UNWILLING to depart from examples of the most revered authority, I
avail myself of the occasion now presented to express the profound
impression made on me by the call of my country to the station to the
duties of which I am about to pledge myself by the most solemn of
sanctions. So distinguished a mark of confidence, proceeding from the
deliberate and tranquil suffrage of a free and virtuous nation, would
under any circumstances have commanded my gratitude and devotion, as
well as filled me with an awful sense of the trust to be assumed. Under
the various circumstances which give peculiar solemnity to the existing
period, I feel that both the honor and the responsibility allotted to
me are inexpressibly enhanced.

The present situation of the world is indeed without a parallel, and
that of our own country full of difficulties. The pressure of these,
too, is the more severely felt because they have fallen upon us at a
moment when the national prosperity being at a height not before
attained, the contrast resulting from the change has been rendered the
more striking. Under the benign influence of our republican
institutions, and the maintenance of peace with all nations whilst so
many of them were engaged in bloody and wasteful wars, the fruits of a
just policy were enjoyed in an unrivaled growth of our faculties and
resources. Proofs of this were seen in the improvements of agriculture,
in the successful enterprises of commerce, in the progress of
manufacturers and useful arts, in the increase of the public revenue
and the use made of it in reducing the public debt, and in the valuable
works and establishments everywhere multiplying over the face of our
land.

It is a precious reflection that the transition from this prosperous