Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives :
THE pleasure I have in congratulating you upon your return to your constitutional duties is much heightened by the satisfaction which the condition of our beloved country at this period justly inspires. The Beneficent Author of all good has granted to us, during the present year, health, peace, and plenty, and numerous causes for joy in the wonderful success which attends the progress of our free institutions.
With a population unparalleled in its increase, and possessing a character which combines the hardihood of enterprise with the considerateness of wisdom, we see in every section of our happy country a steady improvement in the means of social intercourse, and correspondent effects upon the genius and laws of our extended republic.
The apparent exceptions to the harmony of the prospect are to be referred rather to the inevitable diversities in the various interests which enter into the composition of so extensive a whole, than to any want of attachment to the Union-interests whose collisions serve only, in the end, to foster the spirit of conciliation and patriotism, so essential to the preservation of that Union which I most devoutly hope is destined to prove imperishable.
In the midst of these blessings, we have recently witnessed changes in the condition of other nations which may, in their consequences, call for the utmost vigilance, wisdom, and unanimity, in our councils, and the exercise of all the moderation and patriotism of our people..
The important modifications of their government, effected with so much courage and wisdom by the people of France, afford a happy presage of their future course, and have naturally elicited from the kindred feelings of this nation that spontaneous and universal burst of applause in which you have participated. In congratulating you, my fellow-citizens, upon an event so auspicious to the dearest interests of mankind, I do no more than respond to the voice of my country, without transcending in the slightest degree that salutary maxim of the illustrious Washington, which enjoins an VOL. II.-1