of
the American people. Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your
care, it will remain with your judgment to decide how far an exercise of
the occasional power delegated by the fifth article of the Constitution
is rendered expedient at the present juncture by the nature of the
objections which have been urged against the system, or by the degree
of inquietude which has given birth to them. Instead of undertaking
particular recommendations on this subject in which I could be guided by
no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to
my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good,
for I assure myself that while you carefully avoid every alteration
which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government,
or which ought to await the future lessons of experience, a reverence
for the characteristic rights of freemen, and a regard for the public
harmony will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question,
how far the former can be more impregnably fortified, or the latter be
safely and advantageously promoted.

To the preceding observations I have one to add, which will be most
properly addressed to the House of Representatives. It concerns myself,
and will, therefore, be as brief as possible. When I was first honored
with a call into the service of my country, then on the eve of an
arduous struggle for its liberties, the light in which I contemplated my
duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From
this resolution I have in no instance departed, and being still under
the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to
myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably
included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must
accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I
am placed, may, during my continuance in it, be limited to such actual
expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.

Having thus imparted to you my sentiments, as as they have been awakened
by the occasion which brings us together, I shall take my present leave,
but not without resorting once more to the benign parent of the human
race in humble supplication, that since he has been pleased to favor the
American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect
tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity
on a form of government for