While we devoutly
return thanks to the beneficent Being who has been pleased to breathe
into them the spirit of conciliation and forgiveness, we are bound
with peculiar gratitude to be thankful to him that our own peace has
been preserved through so perilous a season, and ourselves permitted
quietly to cultivate the earth and to practice and improve those arts
which tend to increase our comforts. The assurances, indeed, of
friendly disposition, received from all the powers with whom we have
principal relations, had inspired a confidence that our peace with
them would not have been disturbed. But a cessation of the
irregularities which had effected the commerce of neutral nations,
and of the irritations and injuries produced by them, cannot but add
to this confidence; and strengthens, at the same time, the hope, that
wrongs committed on offending friends, under a pressure of
circumstances, will now be reviewed with candor, and will be
considered as founding just claims of retribution for the past and
new assurances for the future.
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