voice of the legislatures and the people throughout the nation.

On this subject it might become me better to be silent or to speak
with diffidence; but as something may be expected, the occasion, I
hope, will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that if a
preference, upon principle, of a free republican government,
formed upon long and serious reflection, after a diligent and
impartial inquiry after truth; if an attachment to the
Constitution of the United States, and a conscientious
determination to support it until it shall be altered by the
judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode
prescribed in it; if a respectful attention to the constitutions
of the individual States and a constant caution and delicacy
toward the State governments; if an equal and impartial regard to
the rights, interest, honor, and happiness of all the States in
the Union, without preference or regard to a northern or southern,
an eastern or western, position, their various political opinions
on unessential points or their personal attachments; if a love of
virtuous men of all parties and denominations; if a love of
science and letters and a wish to patronize every rational effort
to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every
institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among
all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on
the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of
society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our
Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry,
the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of
corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the
angel of destruction to elective governments; if a love of equal
laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration; if