It has passed away in a period of profound peace: how much to the satisfaction of our country, and to the honor of our country's name, is known to you all.

The great features of its policy, in general concurrence with the will of the Legislature, have been--To cherish peace while preparing for defensive war to yield exact justice to other nations, and maintain the rights of our own--to cherish the principles of freedom and equal rights, wherever they were proclaimed--to discharge, with all possible promptitude, the national debt--to reduce within the narrowest limits of efficiency the military force--to improve the organization and discipline of the army--to provide and sustain a school of military science--to extend equal protection to all the great interests of the nation--to promote the civilization of the Indian tribes; and to proceed to the great system of internal improvements, within the limits of the constitutional power of the Union.
Under the pledge of these promises, made by that eminent citizen at the time of his first induction to this office, in his career of eight years the internal taxes have been repealed; sixty millions of the public debt have been discharged; provision has been made for the comfort and relief of the aged and indigent among the surviving warriors of the Revolution; the regular armed force has been reduced, and its constitution revised and perfected; the accountability for the expenditures of public monies has been more effective; the Floridas have been peaceably acquired, and our boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean; the independence of the southern nations of this hemisphere has been recognized, and recommended by example and by counsel to the potentates of Europe; progress has been made in the defence of the country, by fortifications and the increase of the navy--towards the effectual suppression of the African traffic in slaves--in alluring the aboriginal hunters of our land to the cultivation of the soil and of the mind--in exploring the interior regions of the Union, and in preparing, by scientific researches and surveys, for the further application of our national resources to the internal improvement of our country.
"In this brief outline of the promise and performance of my immediate predecessor, the line of duty, for his successor, is clearly delineated.
To pursue to their consummation those purposes of improvement in our common condition instituted or recommended by him, will embrace the whole sphere of my obligation.

To the topic of internal improvement, emphatically urged by him at his inauguration, I recur with peculiar satisfaction.

It is that from which I am convinced that the unborn millions of our posterity, who are in future ages to people this continent, will derive their most fervent gratitude to the founders of the Union--that in which the beneficent action of its Government will be most deeply felt and acknowledged.

The magnificence and splendor of their public works are among the imperishable glories of the ancient republics.
The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been the admiration of all after ages, and have survived thousands of years after all her conquests have been swallowed up in despotism, or become the spoil of barbarians.