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.