and continues to exist, among the great mass of our
people a devotion to the Union of the States which will shield and
protect it against the moral treason of any who would seriously
contemplate its destruction. To secure a continuance of that devotion
the compromises of the Constitution must not only be preserved, but
sectional jealousies and heartburnings must be discountenanced, and all
should remember that they are members of the same political family,
having a common destiny. To increase the attachment of our people to the
Union, our laws should be just. Any policy which shall tend to favor
monopolies or the peculiar interests of sections or classes must operate
to the prejudice of the interest of their fellow-citizens, and should
be avoided. If the compromises of the Constitution be preserved, if
sectional jealousies and heartburnings be discountenanced, if our laws
be just and the Government be practically administered strictly within
the limits of power prescribed to it, we may discard all apprehensions
for the safety of the Union.

With these views of the nature, character, and objects of the Government
and the value of the Union, I shall steadily oppose the creation of
those institutions and systems which in their nature tend to pervert it
from its legitimate purposes and make it the instrument of sections,
classes, and individuals. We need no national banks or other extraneous
institutions planted around the Government to control or strengthen it
in opposition to the will of its authors. Experience has taught us how
unnecessary they are as auxiliaries of the public authorities--how
impotent for good and how powerful for mischief.

Ours was intended to be a plain and frugal government, and I shall
regard it to be my duty to recommend to Congress and, as far as the
Executive is concerned, to enforce by all the means within my power the
strictest economy in the expenditure of the public money which may be
compatible with the public interests.

A national debt has become almost an institution of European monarchies.
It is viewed in some of them as an essential prop to existing
governments. Melancholy is the condition of that people whose government
can be sustained only by a system which periodically transfers large
amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of the few. Such a
system is incompatible with the ends for which our republican Government
was instituted. Under a wise policy the debts contracted