if sectional jealousies and heartburnings be discountenanced, if our
laws be just and the Government be practically administered strictly
within the limits of power prescribed to it, we may discard all
apprehensions for the safety of the Union.

With these views of the nature, character, and objects of the
Government and the value of the Union, I shall steadily oppose the
creation of those institutions and systems which in their nature tend
to pervert it from its legitimate purposes and make it the instrument
of sections, classes, and individuals. We need no national banks or
other extraneous institutions planted around the Government to control
or strengthen it in opposition to the will of its authors. Experience
has taught us how unnecessary they are as auxiliaries of the public
authorities - how impotent for good and how powerful for mischief.

Ours was intended to be a plain and frugal government, and I shall
regard it to be my duty to recommend to Congress and, as far as the
Executive is concerned, to enforce by all the means within my power the
strictest economy in the expenditure of the public money which may be
compatible with the public interests.

A national debt has become almost an institution of European
monarchies. It is viewed in some of them as an essential prop to
existing governments. Melancholy is the condition of that people whose
government can be sustained only by a system which periodically
transfers large amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of
the few. Such a system is incompatible with the ends for which our
republican Government was instituted. Under a wise policy the debts
contracted in our Revolution and during the War of 1812 have been
happily extinguished. By a judicious application of the revenues not