When we advert to the internal situation of the United States, we deem it equally natural and becoming to compare the present period with that immediately antecedent to the operation of the Government, and to contrast it with the calamities in which the state of war still involves several of the European nations, as the reflections deduced from both tend to justify as well as to excite a warmer admiration of our free Constitution, and to exalt our minds to a more fervent and grateful sense of piety toward Almighty God for the beneficence of His providence, by which its administration has been hitherto so remarkably distinguished.  And while we entertain a grateful conviction that your wise, firm, and patriotic Administration has been signally conducive to the success of the present form of government, we can not forbear to express the deep sensations of regret with which we contemplate your intended retirement from office.

As no other suitable occasion may occur, we can not suffer the present to pass without attempting to disclose some of the emotions which it can not fail to awaken.

The gratitude and admiration of your countrymen are still drawn to the recollection of those resplendent virtues and talents which were so eminently instrumental to the achievement of the Revolution, and of which that glorious event will ever be the memorial.  Your obedience to the voice of duty and your country when you quitted reluctantly a second time the retreat you had chosen and first accepted the Presidency afforded a new proof of the devotedness of your zeal in its service and an earnest of the patriotism and success which have characterized your Administration.  As the grateful confidence of the citizens in the virtues of their Chief Magistrate has essentially contributed to that success, we persuade ourselves that the millions whom we represent participate with us in the anxious solicitude of the present occasion.

Yet we can not be unmindful that your moderation and magnanimity, twice displayed by retiring from your exalted stations, afford examples no less rare and instructive to mankind than valuable to a republic.

Although we are sensible that this event of itself completes the luster of a character already conspicuously unrivaled by the coincidence of virtue, talents, success, and public estimation, yet we conceive we owe it to you, sir, and still more emphatically to ourselves and to our nation (of the language of whose hearts we presume to think ourselves at this moment the faithful interpreters), to express the sentiments with which it is contemplated.

The spectacle of a free and enlightened nation offering, by its Representatives, the tribute of unfeigned approbation to its first citizen, however novel and interesting it may be, derives all its luster (a luster which accident or enthusiasm could not bestow, and which adulation would tarnish) from the transcendent merit of which it is the voluntary testimony.