In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another.  Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense.  No individual wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.  The incumbent became an officer with a view to public benefits, and when these require his removal they are not to be sacrificed to private interests.  It is the people, and they alone, who have a right to complain when a bad officer is substituted for a good one.  He who is removed has the same means of obtaining a living that are enjoyed by the millions who never held office.  The proposed limitation would destroy the idea of property now so generally connected with official station, and although individual distress may be some times produced, it would, by promoting that rotation which constitutes a leading principle in the republican creed, give healthful action to the system.

No very considerable change has occurred during the recess of Congress in the condition of either our agriculture, commerce, or manufactures.  The operation of the tariff has not proved so injurious to the two former or as beneficial to the latter as was anticipated.  Importations of foreign goods have not been sensibly diminished, while domestic competition, under an illusive excitement, has increased the production much beyond the demand for home consumption.  The consequences have been low prices, temporary embarrassment, and partial loss.  That such of our manufacturing establishments as are based upon capital and are prudently managed will survive the shock and be ultimately profitable there is no good reason to doubt.

To regulate its conduct so as to promote equally the prosperity of these three cardinal interests is one of the most difficult tasks of Government; and it may be regretted that the complicated restrictions which now embarrass the intercourse of nations could not by common consent be abolished, and commerce allowed to flow in those channels to which individual enterprise, always its surest guide, might direct it.  But we must ever expect selfish legislation in other nations, and are therefore compelled to adapt our own to their regulations in the manner best calculated to avoid serious injury and to harmonize the conflicting interests of our agriculture, our commerce, and our manufactures.  Under these impressions I invite your attention to the existing tariff, believing that some of its provisions require modification.

The general rule to be applied in graduating the duties upon articles of foreign growth or manufacture is that which will place our own in fair competition with those of other countries; and the inducements to advance even a step beyond this point are controlling in regard to those articles which are of primary necessity in time of war.  When we reflect upon the difficulty and delicacy of this operation, it is important that it should never be attempted but with the utmost caution.  Frequent legislation in regard to any branch of industry, affecting its value, and by which its capital may be transferred to new channels, must always be productive of hazardous speculation and loss.