PROCLAMATIONS.


[From C. F. Adams's Works of John Adams, Vol. IX, p. 172.]

PROCLAMATION.

MARCH 6, 1799.

As no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any
more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep
sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme
Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts
and righteous distributer of rewards and punishments are conducive
equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the
well-being of communities; as it is also most reasonable in itself that
men who are made capable of social acts and relations, who owe their
improvements to the social state, and who derive their enjoyments from
it, should, as a society, make their acknowledgments of dependence
and obligation to Him who hath endowed them with these capacities and
elevated them in the scale of existence by these distinctions; as it is
likewise a plain dictate of duty and a strong sentiment of nature that
in circumstances of great urgency and seasons of imminent danger earnest
and particular supplications should be made to Him who is able to defend
or to destroy; as, moreover, the most precious interests of the people
of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs
and insidious acts of a foreign nation, as well as by the dissemination
among them of those principles, subversive of the foundations of
all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced
incalculable mischief and misery in other countries; and as, in fine,