Fellow-Citizens:
In
the presence of this vast assemblage of my countrymen I am
about to supplement and seal by the oath which I shall
take the manifestation of the will of a great and free
people. In the exercise of their power and right of
self-government they have committed to one of their
fellow-citizens a supreme and sacred trust, and he here
consecrates himself to their service.
This
impressive ceremony adds little to the solemn sense of
responsibility with which I contemplate the duty I owe to
all the people of the land. Nothing can relieve me from
anxiety lest by any act of mine their interests may
suffer, and nothing is needed to strengthen my resolution
to engage every faculty and effort in the promotion of
their welfare.
Amid
the din of party strife the people's choice was made, but
its attendant circumstances have demonstrated anew the
strength and safety of a government by the people. In each
succeeding year it more clearly appears that our
democratic principle needs no apology, and that in its
fearless and faithful application is to be found the
surest guaranty of good government.
But
the best results in the operation of a government wherein
every citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper
limitation of purely partisan zeal and effort and a
correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the
partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the
citizen.
To-day
the executive branch of the Government is transferred to
new keeping. But this is still the Government of all the
people, and it should be none the less an object of their
affectionate solicitude. At this hour the animosities of
political strife, the bitterness of partisan defeat, and
the exultation of partisan triumph should be supplanted by
an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will and a
sober, conscientious concern for the general weal.
Moreover, if from this hour we cheerfully and honestly
abandon all sectional prejudice and distrust, and
determine, with manly confidence in one another, to work
out harmoniously the achievements of our national destiny,
we shall deserve to realize all the benefits which our
happy form of government can bestow.
On
this auspicious occasion we may well renew the pledge of
our devotion to the Constitution, which, launched by the
founders of the Republic and consecrated by their prayers
and patriotic devotion, has for almost a century borne the
hopes and the aspirations of a great people through
prosperity and peace and through the shock of foreign
conflicts and the perils of domestic strife and
vicissitudes.
By
the Father of his Country our Constitution was commended
for adoption as "the result of a spirit of amity and
mutual concession." In that same spirit it should be
administered, in order to promote the lasting welfare of
the country and to secure the full measure of its
priceless benefits to us and to those who will succeed to
the blessings of our national life. The large variety of
diverse and competing interests subject to Federal
control, persistently seeking the recognition of their
claims, need give us no fear that "the greatest good
to the greatest number" will fail to be accomplished
if in the halls of national legislation that spirit of
amity and mutual concession shall prevail in which the
Constitution had its birth. If this involves the surrender
or postponement of private interests and the abandonment
of local advantages, compensation will be found in the
assurance that the common interest is subserved and the
general welfare advanced.
In
the discharge of my official duty I shall endeavor to be
guided by a just and unstrained construction of the
Constitution, a careful observance of the distinction
between the powers granted to the Federal Government and
those reserved to the States or to the people, and by a
cautious appreciation of those functions which by the
Constitution and laws have been especially assigned to the
executive branch of the Government.
But
he who takes the oath today to preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution of the United States only assumes
the solemn obligation which every patriotic citizen on
the farm, in the workshop, in the busy marts of trade, and
everywhere should share with him. The Constitution which
prescribes his oath, my countrymen, is yours; the
Government you have chosen him to administer for a time is
yours; the suffrage which executes the will of freemen is
yours; the laws and the entire scheme of our civil rule,
from the town meeting to the State capitals and the
national capital, is yours. Your every voter, as surely as
your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction,
though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust.
Nor is this all. Every citizen owes to the country a
vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants
and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity and
usefulness. Thus is the people's will impressed upon the
whole framework of our civil polity municipal, State,
and Federal; and this is the price of our liberty and the
inspiration of our faith in the Republic.
It
is the duty of those serving the people in public place to
closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of
the Government economically administered, because this
bounds the right of the Government to exact tribute from
the earnings of labor or the property of the citizen, and
because public extravagance begets extravagance among the
people. We should never be ashamed of the simplicity and
prudential economies which are best suited to the
operation of a republican form of government and most
compatible with the mission of the American people. Those
who are selected for a limited time to manage public
affairs are still of the people, and may do much by their
example to encourage, consistently with the dignity of
their official functions, that plain way of life which
among their fellow-citizens aids integrity and promotes
thrift and prosperity.
The
genius of our institutions, the needs of our people in
their home life, and the attention which is demanded for
the settlement and development of the resources of our
vast territory dictate the scrupulous avoidance of any
departure from that foreign policy commended by the
history, the traditions, and the prosperity of our
Republic. It is the policy of independence, favored by our
position and defended by our known love of justice and by
our power. It is the policy of peace suitable to our
interests. It is the policy of neutrality, rejecting any
share in foreign broils and ambitions upon other
continents and repelling their intrusion here. It is the
policy of Monroe and of Washington and
Jefferson "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship
with all nations; entangling alliance with none."
A
due regard for the interests and prosperity of all the
people demands that our finances shall be established upon
such a sound and sensible basis as shall secure the safety
and confidence of business interests and make the wage of
labor sure and steady, and that our system of revenue
shall be so adjusted as to relieve the people of
unnecessary taxation, having a due regard to the interests
of capital invested and workingmen employed in American
industries, and preventing the accumulation of a surplus
in the Treasury to tempt extravagance and waste.
Care
for the property of the nation and for the needs of future
settlers requires that the public domain should be
protected from purloining schemes and unlawful occupation.
The
conscience of the people demands that the Indians within
our boundaries shall be fairly and honestly treated as
wards of the Government and their education and
civilization promoted with a view to their ultimate
citizenship, and that polygamy in the Territories,
destructive of the family relation and offensive to the
moral sense of the civilized world, shall be repressed.
The
laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the
immigration of a servile class to compete with American
labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and
bringing with them and retaining habits and customs
repugnant to our civilization.
The
people demand reform in the administration of the
Government and the application of business principles to
public affairs. As a means to this end, civil-service
reform should be in good faith enforced. Our citizens have
the right to protection from the incompetency of public
employees who hold their places solely as the reward of
partisan service, and from the corrupting influence of
those who promise and the vicious methods of those who
expect such rewards; and those who worthily seek public
employment have the right to insist that merit and
competency shall be recognized instead of party
subserviency or the surrender of honest political belief.
In
the administration of a government pledged to do equal and
exact justice to all men there should be no pretext for
anxiety touching the protection of the freedmen in their
rights or their security in the enjoyment of their
privileges under the Constitution and its amendments. All
discussion as to their fitness for the place accorded to
them as American citizens is idle and unprofitable except
as it suggests the necessity for their improvement. The
fact that they are citizens entitles them to all the
rights due to that relation and charges them with all its
duties, obligations, and responsibilities.
These
topics and the constant and ever-varying wants of an
active and enterprising population may well receive the
attention and the patriotic endeavor of all who make and
execute the Federal law. Our duties are practical and call
for industrious application, an intelligent perception of
the claims of public office, and, above all, a firm
determination, by united action, to secure to all the
people of the land the full benefits of the best form of
government ever vouchsafed to man. And let us not trust to
human effort alone, but humbly acknowledging the power and
goodness of Almighty God, who presides over the destiny of
nations, and who has at all times been revealed in our
country's history, let us invoke His aid and His blessings
upon our labors.
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