This is the sum of good government,
and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which
comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper that
you should understand what I deem the essential principles of
our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its
administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they
will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion,
religious, or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with
all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the state
governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations
for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against
anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government
in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at
home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the
people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the
sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute
acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital, principle
of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital
principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia,
our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till
regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military
authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly
burdened; the honest payment of our debts send sacred preservation of
the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its
handmaid; the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses
at the bar of public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press;
freedom of person under the protection of the _habeas corpus_; and
trial by juries impartially selected; these principles form the bright
constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an
age of revolution and reformation.
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