ct which can not fail to
suggest itself to your patriotic reflections.

It will rest with the consideration of Congress also whether a provident
as well as fair encouragement would not be given to our navigation by
such regulations as would place it on a level of competition with
foreign vessels, particularly in transporting the important and bulky
productions of our own soil. The failure of equality and reciprocity in
the existing regulations on this subject operates in our ports as a
premium to foreign competitors, and the inconvenience must increase as
these may be multiplied under more favorable circumstances by the more
than countervailing encouragements now given them by the laws of their
respective countries.

Whilst it is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone
can be permanently a free people, and whilst it is evident that the
means of diffusing and improving useful knowledge form so small a
proportion of the expenditures for national purposes, I can not presume
it to be unseasonable to invite your attention to the advantages of
superadding to the means of education provided by the several States a
seminary of learning instituted by the National Legislature within the
limits of their exclusive jurisdiction, the expense of which might be
defrayed or reimbursed out of the vacant grounds which have accrued to
the nation within those limits.

Such an institution, though local in its legal character, would be
universal in its beneficial effects. By enlightening the opinions, by
expanding the patriotism, and by assimilating the principles, the
sentiments, and the manners of those who might resort to this temple of
science, to be redistributed in due time through every part of the
community, sources of jealousy and prejudice would be diminished, the
features of national character would be multiplied, and greater extent
given to social harmony. But, above all, a well-constituted seminary in
the center of the nation is recommended by the consideration that the
additional instruction emanating from it would contribute not less to
strengthen the foundations than to adorn the structure of our free and
happy system of government.

Among the commercial abuses still committed under the American flag, and
leaving in force my former reference to that subject, it appears that
American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved
Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in