ard to that which is
advancing, we may at once indulge in grateful exultation and in cheering
hope. From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for
the future. Of the two great political parties which have divided the
opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now
admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity,
ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and
administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal
indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary
wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the Government
of the United States first went into operation under this Constitution,
excited a collision of sentiments and of sympathies which kindled all
the passions and imbittered the conflict of parties till the nation was
involved in war and the Union was shaken to its center. This time of
trial embraced a period of five and twenty years, during which the
policy of the Union in its relations with Europe constituted the
principal basis of our political divisions and the most arduous part of
the action of our Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the
wars of the French Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent peace
with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party strife was uprooted. From
that time no difference of principle, connected either with the theory
of government or with our intercourse with foreign nations, has existed
or been called forth in force sufficient to sustain a continued
combination of parties or to give more than wholesome animation to
public sentiment or legislative debate. Our political creed is, without
a dissenting voice that can be heard, that the will of the people is the
source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate
government upon earth; that the best security for the beneficence and
the best guaranty against the abuse of power consists in the freedom,
the purity, and the frequency of popular elections; that the General
Government of the Union and the separate governments of the States are
all sovereignties of limited powers, fellow-servants of the same
masters, uncontrolled within their respective spheres, uncontrollable by
encroachments upon each other; that the firmest security of peace is the
preparation during peace of the defenses of war; that a rigorous economy
and accountability of public expenditures should g