and
tranquil suffrage of a free and virtuous nation, would under any
circumstances have commanded my gratitude and devotion, as well as
filled me with an awful sense of the trust to be assumed. Under the
various circumstances which give peculiar solemnity to the existing
period, I feel that both the honor and the responsibility allotted to me
are inexpressibly enhanced.

The present situation of the world is indeed without a parallel and that
of our own country full of difficulties. The pressure of these, too, is
the more severely felt because they have fallen upon us at a moment when
the national prosperity being at a height not before attained, the
contrast resulting from the change has been rendered the more striking.
Under the benign influence of our republican institutions, and the
maintenance of peace with all nations whilst so many of them were
engaged in bloody and wasteful wars, the fruits of a just policy were
enjoyed in an unrivaled growth of our faculties and resources. Proofs of
this were seen in the improvements of agriculture, in the successful
enterprises of commerce, in the progress of manufacturers and useful
arts, in the increase of the public revenue and the use made of it in
reducing the public debt, and in the valuable works and establishments
everywhere multiplying over the face of our land.

It is a precious reflection that the transition from this prosperous
condition of our country to the scene which has for some time been
distressing us is not chargeable on any unwarrantable views, nor, as I
trust, on any involuntary errors in the public councils. Indulging no
passions which trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations, it
has been the true glory of the United States to cultivate peace by
observing justice, and to entitle themselves to the respect of the
nations at war by fulfilling their neutral obligations with the most
scrupulous impartiality. If there be candor in the world, the truth of
these assertions will not be questioned; posterity at least will do
justice to them.

This unexceptionable course could not avail against the injustice and
violence of the belligerent powers. In their rage against each other, or
impelled by more direct motives, principles of retaliation have been
introduced equally contrary to universal reason and acknowledged law.
How long their arbitrary edicts will be continued in spite of the
demonstrations that not even a pretext for them has been given by