es appear to
give temporary relief, they almost invariably aggravate the evil in the
end. It is only by retrenchment and reform--by curtailing public and
private expenditures, by paying our debts, and by reforming our banking
system--that we are to expect effectual relief, security for the future,
and an enduring prosperity. In shaping the institutions and policy of
the General Government so as to promote as far as it can with its
limited powers these important ends, you may rely on my most cordial
cooperation.

That there should have been in the progress of recent events doubts in
many quarters and in some a heated opposition to every change can not
surprise us. Doubts are properly attendant on all reform, and it is
peculiarly in the nature of such abuses as we are now encountering to
seek to perpetuate their power by means of the influence they have been
permitted to acquire. It is their result, if not their object, to gain
for the few an ascendency over the many by securing to them a monopoly
of the currency, the medium through which most of the wants of mankind
are supplied; to produce throughout society a chain of dependence which
leads all classes to look to privileged associations for the means of
speculation and extravagance; to nourish, in preference to the manly
virtues that give dignity to human nature, a craving desire for
luxurious enjoyment and sudden wealth, which renders those who seek
them dependent on those who supply them; to substitute for republican
simplicity and economical habits a sickly appetite for effeminate
indulgence and an imitation of that reckless extravagance which
impoverished and enslaved the industrious people of foreign lands, and
at last to fix upon us, instead of those equal political rights the
acquisition of which was alike the object and supposed reward of our
Revolutionary struggle, a system of exclusive privileges conferred by
partial legislation. To remove the influences which had thus gradually
grown up among us, to deprive them of their deceptive advantages, to
test them by the light of wisdom and truth, to oppose the force which
they concentrate in their support--all this was necessarily the work of
time, even among a people so enlightened and pure as that of the United
States. In most other countries, perhaps, it could only be accomplished
through that series of revolutionary movements which are too often found
necessary to effect any great and radical reform; but it is t