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Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the Assembly:

The opening of the seventy-fifth annual session of the Legislature of New-York, since the establishment of our republican Constitution, is an event peculiarly suggestive of grateful memories and patriotic hopes. Three quarters of a century have passed away since our ancestors, uniting with the sister colonies in renouncing dependence on a distant monarchy, and appealing to Heaven for the justice of their cause, proclaimed the sacred right of self-government, and assumed the attitude of a free and sovereign State. It is profitable to recur to the spirit of wisdom and patriotism which guided our legislative councils at that trying period. Compelled to deliberate amid the strife of opposing armies, and surrounded by difficulties which called for the highest exercise of capacity and energy, your early predecessors gained a double title to the public gratitude. While their prudent but vigorous measures sustained our arms and carried the country in triumph through its long struggle for independence, they accomplished the more difficult work of framing a system of representative government based upon principles of justice, equality and social order, combining popular freedom with those salutary restraints which history has shown to be necessary for the protection of the citizen in the peaceful enjoyment of his rights. [Assembly, No. 1.]

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