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 hope that a proper
organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of
government for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy
issue to the experiment. 'Tis well worth a fair and full
experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union
affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not
have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be
reason to distrust the patriotism of those who, in any quarter,
may endeavor to weaken its bands.

13. In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it
occurs as a matter of serious concern that any ground should
have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical
discriminations,--Northern and Southern, Atlantic and
Western,--whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief
that there is a real difference of local interests and views.
One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within
particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of
other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against
the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these
misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other
those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The
inhabitants of our 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 that
event throughout the United States, a decisive proof how
unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy
in the general government and in the Atlantic States, unfriendly
to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been
witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great
Britain and that with Spain, which secure to them everything
they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards
confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely
for the preservati