Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter -- with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Glossary
acquisitions: things that are gained or obtained
benign: kind and not harmful
degradations: acts or conditions that lower someone's dignity or make something worse
dispensations: special permissions or exceptions to a rule
enlightened: having gained greater knowledge or understanding
faculties: natural mental or physical abilities
felicities: states of happiness or great joy
frugal: careful about spending money or using resources
havoc: great destruction or confusion
inculcating: teaching an idea or habit by repeating it often
prosperous: successful and doing well, especially in wealth or business
providence: God's guidance or care over people and events
temperance: self-control and avoiding too much of something