character of the country for generosity and nobleness of feeling may be
destroyed by the great increase and neck toleration of usury, it is an
exclusive metallic currency.

Amongst the other duties of a delicate character which the President is
called upon to perform is the supervision of the government of the
Territories of the United States. Those of them which are destined to
become members of our great political family are compensated by their
rapid progress from infancy to manhood for the partial and temporary
deprivation of their political rights. It is in this District only
where American citizens are to be found who under a settled policy are
deprived of many important political privileges without any inspiring
hope as to the future. Their only consolation under circumstances of
such deprivation is that of the devoted exterior guards of a camp -
that their sufferings secure tranquillity and safety within. Are there
any of their countrymen, who would subject them to greater sacrifices,
to any other humiliations than those essentially necessary to the
security of the object for which they were thus separated from their
fellow-citizens? Are their rights alone not to be guaranteed by the
application of those great principles upon which all our constitutions
are founded? We are told by the greatest of British orators and
statesmen that at the commencement of the War of the Revolution the
most stupid men in England spoke of "their American subjects." Are
there, indeed, citizens of any of our States who have dreamed of their
subjects in the District of Columbia? Such dreams can never be realized
by any agency of mine. The people of the District of Columbia are not
the subjects of the people of the States, but free American citizens.
Being in the latter condition when the Constitution was formed, no
words used in that instrument could have been intended to deprive them
of that character. If there is anything in the great principle of