tions of its founders.
Union, justice, tranquillity, the common defence, the general welfare,
and the blessings of liberty--all have been promoted by the Government
under which we have lived. Standing at this point of time, looking back to
that generation which has gone by, and forward to that which is advancing,
we may at once indulge in grateful exultation and in cheering hope. From
the experience of the past, we derive instructive lessons for the future.

"Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and
feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit, that both
have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism,
and disinterested sacrifices, to the formation and administration of the
Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion
of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing
precisely at the moment when the Government of the United States first
went into operation under the constitution, excited collisions of
sentiments and of sympathies, which kindled all the passions and
embittered the conflict of parties, till the nation was involved in war,
and the Union was shaken to its centre. This time of trial embraced a
period of five and twenty years, during which the policy of the Union in
its relations with Europe constituted the principal basis of our own
political divisions, and the most arduous part of the action of the
Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the wars of the French
Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain,
this baneful weed of party strife was uprooted. From that time no
difference of principle, connected with the theory of government, or with
our intercourse with foreign nations, has existed or been called forth in
force sufficient to sustain a continued combination of parties, or given
more than wholesome animation to public sentiment or legislative debate.
Our political creed, without a dissenting voice that can be heard, is,
that the will of the people is the source, and the happiness of the people
is the end, of all legitimate government upon earth: that the best
security for the beneficence, and the best guaranty against the abuse of
power, consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular
elections: that the General Government of the Union, and the separate
Governments of the States, are all sovereignties of legitimate powers