The healing effects of time, a just consideration of the powerful
motives for a cordial good understanding between the two nations, the
strong inducements each has to respect and esteem the other, will no
doubt soon obliterate from their remembrance all traces of that
disagreement.
Of the elevated and disinterested part the Government of Great Britain
has acted and was prepared to act I have already had occasion to express
my high sense. Universal respect and the consciousness of meriting
it are with Governments as with men the just rewards of those who
faithfully exert their power to preserve peace, restore harmony, and
perpetuate good will.
I may be permitted, I trust, at this time, without a suspicion of the
most remote desire to throw off censure from the Executive or to point
it to any other department or branch of the Government, to refer to the
want of effective preparation in which our country was found at the
late crisis. From the nature of our institutions the movements of the
Government in preparation for hostilities must ever be too slow for the
exigencies of unexpected war. I submit it, then, to you whether the
first duty we owe to the people who have confided to us their power is
not to place our country in such an attitude as always to be so amply
supplied with the means of self-defense as to afford no inducements to
other nations to presume upon our forbearance or to expect important
advantages from a sudden assault, either upon our commerce, our
seacoast, or our interior frontier.
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