REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT.
GENTLEMEN: With real pleasure I receive your address, recognizing the prosperous situation of our public affairs, and giving assurances of your careful attention to the objects demanding legislative consideration, and that with a true zeal for the public welfare you will cheerfully cooperate in every measure which shall appear to you best calculated to promote the same.
But I derive peculiar satisfaction from your concurrence with me in the expressions of gratitude to Almighty God, which a review of the auspicious circumstances that distinguish our happy country have excited, and I trust the sincerity of our acknowledgments will be evinced by a union of efforts to establish and preserve its peace, freedom, and prosperity.
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
DECEMBER 12, 1795.
ADDRESS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TO GEORGE WASHINGTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
SIR: As the Representatives of the people of the United States, we can not but participate in the strongest sensibility to every blessing which they enjoy, and cheerfully join with you in profound gratitude to the Author of all Good for the numerous and extraordinary blessings which He has conferred on our favored country.
A final and formal termination of the distressing war which has ravaged our Northwestern frontier will be an event which must afford a satisfaction proportionate to the anxiety with which it has long been sought, and in the adjustment of the terms we perceive the true policy of making them satisfactory to the Indians as well as to the United States as the best basis of a durable tranquillity. The disposition of such of the Southern tribes as had also heretofore annoyed our frontier is another prospect in our situation so important to the interest and happiness of the United States that it is much to be lamented that any clouds should be thrown over it, more especially by excesses on the part of our own citizens.
While our population is advancing with a celerity which exceeds the most sanguine calculations; while every part of the United States displays indications of rapid and various improvement; while we are in the enjoyment of protection and security by mild and wholesome laws, administered by governments founded on the genuine principles of rational liberty, a secure foundation will be laid for accelerating, maturing, and establishing the prosperity of our country if, by treaty and amicable negotiation, all those causes of external discord which heretofore menaced our tranquillity shall be extinguished on terms compatible with our national rights and honor and with our Constitution and great commercial interests.