admitting no motive as worthy either of my character or position which does not contemplate an efficient discharge of duty and the best interests of my country.  I acknowledge my obligations to the masses of my countrymen, and to them alone.  Higher objects than personal aggrandizement gave direction and energy to their exertions in the late canvass, and they shall not be disappointed.  They require at my hands diligence, integrity, and capacity wherever there are duties to be performed.  Without these qualities in their public servants, more stringent laws for the prevention or punishment of fraud, negligence, and peculation will be vain.  With them they will be unnecessary.

But these are not the only points to which you look for vigilant watchfulness.  The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.  You have a right, therefore, to expect your agents in every department to regard strictly the limits imposed upon them by the Constitution of the United States.  The great scheme of our constitutional liberty rests upon a proper distribution of power between the State and Federal authorities, and experience has shown that the harmony and happiness of our people must depend upon a just discrimination between the separate rights and responsibilities of the States and your common rights and obligations under the General Government; and here, in my opinion, are the considerations which should form the true basis of future concord in regard to the questions which have most seriously disturbed public tranquillity.  If the Federal Government will confine itself to the exercise of powers clearly granted by the Constitution, it can hardly happen that its action upon any question should endanger the institutions of the States or interfere with their right to manage matters strictly domestic according to the will of their own people.

In expressing briefly my views upon an important subject rich has recently agitated the nation to almost a fearful degree, I am moved by no other impulse than a most earnest desire for the perpetuation of that Union which has made us what we are, showering upon us blessings and conferring a power and influence which our fathers could hardly have anticipated, even with their most sanguine hopes directed to a far-off future.  The sentiments I now announce were not unknown before the expression of the voice which called me here.  My own position upon this subject was clear and unequivocal, upon the record of my words and my acts, and it is only recurred to at this time because silence might perhaps be misconstrued.  With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.  Without it what are we individually or collectively?  What becomes of the noblest field ever opened for the advancement of our race in religion, in government, in the arts, and in all that dignifies and adorns mankind?  From that radiant constellation which both illumines our own