'a national debt is a
national blessing,' renounced, and more than thirty-three millions of
our debt discharged; the native right to nearly one hundred millions
of acres of our national domain extinguished; and, without the guilt or
calamities of conquest, a vast and, fertile region added to our country,
far more extensive than her original possessions, bringing along with
it the Mississippi and the port of Orleans, the trade of the west to the
Pacific Ocean, and in the intrinsic value of the land itself, a source
of permanent and almost inexhaustible revenue. These are points in your
administration which the historian will not fail to seize, to expand,
and teach posterity to dwell upon with delight. Nor will he forget our
peace with the civilized world, preserved through a season of uncommon
difficulty and trial; the good-will cultivated with the unfortunate
aborigines of our country, and the civilization humanely extended among
them; the lesson taught the inhabitants of the coast of Barbary, that
we have the means of chastising their piratical encroachments, and
awing them into justice; and that theme, on which, above all others, the
historic genius will hang with rapture, the liberty of speech and of the
press, preserved inviolate, without which genius and science are given
to man in vain.

In the principles on which you have administered the government, we see
only the continuation and maturity of the same virtues and abilities,
which drew upon you in your youth the resentment of Dunmore. From the
first brilliant and happy moment of your resistance to foreign tyranny,
until the present day, we mark with pleasure and with gratitude the same
uniform, consistent character, the same warm and devoted attachment
to liberty and the republic, the same Roman love of your country, her
rights, her peace, her honor, her prosperity.

How blessed will be the retirement into which you are about to go! How
deservedly blessed will it be! For you carry with you the richest of all
rewards, the recollection of a life well spent in the service of your
country, and proofs the most decisive, of the love, the gratitude, the
veneration of your countrymen.

That your retirement may be as happy as your life has been virtuous and
useful; that our youth may see, in the blissful close of your days, an
additional inducement to form themselves on your model, is the devout
and earnest prayer of your fellow-citizens who compose the General
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