TT4

We have been engaged for the past four months in the
work of framing anew the organic law of this State. How-
ever easy the task may appear to many, and especially to
those who have never participated in such a work, yet I
am sure you will concur with me that its difficulties, not a
few even in times of profound peace, have been greatly in-
creased by the condition of things by which we were sur-
rounded.

Amid a civil war of the most gigantic proportions, our
minds have been constantly disturbed by the ever recurring
consideration whether the institutions, under which we have
prospered so long as a nation, were to stand or fall amid
the conflicts of the day. While the nation has been thus
agitated throughout its entire limits, our own State has
been the theatre of the most bitter contests between social
and political classes ever experienced, and which it could
have been wished should not have existed while we were,
engaged in a work of so much importance and magnitude.
Our labors, though thus interrupted by scenes calculated to
create the most embittered feeling, and to provoke discus-
sions of the most exciting character;, have not been marred by
any of those personal animosities or collisions which might
have been anticipated, and which have so often characterized
the proceedings of other deliberative bodies. This is a mat-
ter of sincere congratulation, and if your President has suc-
ceeded in the accomplishment of this object, he has been
encouraged and sustained by a conviction of your belief in his
conscientious discharge of duty, and in his faithful endeavor
at all times to award to each individual member, irrespective
of party designations or particular localities, that impar-
tial justice which should always control the action of a pre-
siding officer of a deliberative body.

We are now about to separate for our respective homes.
In all human probability the most of us may never meet
again. As actons in the past and present eventful scenes,
can we not all—dismissing the memory of every embittered
feeling, before parting—unite in the prayer so often repeated
at this desk, that the same ever living God, who has here-
tofore protected and defended us as one people, may, notwith-
standing our civil broils, our many sins and misgivings, still
preserve us "under the shadow of his wing" as one undivid-
ed nation; that whatever changes may be occasioned by the
rapidly transpiring events of the day—whatever modifica-
tions may be produced in the character of our social insti-
tutions, the Union, as the great ark of our national safety,
with the Constitution, may be vouchsafed to us and our chil-
dren; and that ere many years shall roll around, we may