The people of this Commonwealth, in their declaration of rights, have recorded their own opinion, that the Legislature ought frequently to assemble for the redress of grievances, correcting, strengthening and confirming the Laws, and making new Laws, as the common good may require.—­The Laws of the Commonwealth are intended to secure to each and all the Citizens, their own rights and liberties, and the property which they honestly possess.  If there are any instances wherein the Laws in being, are inadequate to these great and capital ends, your eye will discern the evil, and your wisdom will provide a suitable remedy.  It shall be my endeavour, as indeed it is my duty, carefully to revise and readily approve your Bills and Resolves, which may be calculated for the public good.

By the late returns of the votes for Representatives to serve the Commonwealth in Congress, there were several districts in which no choice had been effected.  I immediately issued precepts according to law, requiring the several towns within those Districts to meet on a day now past, in order to complete their elections.  I cannot but recommend to your consideration, whether it may not be necessary more effectually to guard the elections of public agents and officers against illegal practices.  All elections ought to be free, and every qualified elector who feels his own independence as he ought, will act his part according to his best, and most enlightened judgment.  Elections are the immediate acts of the people’s sovereignty, in which no foreigners should be allowed to intermeddle.  Upon free and unbiassed elections, the purity of the government, and consequently the safety and welfare of the citizens, may I not say altogether depend.

If we continue to be a happy people, that happiness must be assured by the enacting and executing of reasonable and wise laws, expressed in the plainest language, and by establishing such modes of education as tend to inculcate in the minds of youth, the feelings and habits of “piety, religion and morality,” and to lead them to the knowledge and love of those truly Republican principles upon which our civil institutions are founded.  We have solemnly engaged ourselves, fellow citizens, to support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this Commonwealth.  This must be reconcileable in the mind of any man, who judiciously considers the sovereign rights of the one as limited to federal purposes, and the sovereign rights of the other, as acting upon and directing the internal concerns of our own Republic.

We have been under apprehensions of being made a party in the dissolating contest in Europe.  Permit me just to observe, that the first and main principle which urged the Combined Powers to enter into the contest, is in my own opinion unsupportable by reason and nature, and in violation of the most essential right of nations and of men.  The repeated acts of violence which have been committed on the property