M. VAN BUREN.
FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.
WASHINGTON, _December 5, 1840_.
_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives_:
Our devout gratitude is due to the Supreme Being for having graciously
continued to our beloved country through the vicissitudes of another
year the invaluable blessings of health, plenty, and peace. Seldom
has this favored land been so generally exempted from the ravages of
disease or the labor of the husbandman more amply rewarded, and never
before have our relations with other countries been placed on a more
favorable basis than that which they so happily occupy at this critical
conjuncture in the affairs of the world. A rigid and persevering
abstinence from all interference with the domestic and political
relations of other States, alike due to the genius and distinctive
character of our Government and to the principles by which it is
directed; a faithful observance in the management of our foreign
relations of the practice of speaking plainly, dealing justly, and
requiring truth and justice in return as the best conservatives of
the peace of nations; a strict impartiality in our manifestations of
friendship in the commercial privileges we concede and those we require
from others--these, accompanied by a disposition as prompt to maintain
in every emergency our own rights as we are from principle averse to the
invasion of those of others, have given to our country and Government a
standing in the great family of nations of which we have just cause to
be proud and the advantages of which are experienced by our citizens
throughout every portion of the earth to which their enterprising and
adventurous spirit may carry them.
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