With an experience thus suggestive and cheering, the policy of my Administration will not be controlled by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion.  Indeed, it is not to be disguised that our attitude as a nation and our position on the globe render the acquisition of certain possessions not within our jurisdiction eminently important for our protection, if not in the future essential for the preservation of the rights of commerce and the peace of the world.  Should they be obtained, it will be through no grasping spirit, but with a view to obvious national interest and security, and in a manner entirely consistent with the strictest observance of national faith.  We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression; we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.  Purposes, therefore, at once just and pacific will be significantly marked in the conduct of our foreign affairs.  I intend that my Administration shall leave no blot upon our fair record, and trust I may safely give the assurance that no act within the legitimate scope of my constitutional control will be tolerated on the part of any portion of our citizens which can not challenge a ready justification before the tribunal of the civilized world.  An Administration would be unworthy of confidence at home or respect abroad should it cease to be influenced by the conviction that no apparent advantage can be purchased at a price so dear as that of national wrong or dishonor.  It is not your privilege as a nation to speak of a distant past.  The striking incidents of your history, replete with instruction and furnishing abundant grounds for hopeful confidence, are comprised in a period comparatively brief.  But if your past is limited, your future is boundless.  Its obligations throng the unexplored pathway of advancement, and will be limitless as duration.  Hence a sound and comprehensive policy should embrace not less the distant future than the urgent present.

The great objects of our pursuit as a people are best to be attained by peace, and are entirely consistent with the tranquillity and interests of the rest of mankind.  With the neighboring nations upon our continent we should cultivate kindly and fraternal relations.  We can desire nothing in regard to them so much as to see them consolidate their strength and pursue the paths of prosperity and happiness.  If in the course of their growth we should open new channels of trade and create additional facilities for friendly intercourse, the benefits realized will be equal and mutual, Of the complicated European systems of national polity we have heretofore been independent.  From their wars, their tumults, and anxieties we have been, happily, almost entirely exempt.  Whilst these are confined to the nations which gave them existence, and within their legitimate jurisdiction, they can not affect us except as they appeal to our Sympathies in the cause of human freedom and universal advancement.  But the vast interests of commerce are common to all mankind, and the advantages of trade and international intercourse must always present a noble field for the moral influence of a great people.