ople themselves 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 up 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.
We have seen under the persevering and enlightened enterprise of another
State the waters of our Western lakes mingle with those of the ocean. If
undertakings like these have been accomplished in the compass of a few
years by the authority of single members of our Confederation, can we,
the representative authorities of the whole Union, fall behind our
fellow-servants in the exercise of the trust committed to us for the
benefit of our common sovereign by the accomplishment of works important
to the whole and to which neither the authority nor the resources of any
one State can be adequate?

Finally, fellow-citizens, I shall await with cheering hope and faithful
cooperation the result of your deliberations, assured that, without
encroaching upon the powers reserved to the authorities of the
respective States or to the people, you will, with a due sense of your
obligations to your country and of the high responsibilities weighing
upon yourselves, give efficacy to the means committed to yo