depend. Situated within the temperate zone, and extending through many
degrees of latitude along the Atlantic, the United States enjoy all the
varieties of climate, and every production incident to that portion of
the globe. Penetrating internally to the Great Lakes and beyond the
sources of the great rivers which communicate through our whole
interior, no country was ever happier with respect to its domain.
Blessed, too, with a fertile soil, our produce has always been very
abundant, leaving, even in years the least favorable, a surplus for the
wants of our fellow-men in other countries. Such is our peculiar
felicity that there is not a part of our Union that is not particularly
interested in preserving it. The great agricultural interest of the
nation prospers under its protection. Local interests are not less
fostered by it. Our fellow-citizens of the North engaged in navigation
find great encouragement in being made the favored carriers of the vast
productions of the other portions of the United States, while the
inhabitants of these are amply recompensed, in their turn, by the
nursery for seamen and naval force thus formed and reared up for the
support of our common rights. Our manufactures find a generous
encouragement by the policy which patronizes domestic industry, and the
surplus of our produce a steady and profitable market by local wants in
less-favored parts at home.

Such, then, being the highly favored condition of our country, it is
the interest of every citizen to maintain it. What are the dangers
which menace us? If any exist they ought to be ascertained and guarded
against.

In explaining my sentiments on this subject it may be asked, What
raised us to the present happy state? How did we accomplish the
Revolution? How remedy the defects of the first instrument of our