he treasury
augmented its stores, while the work of improvement went on; the public
debt, contracted in past wars, dissolved away, and the nation flourished
in unexampled prosperity. John Quincy Adams administered the Federal
Government, while De Witt Clinton was presiding in the State of New York.
It is refreshing to recall the noble emulation of these illustrious
benefactors--an emulation that shows how inseparable sound philosophy is
from true patriotism.

If [said Adams, in his first annual message to the Congress of the United
States,] the powers enumerated may be effectually brought into action by
laws promoting the improvement of agriculture, commerce and manufactures,
the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic arts, and of the elegant
arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences,
ornamental and profound, to refrain from exercising them for the benefit
of the people would be to hide in the earth the talent committed to our
charge, would be treachery to the most sacred of trusts. The spirit of
improvement is abroad upon the earth. It stimulates the hearts, and
sharpens the faculties, not of our fellow-citizens alone, but of the
nations of Europe, and of their rulers. While dwelling with pleasing
satisfaction upon the superior excellence of our political institutions,
let us not be unmindful that liberty is power, that the nation blessed
with the largest portion of liberty, must in proportion to its numbers be
the most powerful nation upon earth, and that the tenure of power by man
is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be
exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself, and
his fellow men. While foreign nations, less blessed with that freedom
which is power than ourselves, are advancing with gigantic strides in the
career of public improvement, were we to slumber in indolence, or fold our
arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our
constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence and
doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority? In the course of the year now
drawing to its close, we have beheld, under the auspices, and at the
expense of one State of this Union, a new university unfolding its portals
to the sons of science, and holding up the torch of human improvement to
eyes that seek the light.[Footnote: The University of Virginia.] We have
seen, under the persevering and enlightened ent