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honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude and the love of man, acknowledging
and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations
proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and in his greater
happiness hereafter. With all these blessings, what more is necessary
to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more,
fellow-citizens: a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men
from injuring one another shall leave them otherwise free to regulate
their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from
the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. 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 you should
understand what I deem the essential principles of this government,
and consequently those which ought to shape its administration. I
will compress them in the narrowest limits 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
public expense that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of
our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement
of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of
information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public
reason; freedom of religion, fre