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 citizenon
the farm, in the workshop, in the busy marts
of trade, and everywhereshould 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 politymunicipal,
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. |