foundations of public happiness in wholesome laws, the execution of
which alone remains for others, and it is due to the able and faithful
auxiliaries, whose patriotism has associated them with me in the
executive functions.

During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the
artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with
whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an
institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be
regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap
its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome
punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States
against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press
on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been
left to find their punishment in the public indignation.

Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be
fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power,
is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth - whether
a government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution,
with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the
whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and
defamation. The experiment has been tried; you have witnessed the
scene; our fellow-citizens looked on, cool and collected; they saw the
latent source from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around
their public functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to
the decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to
those who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who
believes that he may be trusted with the control of his own affairs.