In future, while I hold my present office, the subject of
acquisition of territory must have the support of the people
before I will recommend any proposition looking to such
acquisition. I say here, however, that I do not share in the
apprehension held by many as to the danger of governments becoming
weakened and destroyed by reason of their extension of territory.
Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought and matter by
telegraph and steam have changed all this. Rather do I believe
that our Great Maker is preparing the world, in His own good time,
to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and
navies will be no longer required.
My efforts in the future will be directed to the restoration of
good feeling between the different sections of our common country;
to the restoration of our currency to a fixed value as compared
with the world's standard of values--gold--and, if possible, to a
par with it; to the construction of cheap routes of transit
throughout the land, to the end that the products of all may find
a market and leave a living remuneration to the producer; to the
maintenance of friendly relations with all our neighbors and with
distant nations; to the reestablishment of our commerce and share
in the carrying trade upon the ocean; to the encouragement of such
manufacturing industries as can be economically pursued in this
country, to the end that the exports of home products and
industries may pay for our imports--the only sure method of
returning to and permanently maintaining a specie basis; to the
elevation of labor; and, by a humane course, to bring the
aborigines of the country under the benign influences of education
and civilization.
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