Proceeding,
fellow-citizens, to that qualification which the
Constitution requires before my entrance on the charge
again conferred on me, it is my duty to express the deep
sense I entertain of this new proof of confidence from my
fellow-citizens at large, and the zeal with which it
inspires me so to conduct myself as may best satisfy their
just expectations.
On
taking this station on a former occasion I declared the
principles on which I believed it my duty to administer
the affairs of our Commonwealth. My conscience tells me I
have on every occasion acted up to that declaration
according to its obvious import and to the understanding
of every candid mind.
In
the transaction of your foreign affairs we have endeavored
to cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially
of those with which we have the most important relations.
We have done them justice on all occasions, favored where
favor was lawful, and cherished mutual interests and
intercourse on fair and equal terms. We are firmly
convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with
nations as with individuals our interests soundly
calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral
duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just
nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to
armaments and wars to bridle others.
At
home, fellow-citizens, you best know whether we have done
well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of
useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to
discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering our land
with officers and opening our doors to their intrusions,
had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation
which once entered is scarcely to be restrained from
reaching successively every article of property and
produce. If among these taxes some minor ones fell which
had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount
would not have paid the officers who collected them, and
because, if they had any merit, the State authorities
might adopt them instead of others less approved.
The
remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles
is paid chiefly by those who can afford to add foreign
luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our
seaboard and frontiers only, and incorporated with the
transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the
pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer,
what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the
United States? These contributions enable us to support
the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill
contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native
right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits,
and to apply such a surplus to our public debts as places
at a short day their final redemption, and that redemption
once effected the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just
repartition of it among the States and a corresponding
amendment of the Constitution, be applied in time of peace
to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education,
and other great objects within each State. In time of war,
if injustice by ourselves or others must sometimes produce
war, increased as the same revenue will be by increased
population and consumption, and aided by other resources
reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all
the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights
of future generations by burthening them with the debts of
the past. War will then be but a suspension of useful
works, and a return to a state of peace, a return to the
progress of improvement.
I
have said, fellow-citizens, that the income reserved had
enabled us to extend our limits, but that extension may
possibly pay for itself before we are called on, and in
the meantime may keep down the accruing interest; in all
events, it will replace the advances we shall have made. I
know that the acquisition of Louisiana had been
disapproved by some from a candid apprehension that the
enlargement of our territory would endanger its union. But
who can limit the extent to which the federative principle
may operate effectively? The larger our association the
less will it be shaken by local passions; and in any view
is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi
should be settled by our own brethren and children than by
strangers of another family? With which should we be most
likely to live in harmony and friendly intercourse?
In
matters of religion I have considered that its free
exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the
powers of the General Government. I have therefore
undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious
exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the
Constitution found them, under the direction and
discipline of the church or state authorities acknowledged
by the several religious societies.
The
aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded
with the commiseration their history inspires. Endowed
with the faculties and the rights of men, breathing an
ardent love of liberty and independence, and occupying a
country which left them no desire but to be undisturbed,
the stream of overflowing population from other regions
directed itself on these shores; without power to divert
or habits to contend against it, they have been
overwhelmed by the current or driven before it; now
reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter's state,
humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the
domestic arts; to encourage them to that industry which
alone can enable them to maintain their place in existence
and to prepare them in time for that state of society
which to bodily comforts adds the improvement of the mind
and morals. We have therefore liberally furnished them
with the implements of husbandry and household use; we
have placed among them instructors in the arts of first
necessity, and they are covered with the aegis of the law
against aggressors from among ourselves.
But
the endeavors to enlighten them on the fate which awaits
their present course of life, to induce them to exercise
their reason, follow its dictates, and change their
pursuits with the change of circumstances have powerful
obstacles to encounter; they are combated by the habits of
their bodies, prejudices of their minds, ignorance, pride,
and the influence of interested and crafty individuals
among them who feel themselves something in the present
order of things and fear to become nothing in any other.
These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the
customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did must
be done through all time; that reason is a false guide,
and to advance under its counsel in their physical, moral,
or political condition is perilous innovation; that their
duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance
being safety and knowledge full of danger; in short, my
friends, among them also is seen the action and
counteraction of good sense and of bigotry; they too have
their antiphilosophists who find an interest in keeping
things in their present state, who dread reformation, and
exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendancy of
habit over the duty of improving our reason and obeying
its mandates.
In
giving these outlines I do not mean, fellow-citizens, to
arrogate to myself the merit of the measures. That is due,
in the first place, to the reflecting character of our
citizens at large, who, by the weight of public opinion,
influence and strengthen the public measures. It is due to
the sound discretion with which they select from among
themselves those to whom they confide the legislative
duties. It is due to the zeal and wisdom of the characters
thus selected, who lay the foundations of public happiness
in wholesome laws, the execution of which alone remains
for others, and it is due to the able and faithful
auxiliaries, whose patriotism has associated them with me
in the executive functions.
During
this course of administration, and in order to disturb it,
the artillery of the press has been leveled against us,
charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or
dare. These abuses of an institution so important to
freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch
as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its
safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the
wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws
of the several States against falsehood and defamation,
but public duties more urgent press on the time of public
servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to
find their punishment in the public indignation.
Nor
was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment
should be fairly and fully made, whether freedom of
discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the
propagation and protection of truth—whether a government
conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution,
with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be
unwilling the whole world should witness, can be written
down by falsehood and defamation. The experiment has been
tried; you have witnessed the scene; our fellow-citizens
looked on, cool and collected; they saw the latent source
from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around
their public functionaries, and when the Constitution
called them to the decision by suffrage, they pronounced
their verdict, honorable to those who had served them and
consolatory to the friend of man who believes that he may
be trusted with the control of his own affairs.
No
inference is here intended that the laws provided by the
States against false and defamatory publications should
not be enforced; he who has time renders a service to
public morals and public tranquility in reforming these
abuses by the salutary coercions of the law; but the
experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason
have maintained their ground against false opinions in
league with false facts, the press, confined to truth,
needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will
correct false reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of
all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn
between the inestimable liberty of the press and its
demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still
improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its
supplement must be sought in the censorship of public
opinion.
Contemplating
the union of sentiment now manifested so generally as
auguring harmony and happiness to our future course, I
offer to our country sincere congratulations. With those,
too, not yet rallied to the same point the disposition to
do so is gaining strength; facts are piercing through the
veil drawn over them, and our doubting brethren will at
length see that the mass of their fellow-citizens with
whom they can not yet resolve to act as to principles and
measures, think as they think and desire what they desire;
that our wish as well as theirs is that the public efforts
may be directed honestly to the public good, that peace be
cultivated, civil and religious liberty unassailed, law
and order preserved, equality of rights maintained, and
that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to
every man from his own industry or that of his father's.
When satisfied of these views it is not in human nature
that they should not approve and support them. In the
meantime let us cherish them with patient affection, let
us do them justice, and more than justice, in all
competitions of interest; and we need not doubt that
truth, reason, and their own interests will at length
prevail, will gather them into the fold of their country,
and will complete that entire union of opinion which gives
to a nation the blessing of harmony and the benefit of all
its strength.
I
shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens
have again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of
those principles which they have approved. I fear not that
any motives of interest may lead me astray; I am sensible
of no passion which could seduce me knowingly from the
path of justice, but the weaknesses of human nature and
the limits of my own understanding will produce errors of
judgment sometimes injurious to your interests. I shall
need, therefore, all the indulgence which I have
heretofore experienced from my constituents; the want of
it will certainly not lessen with increasing years. I
shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we
are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their
native land and planted them in a country flowing with all
the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our
infancy with His providence and our riper years with His
wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join
in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the
minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper
their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in
your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship,
and approbation of all nations.
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