just expectations.

On taking this station on a former occasion I declared the principles
on which I believed it my duty to administer the affairs of our
Commonwealth. My conscience tells me I have on every occasion acted up
to that declaration according to its obvious import and to the
understanding of every candid mind.

In the transaction of your foreign affairs we have endeavored to
cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially of those with
which we have the most important relations. We have done them justice
on all occasions, favored where favor was lawful, and cherished mutual
interests and intercourse on fair and equal terms. We are firmly
convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with
individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found
inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the
fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to
armaments and wars to bridle others.

At home, fellow-citizens, you best know whether we have done well or
ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments
and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These,
covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their
intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation
which once entered is scarcely to be restrained from reaching
successively every article of property and produce. If among these
taxes some minor ones fell which had not been inconvenient, it was
because their amount would not have paid the officers who collected
them, and because, if they had any merit, the State authorities might
adopt them instead of others less approved.