrinsic embarrassment from the selection of the proper object which is always a choice of difficulties ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of business and the measures for obtaining revenue that they may dictate. observe good faith and justice forwards all nations and cultivate peace and harmony. religion and morality enjoy this conduct and could it be good policy does not enjoy it?