government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our
felicities.

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which
comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you
should understand what I deem the essential principles of our
Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its
Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass
they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its
limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state
or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest
friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the
support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most
competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest
bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of
the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the
sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous
care of the right of election by the people--a mild and safe
corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution
where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in
the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics,
from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and
immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our
best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till
regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the
military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may
be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred
preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture,
and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and
arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom