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 to-day 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 blessing upon our
labors.