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16 successful vindication of our independence, though never sacrificing anything of national dignity, to keep aloof from all entangling alliances with foreign powers, to avoid subjects of contention likely to furnish an excuse for their interference in our domestic affairs, and assiduously to cultivate the arts and the institutions of peace. The elements of greatness and power are ours; yet these have been manifested, not so much in the achievements of our armies, and the splendor of our military establishments, as in the protection afforded to our commerce, and the encouragement given to the agricultural and industrial pursuits to which our people are devoted. The growth of the nation has been rapid, beyond parallel. At the beginning of the present century, she was weak and feeble—she is now great and powerful. But her career of glory, unexampled as it is, has been marked, more than all, by the development of new principles in government, by the energy and industry which have made the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and by the extension of human civilization, from the frozen regions of the north to the land of perpetual flowers—from the rock-bound coast of the Atlantic to the prairies of the West—"the gardens of the desert," whose "very weeds are beautiful," and whose

 "waste More rich than other climes' fertility."

At the close of the Revolution, a new government was established, and we became, emphatically, a new people. It was our aim and object to remain at peace with the world, and to continue forever wholly independent of every other power. Our land was the refuge of the oppressed of every nation and creed; the natural enmity of the Briton and the Gaul was forgot