t there is 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 can not shield yourselves too much against the jealousies
and heart-burnings 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,
toward confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely
for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were
procured? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such
there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them
with aliens?

To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole
is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts, can be
an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions
and interruptions which all alliances, in all time, have experienced.
Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first
essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated
than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious
management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of
your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full
investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its
principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with
energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment,
has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its
authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are
duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of liberty. The basis of our
political systems is