Various considerations also render it expedient that the terms on which
foreigners may be admitted to the rights of citizens should be speedily
ascertained by a uniform rule of naturalization.

Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is
an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended
to.

The advancement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures by all proper
means will not, I trust, need recommendation; but I can not forbear
intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well
to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad as to the
exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home, and of
facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a
due attention to the post-office and post-roads.

Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there
is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of
science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of
public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their
impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is
proportionably essential.

To the security of a free constitution it contributes in various ways--by
convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration that
every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened
confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and
to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of
them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of