The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, our national character. You are considered by them as not only having rendered important service in our own revolution, but as being, on a more extended scale, the friend of human rights, and able advocate of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine, the Americas are not, nor can they be, indifferent.

A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends.

While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.

To impose taxes when the public exigencies require them is an obligation of the most sacred character, especially with a free people.

During the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress and George Washington - I call him the first George W. - (laughter and applause) - urged citizens to pray and to give thanks and to ask for God's protection.

The civil war which has so long prevailed between Spain and the Provinces in South America still continues, without any prospect of its speedy termination.

How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.