it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from
conviction of national innocence, information, and benevolence.

In the midst of these pleasing ideas, we should be unfaithful to
ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our
liberties--if anything partial or extraneous should infect the
purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an
election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and
that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the
government may be the choice of a party, for its own ends, not of
the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be
obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or
violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the government may not
be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations. It may
be foreign nations who govern us, and not we, the people, who govern
ourselves; and candid men will acknowledge that, in such cases,
choice would have little advantage to boast of over lot or chance.

Such is the amiable and interesting system of government (and such
are some of the abuses to which it may be exposed) which the people
of America have exhibited to the admiration and anxiety of the wise
and virtuous of all nations for eight years, under the administration
of a citizen, who, by a long course of great actions, regulated by
prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, conducting a people
inspired with the same virtues, and animated with the same ardent
patriotism and love of liberty, to independence and peace, to
increasing wealth and unexampled prosperity, has merited the
gratitude of his fellow-citizens, commanded the highest praises of
foreign nations, and secured immortal glory with posterity.