Fellow-Citizens:
There
is no constitutional or legal requirement that the
President shall take the oath of office in the presence of
the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in
the public induction to office of the chief executive
officer of the nation that from the beginning of the
Government the people, to whose service the official oath
consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the
solemn ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the
people becomes a mutual covenant. The officer covenants to
serve the whole body of the people by a faithful execution
of the laws, so that they may be the unfailing defense and
security of those who respect and observe them, and that
neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations
shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest
them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of
cruelty or selfishness.
My
promise is spoken; yours unspoken, but not the less real
and solemn. The people of every State have here their
representatives. Surely I do not misinterpret the spirit
of the occasion when I assume that the whole body of the
people covenant with me and with each other to-day to
support and defend the Constitution and the Union of the
States, to yield willing obedience to all the laws and
each to every other citizen his equal civil and political
rights. Entering thus solemnly into covenant with each
other, we may reverently invoke and confidently expect the
favor and help of Almighty God that He will give to me
wisdom, strength, and fidelity, and to our people a spirit
of fraternity and a love of righteousness and peace.
This
occasion derives peculiar interest from the fact that the
Presidential term which begins this day is the
twenty-sixth under our Constitution. The first
inauguration of President Washington took place in New
York, where Congress was then sitting, on the 30th day of
April, 1789, having been deferred by reason of delays
attending the organization of the Congress and the canvass
of the electoral vote. Our people have already worthily
observed the centennials of the Declaration of
Independence, of the battle of Yorktown, and of the
adoption of the Constitution, and will shortly celebrate
in New York the institution of the second great department
of our constitutional scheme of government. When the
centennial of the institution of the judicial department,
by the organization of the Supreme Court, shall have been
suitably observed, as I trust it will be, our nation will
have fully entered its second century.
I
will not attempt to note the marvelous and in great part
happy contrasts between our country as it steps over the
threshold into its second century of organized existence
under the Constitution and that weak but wisely ordered
young nation that looked undauntedly down the first
century, when all its years stretched out before it.
Our
people will not fail at this time to recall the incidents
which accompanied the institution of government under the
Constitution, or to find inspiration and guidance in the
teachings and example of Washington and his great
associates, and hope and courage in the contrast which
thirty-eight populous and prosperous States offer to the
thirteen States, weak in everything except courage and the
love of liberty, that then fringed our Atlantic seaboard.
The
Territory of Dakota has now a population greater than any
of the original States (except Virginia) and greater than
the aggregate of five of the smaller States in 1790. The
center of population when our national capital was located
was east of Baltimore, and it was argued by many
well-informed persons that it would move eastward rather
than westward; yet in 1880 it was found to be near
Cincinnati, and the new census about to be taken will show
another stride to the westward. That which was the body
has come to be only the rich fringe of the nation's robe.
But our growth has not been limited to territory,
population and aggregate wealth, marvelous as it has been
in each of those directions. The masses of our people are
better fed, clothed, and housed than their fathers were.
The facilities for popular education have been vastly
enlarged and more generally diffused.
The
virtues of courage and patriotism have given recent proof
of their continued presence and increasing power in the
hearts and over the lives of our people. The influences of
religion have been multiplied and strengthened. The sweet
offices of charity have greatly increased. The virtue of
temperance is held in higher estimation. We have not
attained an ideal condition. Not all of our people are
happy and prosperous; not all of them are virtuous and
law-abiding. But on the whole the opportunities offered to
the individual to secure the comforts of life are better
than are found elsewhere and largely better than they were
here one hundred years ago.
The
surrender of a large measure of sovereignty to the General
Government, effected by the adoption of the Constitution,
was not accomplished until the suggestions of reason were
strongly reinforced by the more imperative voice of
experience. The divergent interests of peace speedily
demanded a "more perfect union." The merchant,
the shipmaster, and the manufacturer discovered and
disclosed to our statesmen and to the people that
commercial emancipation must be added to the political
freedom which had been so bravely won. The commercial
policy of the mother country had not relaxed any of its
hard and oppressive features. To hold in check the
development of our commercial marine, to prevent or retard
the establishment and growth of manufactures in the
States, and so to secure the American market for their
shops and the carrying trade for their ships, was the
policy of European statesmen, and was pursued with the
most selfish vigor.
Petitions
poured in upon Congress urging the imposition of
discriminating duties that should encourage the production
of needed things at home. The patriotism of the people,
which no longer found afield of exercise in war, was
energetically directed to the duty of equipping the young
Republic for the defense of its independence by making its
people self-dependent. Societies for the promotion of home
manufactures and for encouraging the use of domestics in
the dress of the people were organized in many of the
States. The revival at the end of the century of the same
patriotic interest in the preservation and development of
domestic industries and the defense of our working people
against injurious foreign competition is an incident
worthy of attention. It is not a departure but a return
that we have witnessed. The protective policy had then its
opponents. The argument was made, as now, that its
benefits inured to particular classes or sections.
If
the question became in any sense or at any time sectional,
it was only because slavery existed in some of the States.
But for this there was no reason why the cotton-producing
States should not have led or walked abreast with the New
England States in the production of cotton fabrics. There
was this reason only why the States that divide with
Pennsylvania the mineral treasures of the great
southeastern and central mountain ranges should have been
so tardy in bringing to the smelting furnace and to the
mill the coal and iron from their near opposing hillsides.
Mill fires were lighted at the funeral pile of slavery.
The emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths of
the earth as well as in the sky; men were made free, and
material things became our better servants.
The
sectional element has happily been eliminated from the
tariff discussion. We have no longer States that are
necessarily only planting States. None are excluded from
achieving that diversification of pursuits among the
people which brings wealth and contentment. The cotton
plantation will not be less valuable when the product is
spun in the country town by operatives whose necessities
call for diversified crops and create a home demand for
garden and agricultural products. Every new mine, furnace,
and factory is an extension of the productive capacity of
the State more real and valuable than added territory.
Shall
the prejudices and paralysis of slavery continue to hang
upon the skirts of progress? How long will those who
rejoice that slavery no longer exists cherish or tolerate
the incapacities it put upon their communities? I look
hopefully to the continuance of our protective system and
to the consequent development of manufacturing and mining
enterprises in the States hitherto wholly given to
agriculture as a potent influence in the perfect
unification of our people. The men who have invested their
capital in these enterprises, the farmers who have felt
the benefit of their neighborhood, and the men who work in
shop or field will not fail to find and to defend a
community of interest.
Is
it not quite possible that the farmers and the promoters
of the great mining and manufacturing enterprises which
have recently been established in the South may yet find
that the free ballot of the workingman, without
distinction of race, is needed for their defense as well
as for his own? I do not doubt that if those men in the
South who now accept the tariff views of Clay and the
constitutional expositions of Webster would courageously
avow and defend their real convictions they would not find
it difficult, by friendly instruction and cooperation, to
make the black man their efficient and safe ally, not only
in establishing correct principles in our national
administration, but in preserving for their local
communities the benefits of social order and economical
and honest government. At least until the good offices of
kindness and education have been fairly tried the contrary
conclusion can not be plausibly urged.
I
have altogether rejected the suggestion of a special
Executive policy for any section of our country. It is the
duty of the Executive to administer and enforce in the
methods and by the instrumentalities pointed out and
provided by the Constitution all the laws enacted by
Congress. These laws are general and their administration
should be uniform and equal. As a citizen may not elect
what laws he will obey, neither may the Executive eject
which he will enforce. The duty to obey and to execute
embraces the Constitution in its entirety and the whole
code of laws enacted under it. The evil example of
permitting individuals, corporations, or communities to
nullify the laws because they cross some selfish or local
interest or prejudices is full of danger, not only to the
nation at large, but much more to those who use this
pernicious expedient to escape their just obligations or
to obtain an unjust advantage over others. They will
presently themselves be compelled to appeal to the law for
protection, and those who would use the law as a defense
must not deny that use of it to others.
If
our great corporations would more scrupulously observe
their legal limitations and duties, they would have less
cause to complain of the unlawful limitations of their
rights or of violent interference with their operations.
The community that by concert, open or secret, among its
citizens denies to a portion of its members their plain
rights under the law has severed the only safe bond of
social order and prosperity. The evil works from a bad
center both ways. It demoralizes those who practice it and
destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the
efficiency of the law as a safe protector. The man in
whose breast that faith has been darkened is naturally the
subject of dangerous and uncanny suggestions. Those who
use unlawful methods, if moved by no higher motive than
the selfishness that prompted them, may well stop and
inquire what is to be the end of this.
An
unlawful expedient can not become a permanent condition of
government. If the educated and influential classes in a
community either practice or connive at the systematic
violation of laws that seem to them to cross their
convenience, what can they expect when the lesson that
convenience or a supposed class interest is a sufficient
cause for lawlessness has been well learned by the
ignorant classes? A community where law is the rule of
conduct and where courts, not mobs, execute its penalties
is the only attractive field for business investments and
honest labor.
Our
naturalization laws should be so amended as to make the
inquiry into the character and good disposition of persons
applying for citizenship more careful and searching. Our
existing laws have been in their administration an
unimpressive and often an unintelligible form. We accept
the man as a citizen without any knowledge of his fitness,
and he assumes the duties of citizenship without any
knowledge as to what they are. The privileges of American
citizenship are so great and its duties so grave that we
may well insist upon a good knowledge of every person
applying for citizenship and a good knowledge by him of
our institutions. We should not cease to be hospitable to
immigration, but we should cease to be careless as to the
character of it. There are men of all races, even the
best, whose coming is necessarily a burden upon our public
revenues or a threat to social order. These should be
identified and excluded.
We
have happily maintained a policy of avoiding all
interference with European affairs. We have been only
interested spectators of their contentions in diplomacy
and in war, ready to use our friendly offices to promote
peace, but never obtruding our advice and never attempting
unfairly to coin the distresses of other powers into
commercial advantage to ourselves. We have a just right to
expect that our European policy will be the American
policy of European courts.
It
is so manifestly incompatible with those precautions for
our peace and safety which all the great powers habitually
observe and enforce in matters affecting them that a
shorter waterway between our eastern and western seaboards
should be dominated by any European Government that we may
confidently expect that such a purpose will not be
entertained by any friendly power.
We
shall in the future, as in the past, use every endeavor to
maintain and enlarge our friendly relations with all the
great powers, but they will not expect us to look kindly
upon any project that would leave us subject to the
dangers of a hostile observation or environment. We have
not sought to dominate or to absorb any of our weaker
neighbors, but rather to aid and encourage them to
establish free and stable governments resting upon the
consent of their own people. We have a clear right to
expect, therefore, that no European Government will seek
to establish colonial dependencies upon the territory of
these independent American States. That which a sense of
justice restrains us from seeking they may be reasonably
expected willingly to forego.
It
must not be assumed, however, that our interests are so
exclusively American that our entire inattention to any
events that may transpire elsewhere can be taken for
granted. Our citizens domiciled for purposes of trade in
all countries and in many of the islands of the sea demand
and will have our adequate care in their personal and
commercial rights. The necessities of our Navy require
convenient coaling stations and dock and harbor
privileges. These and other trading privileges we will
feel free to obtain only by means that do not in any
degree partake of coercion, however feeble the government
from which we ask such concessions. But having fairly
obtained them by methods and for purposes entirely
consistent with the most friendly disposition toward all
other powers, our consent will be necessary to any
modification or impairment of the concession.
We
shall neither fail to respect the flag of any friendly
nation or the just rights of its citizens, nor to exact
the like treatment for our own. Calmness, justice, and
consideration should characterize our diplomacy. The
offices of an intelligent diplomacy or of friendly
arbitration in proper cases should be adequate to the
peaceful adjustment of all international difficulties. By
such methods we will make our contribution to the world's
peace, which no nation values more highly, and avoid the
opprobrium which must fall upon the nation that ruthlessly
breaks it.
The
duty devolved by law upon the President to nominate and,
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to
appoint all public officers whose appointment is not
otherwise provided for in the Constitution or by act of
Congress has become very burdensome and its wise and
efficient discharge full of difficulty. The civil list is
so large that a personal knowledge of any large number of
the applicants is impossible. The President must rely upon
the representations of others, and these are often made
inconsiderately and without any just sense of
responsibility. I have a right, I think, to insist that
those who volunteer or are invited to give advice as to
appointments shall exercise consideration and fidelity. A
high sense of duty and an ambition to improve the service
should characterize all public officers.
There
are many ways in which the convenience and comfort of
those who have business with our public offices may be
promoted by a thoughtful and obliging officer, and I shall
expect those whom I may appoint to justify their selection
by a conspicuous efficiency in the discharge of their
duties. Honorable party service will certainly not be
esteemed by me a disqualification for public office, but
it will in no case be allowed to serve as a shield of
official negligence, incompetency, or delinquency. It is
entirely creditable to seek public office by proper
methods and with proper motives, and all applicants will
be treated with consideration; but I shall need, and the
heads of Departments will need, time for inquiry and
deliberation. Persistent importunity will not, therefore,
be the best support of an application for office. Heads of
Departments, bureaus, and all other public officers having
any duty connected therewith will be expected to enforce
the civil-service law fully and without evasion. Beyond
this obvious duty I hope to do something more to advance
the reform of the civil service. The ideal, or even my own
ideal, I shall probably not attain. Retrospect will be a
safer basis of judgment than promises. We shall not,
however, I am sure, be able to put our civil service upon
a nonpartisan basis until we have secured an incumbency
that fair-minded men of the opposition will approve for
impartiality and integrity. As the number of such in the
civil list is increased removals from office will
diminish.
While
a Treasury surplus is not the greatest evil, it is a
serious evil. Our revenue should be ample to meet the
ordinary annual demands upon our Treasury, with a
sufficient margin for those extraordinary but scarcely
less imperative demands which arise now and then.
Expenditure should always be made with economy and only
upon public necessity. Wastefulness, profligacy, or
favoritism in public expenditures is criminal. But there
is nothing in the condition of our country or of our
people to suggest that anything presently necessary to the
public prosperity, security, or honor should be unduly
postponed.
It
will be the duty of Congress wisely to forecast and
estimate these extraordinary demands, and, having added
them to our ordinary expenditures, to so adjust our
revenue laws that no considerable annual surplus will
remain. We will fortunately be able to apply to the
redemption of the public debt any small and unforeseen
excess of revenue. This is better than to reduce our
income below our necessary expenditures, with the
resulting choice between another change of our revenue
laws and an increase of the public debt. It is quite
possible, I am sure, to effect the necessary reduction in
our revenues without breaking down our protective tariff
or seriously injuring any domestic industry.
The
construction of a sufficient number of modern war ships
and of their necessary armament should progress as rapidly
as is consistent with care and perfection in plans and
workmanship. The spirit, courage, and skill of our naval
officers and seamen have many times in our history given
to weak ships and inefficient guns a rating greatly beyond
that of the naval list. That they will again do so upon
occasion I do not doubt; but they ought not, by
premeditation or neglect, to be left to the risks and
exigencies of an unequal combat. We should encourage the
establishment of American steamship lines. The exchanges
of commerce demand stated, reliable, and rapid means of
communication, and until these are provided the
development of our trade with the States lying south of us
is impossible.
Our
pension laws should give more adequate and discriminating
relief to the Union soldiers and sailors and to their
widows and orphans. Such occasions as this should remind
us that we owe everything to their valor and sacrifice.
It
is a subject of congratulation that there is a near
prospect of the admission into the Union of the Dakotas
and Montana and Washington Territories. This act of
justice has been unreasonably delayed in the case of some
of them. The people who have settled these Territories are
intelligent, enterprising, and patriotic, and the
accession these new States will add strength to the
nation. It is due to the settlers in the Territories who
have availed themselves of the invitations of our land
laws to make homes upon the public domain that their
titles should be speedily adjusted and their honest
entries confirmed by patent.
It
is very gratifying to observe the general interest now
being manifested in the reform of our election laws. Those
who have been for years calling attention to the pressing
necessity of throwing about the ballot box and about the
elector further safeguards, in order that our elections
might not only be free and pure, but might clearly appear
to be so, will welcome the accession of any who did not so
soon discover the need of reform. The National Congress
has not as yet taken control of elections in that case
over which the Constitution gives it jurisdiction, but has
accepted and adopted the election laws of the several
States, provided penalties for their violation and a
method of supervision. Only the inefficiency of the State
laws or an unfair partisan administration of them could
suggest a departure from this policy.
It
was clearly, however, in the contemplation of the framers
of the Constitution that such an exigency might arise, and
provision was wisely made for it. The freedom of the
ballot is a condition of our national life, and no power
vested in Congress or in the Executive to secure or
perpetuate it should remain unused upon occasion. The
people of all the Congressional districts have an equal
interest that the election in each shall truly express the
views and wishes of a majority of the qualified electors
residing within it. The results of such elections are not
local, and the insistence of electors residing in other
districts that they shall be pure and free does not savor
at all of impertinence.
If
in any of the States the public security is thought to be
threatened by ignorance among the electors, the obvious
remedy is education. The sympathy and help of our people
will not be withheld from any community struggling with
special embarrassments or difficulties connected with the
suffrage if the remedies proposed proceed upon lawful
lines and are promoted by just and honorable methods. How
shall those who practice election frauds recover that
respect for the sanctity of the ballot which is the first
condition and obligation of good citizenship? The man who
has come to regard the ballot box as a juggler's hat has
renounced his allegiance.
Let
us exalt patriotism and moderate our party contentions.
Let those who would die for the flag on the field of
battle give a better proof of their patriotism and a
higher glory to their country by promoting fraternity and
justice. A party success that is achieved by unfair
methods or by practices that partake of revolution is
hurtful and evanescent even from a party standpoint. We
should hold our differing opinions in mutual respect, and,
having submitted them to the arbitrament of the ballot,
should accept an adverse judgment with the same respect
that we would have demanded of our opponents if the
decision had been in our favor.
No
other people have a government more worthy of their
respect and love or a land so magnificent in extent, so
pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion
to enterprise and labor. God has placed upon our head a
diadem and has laid at our feet power and wealth beyond
definition or calculation. But we must not forget that we
take these gifts upon the condition that justice and mercy
shall hold the reins of power and that the upward avenues
of hope shall be free to all the people.
I
do not mistrust the future. Dangers have been in frequent
ambush along our path, but we have uncovered and
vanquished them all. Passion has swept some of our
communities, but only to give us a new demonstration that
the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and
law-abiding. No political party can long pursue advantage
at the expense of public honor or by rude and indecent
methods without protest and fatal disaffection in its own
body. The peaceful agencies of commerce are more fully
revealing the necessary unity of all our communities, and
the increasing intercourse of our people is promoting
mutual respect. We shall find unalloyed pleasure in the
revelation which our next census will make of the swift
development of the great resources of some of the States.
Each State will bring its generous contribution to the
great aggregate of the nation's increase. And when the
harvests from the fields, the cattle from the hills, and
the ores of the earth shall have been weighed, counted,
and valued, we will turn from them all to crown with the
highest honor the State that has most promoted education,
virtue, justice, and patriotism among its people.
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