Roads and canals are among the most essential means of improving the condition of nations.

And a people which should deliberately, by the organization of its authorized power, deprive itself of the faculty of multiplying its own blessings, would be as wise as a creator who should undertake to constitute a human being without a…

In unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall be governed, in the fulfilment of those duties, my first resort will be to that constitution which I shall swear, to the best of my ability, to preserve, protect, and defend.

These walls, which were consecrated, so long ago, to the cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant struggles and rung with the shouts of her earliest victories, proclaim now, that distinguished friends and champions of that…

The tears which flow, and the honors that are paid, when the Founders of the Republic die, give hope that the Republic itself may be immortal.

Fellow-citizens: I will detain you no longer by this faint and feeble tribute to the illustrious dead.

Their highest, their best praise, is your deep conviction of their merits, your affectionate gratitude for their labors and services.

It is not my voice, it is this cessation of ordinary pursuits, this arresting of all attention, those solemn ceremonies, and this crowded house, which speak their eulogy.

Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record to their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.

Marble columns may, indeed, moulder into dust, time may erase all impress from the crumbling stone, but their fame remains; for with American liberty it rose, and with American liberty only can it perish.

As George Washington, I would do this man any kindness in my power--as President of the United States, I can do nothing.

Fellow-citizens: There are moments in the progress of time which are the counters of whole ages.

There are events, the monuments of which, surviving every other memorial of human existence, eternize the nation to whose history they belong, after all other vestiges of its glory have disappeared from the globe.

But, were the breath which now gives utterance to my feelings the last vital air I should draw, my expiring words to you and your children should be, Independence and Union forever!

You have maintained through times of trial and danger the inheritance of freedom, of union, of independence bequeathed you by your forefathers.

It remains for you only to transmit the same peerless legacy, unimpaired, to your children of the next succeeding age.

It was the true homage which virtue and patriotism must ever receive--more honorable, and far more grateful to its object, than all the servility and flattery which power and patronage can so easily purchase.

Adams said, that so long as freedom of speech was allowed to him as a member of that House, he would call up that question until it should be decided.

If this practice was to be reversed, let the decision stand upon record, and let it appear how entirely the freedom of speech was suppressed in this House.

If the reading of a paper was to be suppressed in his person, so help him God, he would only consent to it as a matter of record.

There must be an end to this constant attempt to raise excitement, or the Union could not exist much longer.

Where, in the land of freemen, was the right of petition ever placed on the exclusive basis of morality and virtue?

And where is the degree of vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen of the right to supplicate for a boon, or to pray for mercy?

There is no absolute monarch on earth, who is not compelled, by the constitution of his country, to receive the petitions of his people, whosoever they may be.

Does it say that, before presenting a petition, you shall look into it, and see whether it comes from the virtuous, and the great, and the mighty?