ns, and
habits of sentiment and opinion which may respectively characterize
them. Mutual forbearance, respect, and noninterference in our personal
action as citizens and an enlarged exercise of the most liberal
principles of comity in the public dealings of State with State, whether
in legislation or in the execution of laws, are the means to perpetuate
that confidence and fraternity the decay of which a mere political
union, on so vast a scale, could not long survive.

In still another point of view is an important practical duty suggested
by this consideration of the magnitude of dimensions to which our
political system, with its corresponding machinery of government,
is so rapidly expanding. With increased vigilance does it require us
to cultivate the cardinal virtues of public frugality and official
integrity and purity. Public affairs ought to be so conducted that a
settled conviction shall pervade the entire Union that nothing short of
the highest tone and standard of public morality marks every part of
the administration and legislation of the General Government. Thus will
the federal system, whatever expansion time and progress may give it,
continue more and more deeply rooted in the love and confidence of the
people.

That wise economy which is as far removed from parsimony as from corrupt
and corrupting extravagance; that single regard for the public good
which will frown upon all attempts to approach the Treasury with
insidious projects of private interest cloaked under public pretexts;
that sound fiscal administration which, in the legislative department,
guards against the dangerous temptations incident to overflowing
revenue, and, in the executive, maintains an unsleeping watchfulness
against the tendency of all national expenditure to extravagance, while
they are admitted elementary political duties, may, I trust, be deemed
as properly adverted to and urged in view of the more impressive sense
of that necessity which is directly suggested by the considerations now
presented.

Since the adjournment of Congress the Vice-President of the United
States has passed from the scenes of earth, without having entered upon
the duties of the station to which he had been called by the voice of
his countrymen. Having occupied almost continuously for more than thirty
years a seat in one or the other of the two Houses of Congress, and
having by his singular purity and wisdom secured unbounded confidence
and universal