ll experiment. With such
powerful and obvious motives to Union, affecting all parts of our
country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its
impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the
patriotism of those, who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its
bands.

"In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs
as a matter of serious concern, that any ground should have been
furnished for characterizing parties by _Geographical_
discriminations, _northern_ and _southern_, _Atlantic_ and
_western_; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief
that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One
of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular
districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other
districts. You can not shield yourselves too much against the
jealousies and heart-burnings which spring from these
misrepresentations: they tend to render alien to each other those
who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The
inhabitants of our western country have lately had a useful lesson
on this head: they have seen in the negotiation by the Executive,
and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate of the treaty with
Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event throughout
the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the
suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General
Government and in the Atlantic states, unfriendly to their
interests in regard to the MISSISSIPPI: they have been witnesses to
the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain and that
with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in
respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their
prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the
preservation of these advantages on the UNION by which they were
procured? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if
such there are, who would sever them from their brethren, and
connect them with aliens?

"To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the
whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the
parts, can be an adequate substitute: they must inevitably
experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in
al