ason is a false guide, and to advance
under its counsel in their physical, moral, or political condition is
perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made
them, ignorance being safety and knowledge full of danger; in short, my
friends, among them also is seen the action and counteraction of good
sense and of bigotry; they too have their antiphilosophists who find an
interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread
reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendancy of
habit over the duty of improving our reason and obeying its mandates.

In giving these outlines I do not mean, fellow-citizens, to arrogate to
myself the merit of the measures. That is due, in the first place, to
the reflecting character of our citizens at large, who, by the weight of
public opinion, influence and strengthen the public measures. It is due
to the sound discretion with which they select from among themselves
those to whom they confide the legislative duties. It is due to the zeal
and wisdom of the characters thus selected, who lay the foundations of
public happiness in wholesome laws, the execution of which alone remains
for others, and it is due to the able and faithful auxiliaries, whose
patriotism has associated them with me in the executive functions.

During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the
artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with
whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an
institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be
regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its
safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome
punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States
against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on
the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left
to find their punishment in the public indignation.

Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be
fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power,
is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth--whether a
government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution,
with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the
whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and
defamation. The experiment has been tried; you have witne