clarations of these gentlemen, it certainly would not be wise in the
people at large to adopt these new political tenets without being fully
convinced that they are founded in truth and sound policy.

It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America
was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one
connected, fertile, wide-spreading country was the portion of our western
sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with
a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable
streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A
succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders,
as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world,
running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the
easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and
exchange of their various commodities.

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has
been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a
people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language,
professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of
government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their
joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout
a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and
independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and
it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance
so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other
by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial,
jealous, and alien sovereignties.

Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and
denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly
been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same
national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we have made
peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as
a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into
various compacts and conventions with foreign states.

A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people,
at a very early period, to institute a federal government to preserve
and perpetuate it. They formed it almost as soon as they had a political
existence; nay, at a ti