is not particularly interested in preserving it.  The great agricultural interest of the nation prospers under its protection.  Local interests are not less fostered by it.  Our fellow-citizens of the North engaged in navigation find great encouragement in being made the favored carriers of the vast productions of the other portions of the United States, while the inhabitants of these are amply recompensed, in their turn, by the nursery for seamen and naval force thus formed and reared up for the support of our common rights.  Our manufactures find a generous encouragement by the policy which patronizes domestic industry, and the surplus of our produce a steady and profitable market by local wants in less-favored parts at home.

Such, then, being the highly favored condition of our country, it is the interest of every citizen to maintain it.  What are the dangers which menace us?  If any exist they ought to be ascertained and guarded against.

In explaining my sentiments on this subject it may be asked, What raised us to the present happy state?  How did we accomplish the Revolution?  How remedy the defects of the first instrument of our Union, by infusing into the National Government sufficient power for national purposes, without impairing the just rights of the States or affecting those of individuals?  How sustain and pass with glory through the late war?  The Government has been in the hands of the people.  To the people, therefore, and to the faithful and able depositaries of their trust is the credit due.  Had the people of the United States been educated in different principles, had they been less intelligent, less independent, or less virtuous, can it be believed that we should have maintained the same steady and consistent career or been blessed with the same success?  While, then, the constituent body retains its present sound and healthful state everything will be safe.  They will choose competent and faithful representatives for every department.  It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.  Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found.  The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.  Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force.  Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

Dangers from abroad are not less deserving of attention.  Experiencing the fortune of other nations, the United States may be again involved in war, and it may in that event be the object of the adverse party to overset our Government, to break our Union, and demolish us as a nation.  Our distance from Europe and the just, moderate, and pacific policy of our Government may form some security against these dangers, but they ought to be anticipated and guarded against.  Many