Great Expectations
We all in equal sincerity profess to be anxious for the establishment of a republican government on a safe and solid basis.
It is the object of the wishes of every honest man in the United States, and i presume that I shall not be disbelieved when I declare that it is
an object of all others the nearest and most dear to my own heart.
The means of accomplishing this great purpose become the most important study
which can interest mankind. It is our duty to examine all those means with peculiar attention and to choose the best and most effectual. It is our duty
to draw from nature, from reason, from examples, the best principles of policy, and to pursue and apply them in the formation of our government.
We should contemplate and compare the systems which in this examination come under our view; distinguish with a careful eye the defects and excellencies
of each, and, discarding the former, incorporate the latter, as far as circumstances will admit, into our Constitution. If we pursue a different course
and neglect this duty we shall probably disappoint the expectations of our country and of the world.
Farewell Address
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the
edifice of your real independence,
the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of
that very liberty which you so highly prize.
But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much
pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political
fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and
insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective
and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and
speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety.
Federalist Paper #10
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and
control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character
and fate, as when he
contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the
principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils,
have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and
fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American
constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality,
to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected.
Letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
I am surprised at the suddenness as well as the greatness of this revolution... It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever.
It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting, and distresses yet more dreadful.
If this is to be the case it will
have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies, and vices which threaten to disturb,
dishonor, and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every
part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. The people will have unbounded power,
and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence,
in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.
First Inaugural Address - March 4, 1801
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly
separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others;
possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right
to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but
from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating
honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that
it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter -- with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a
prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave
them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.