f freemen will close their eyes on the spectacle
of more than 100,000,000 of population embraced within the majestic
proportions of the American Union. It is not merely as an interesting
topic of speculation that I present these views for your consideration.
They have important practical bearings upon all the political duties we
are called upon to perform. Heretofore our system of government has
worked on what may be termed a miniature scale in comparison with the
development which it must thus assume within a future so near at hand
as scarcely to be beyond the present of the existing generation.

It is evident that a confederation so vast and so varied, both in
numbers and in territorial extent, in habits and in interests, could
only be kept in national cohesion by the strictest fidelity to the
principles of the Constitution as understood by those who have adhered
to the most restricted construction of the powers granted by the people
and the States. Interpreted and applied according to those principles,
the great compact adapts itself with healthy ease and freedom to an
unlimited extension of that benign system of federative self-government
of which it is our glorious and, I trust, immortal charter. Let us,
then, with redoubled vigilance, be on our guard against yielding to the
temptation of the exercise of doubtful powers, even under the pressure
of the motives of conceded temporary advantage and apparent temporary
expediency.

The minimum of Federal government compatible with the maintenance of
national unity and efficient action in our relations with the rest of
the world should afford the rule and measure of construction of our
powers under the general clauses of the Constitution. A spirit of strict
deference to the sovereign rights and dignity of every State, rather
than a disposition to subordinate the States into a provincial relation
to the central authority, should characterize all our exercise of the
respective powers temporarily vested in us as a sacred trust from the
generous confidence of our constituents.

In like manner, as a manifestly indispensable condition of the
perpetuation of the Union and of the realization of that magnificent
national future adverted to, does the duty become yearly stronger and
clearer upon us, as citizens of the several States, to cultivate a
fraternal and affectionate spirit, language, and conduct in regard to
other States and in relation to the varied interests, institutio