confidence, are comprised in a period comparatively brief. But if your
past is limited, your future is boundless. Its obligations throng the
unexplored pathway of advancement, and will be limitless as duration.
Hence a sound and comprehensive policy should embrace not less the
distant future than the urgent present.

The great objects of our pursuit as a people are best to be attained by
peace, and are entirely consistent with the tranquillity and interests
of the rest of mankind. With the neighboring nations upon our continent
we should cultivate kindly and fraternal relations. We can desire
nothing in regard to them so much as to see them consolidate their
strength and pursue the paths of prosperity and happiness. If in the
course of their growth we should open new channels of trade and create
additional facilities for friendly intercourse, the benefits realized
will be equal and mutual. Of the complicated European systems of
national polity we have heretofore been independent. From their wars,
their tumults, and anxieties we have been, happily, almost entirely
exempt. Whilst these are confined to the nations which gave them
existence, and within their legitimate jurisdiction, they can not
affect us except as they appeal to our sympathies in the cause of human
freedom and universal advancement. But the vast interests of commerce
are common to all mankind, and the advantages of trade and
international intercourse must always present a noble field for the
moral influence of a great people.

With these views firmly and honestly carried out, we have a right to
expect, and shall under all circumstances require, prompt reciprocity.
The rights which belong to us as a nation are not alone to be regarded,
but those which pertain to every citizen in his individual capacity, at
home and abroad, must be sacredly maintained. So long as he can discern