Our commerce has been
extended to the remotest nations; the value and even nature of our
productions have been greatly changed; a wide difference has
arisen in the relative wealth and resources of every portion of
our country; yet the spirit of mutual regard and of faithful
adherence to existing compacts has continued to prevail in our
councils and never long been absent from our conduct. We have
learned by experience a fruitful lesson--that an implicit and
undeviating adherence to the principles on which we set out can
carry us prosperously onward through all the conflicts of
circumstances and vicissitudes inseparable from the lapse of
years.
The success that has thus attended our great experiment is in
itself a sufficient cause for gratitude, on account of the
happiness it has actually conferred and the example it has
unanswerably given But to me, my fellow-citizens, looking forward
to the far-distant future with ardent prayers and confiding hopes,
this retrospect presents a ground for still deeper delight. It
impresses on my mind a firm belief that the perpetuity of our
institutions depends upon ourselves; that if we maintain the
principles on which they were established they are destined to
confer their benefits on countless generations yet to come, and
that America will present to every friend of mankind the cheering
proof that a popular government, wisely formed, is wanting in no
element of endurance or strength.
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