ruments
of immense national benefits.

I have heretofore proposed to the consideration of Congress the
expediency of establishing a national university and also a military
academy. The desirableness of both these institutions has so constantly
increased with every new view I have taken of the subject that I can not
omit the opportunity of once for all recalling your attention to them.

The assembly to which I address myself is too enlightened not to be
fully sensible how much a flourishing state of the arts and sciences
contributes to national prosperity and reputation.

True it is that our country, much to its honor, contains many seminaries
of learning highly respectable and useful; but the funds upon which they
rest are too narrow to command the ablest professors in the different
departments of liberal knowledge for the institution contemplated,
though they would be excellent auxiliaries.

Amongst the motives to such an institution, the assimilation of the
principles, opinions, and manners of our countrymen by the common
education of a portion of our youth from every quarter well deserves
attention. The more homogeneous our citizens can be made in these
particulars the greater will be our prospect of permanent union; and a
primary object of such a national institution should be the education of
our youth in the science of _government_. In a republic what species of
knowledge can be equally important and what duty more pressing on its
legislature than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those who
are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?

The institution of a military academy is also recommended by cogent
reasons. However pacific the general policy of a nation may be, it
ought never to be without an adequate stock of military knowledge for
emergencies. The first would impair the energy of its character, and
both would hazard its safety or expose it to greater evils when war
could not be avoided; besides that, war might often not depend upon
its own choice. In proportion as the observance of pacific maxims might
exempt a nation from the necessity of practicing the rules of the
military art ought to be its care in preserving and transmitting, by
proper establishments, the knowledge of that art. Whatever argument
may be drawn from particular examples superficially viewed, a thorough
examination of the subject will evince that the art of war is at once
comprehensive and complicated, that