Nor is it less a
peculiar felicity of this Constitution, so dear to us all, that it is
found to be capable, without losing its vital energies, of expanding
itself over a spacious territory with the increase and expansion of the
community for whose benefit it was established.
And may I not be allowed to add to this gratifying spectacle that I
shall read in the character of the American people, in their devotion
to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium, sure
presages that the destined career of my country will exhibit a
Government pursuing the public good as its sole object, and regulating
its means by the great principles consecrated in its charter and by
those moral principles to which they are so well allied; a Government
which watches over the purity of elections, the freedom of speech and
of the press, the trial by jury, and the equal interdict against
encroachments and compacts between religion and the state; which
maintains inviolably the maxims of public faith, the security of persons
and property, and encourages in every authorized mode that general
diffusion of knowledge which guarantees to public liberty its permanency
and to those who possess the blessing the true enjoyment of it; a
Government which avoids intrusions on the internal repose of other
nations, and repels them from its own; which does justice to all nations
with a readiness equal to the firmness with which it requires justice
from them; and which, whilst it refines its domestic code from every
ingredient not congenial with the precepts of an enlightened age and the
sentiments of a virtuous people, seeks by appeals to reason and by its
liberal examples to infuse into the law which governs the civilized
world a spirit which may diminish the frequency or circumscribe the
calamities of war, and meliorate the social and beneficent relations of
peace; a Government, in a word, whose conduct within and without may
bespeak the most noble of all ambitions---that of promoting peace on
earth and good will to man.
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