a change of public feeling at home, which prompts our people to pause in their career and think of the means by which debts are to be paid before they are contracted.  If we would escape embarrassment, public and private, we must cease to run in debt except for objects of necessity or such as will yield a certain return.  Let the faith of the States, corporations, and individuals already pledged be kept with the most punctilious regard.  It is due to our national character as well as to justice that this should on the part of each be a fixed principle of conduct.  But it behooves us all to be more chary in pledging it hereafter.  By ceasing to run in debt and applying the surplus of our crops and incomes to the discharge of existing obligations, buying less and selling more, and managing all affairs, public and private, with strict economy and frugality, we shall see our country soon recover from a temporary depression, arising not from natural and permanent causes, but from those I have enumerated, and advance with renewed vigor in her career of prosperity.

Fortunately for us at this moment, when the balance of trade is greatly against us and the difficulty of meeting it enhanced by the disturbed state of our money affairs, the bounties of Providence have come to relieve us from the consequences of past errors.  A faithful application of the immense results of the labors of the last season will afford partial relief for the present, and perseverance in the same course will in due season accomplish the rest.  We have had full experience in times past of the extraordinary results which can in this respect be brought about in a short period by the united and well-directed efforts of a community like ours.  Our surplus profits, the energy and industry of our population, and the wonderful advantages which Providence has bestowed upon our country in its climate, its various productions, indispensable to other nations, will in due time afford abundant means to perfect the most useful of those objects for which the States have been plunging themselves of late in embarrassment and debt, without imposing on ourselves or our children such fearful burdens.

But let it be indelibly engraved on our minds that relief is not to be found in expedients.  Indebtedness can not be lessened by borrowing more money or by changing the form of the debt.  The balance of trade is not to be turned in our favor by creating new demands upon us abroad.  Our currency can not be improved by the creation of new banks or more issues from those which now exist.  Although these devices sometimes 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.