that source and from the sales of the public lands
will, it is confidently believed, enable the Government to discharge
annually several millions of the debt and at the same time possess the
means of meeting necessary appropriations for all other proper objects.
Unless Congress shall authorize largely increased expenditures for
objects not of absolute necessity, the whole public debt existing before
the Mexican war and that created during its continuance may be paid off
without any increase of taxation on the people long before it falls due.

Upon the restoration of peace we should adopt the policy suited to a
state of peace. In doing this the earliest practicable payment of the
public debt should be a cardinal principle of action. Profiting by the
experience of the past, we should avoid the errors into which the
country was betrayed shortly after the close of the war with Great
Britain in 1815. In a few years after that period a broad and
latitudinous construction of the powers of the Federal Government
unfortunately received but too much countenance. Though the country was
burdened with a heavy public debt, large, and in some instances
unnecessary and extravagant, expenditures were authorized by Congress.
The consequence was that the payment of the debt was postponed for more
than twenty years, and even then it was only accomplished by the stern
will and unbending policy of President Jackson, who made its payment a
leading measure of his Administration. He resisted the attempts which
were made to divert the public money from that great object and apply it
in wasteful and extravagant expenditures for other objects, some of them
of more than doubtful constitutional authority and expediency.

If the Government of the United States shall observe a proper economy in
its expenditures, and be confined in its action to the conduct of our
foreign relations and to the few general objects of its care enumerated
in the Constitution, leaving all municipal and local legislation to the
States, our greatness as a nation, in moral and physical power and in
wealth and resources, can not be calculated.

By pursuing this policy oppressive measures, operating unequally and
unjustly upon sections and classes, will be avoided, and the people,
having no cause of complaint, will pursue their own interests under the
blessings of equal laws and the protection of a just and paternal
Government. By abstaining from the exercise of all powers not