ly within
the limits of power prescribed to it, we may discard all apprehensions
for the safety of the Union.

With these views of the nature, character, and objects of the Government
and the value of the Union, I shall steadily oppose the creation of
those institutions and systems which in their nature tend to pervert it
from its legitimate purposes and make it the instrument of sections,
classes, and individuals. We need no national banks or other extraneous
institutions planted around the Government to control or strengthen it
in opposition to the will of its authors. Experience has taught us how
unnecessary they are as auxiliaries of the public authorities--how
impotent for good and how powerful for mischief.

Ours was intended to be a plain and frugal government, and I shall
regard it to be my duty to recommend to Congress and, as far as the
Executive is concerned, to enforce by all the means within my power the
strictest economy in the expenditure of the public money which may be
compatible with the public interests.

A national debt has become almost an institution of European monarchies.
It is viewed in some of them as an essential prop to existing
governments. Melancholy is the condition of that people whose government
can be sustained only by a system which periodically transfers large
amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of the few. Such a
system is incompatible with the ends for which our republican Government
was instituted. Under a wise policy the debts contracted in our
Revolution and during the War of 1812 have been happily extinguished. By
a judicious application of the revenues not required for other necessary
purposes, it is not doubted that the debt which has grown out of the
circumstances of the last few years may be speedily paid off.

I congratulate my fellow-citizens on the entire restoration of the
credit of the General Government of the Union and that of many of the
States. Happy would it be for the indebted States if they were freed
from their liabilities, many of which were incautiously contracted.
Although the Government of the Union is neither in a legal nor a moral
sense bound for the debts of the States, and it would be a violation of
our compact of union to assume them, yet we can not but feel a deep
interest in seeing all the States meet their public liabilities and pay
off their just debts at the earliest practicable period. That they will
do so as soon as it can be do