|
In compliance with
an usage coeval with the existence of our Federal Constitution ,
and sanctioned by the example of my predecessors in the career
upon which I am about to enter, I appear, my fellow-citizens, in
your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the
solemnities of religious obligation to the faithful performance
of the duties allotted to me in the station to which I have been
called.
In unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall be
governed in the fulfillment of those duties my first resort will
be to that Constitution which I shall swear to the best of my
ability to preserve, protect, and defend. That revered
instrument enumerates the powers and prescribes the duties of
the Executive Magistrate, and in its first words declares the
purposes to which these and the whole action of the Government
instituted by it should be invariably and sacredly devoted--to
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to the
people of this Union in their successive generations. Since the
adoption of this social compact one of these generations has
passed away. It is the work of our forefathers. Administered by
some of the most eminent men who contributed to its formation,
through a most eventful period in the annals of the world, and
through all the vicissitudes of peace and war incidental to the
condition of associated man, it has not disappointed the hopes
and aspirations of those illustrious benefactors of their age
and nation. It has promoted the lasting welfare of that country
so dear to us all; it has to an extent far beyond the ordinary
lot of humanity secured the freedom and happiness of this
people. We now receive it as a precious inheritance from those
to whom we are indebted for its establishment, doubly bound by
the examples which they have left us and by the blessings which
we have enjoyed as the fruits of their labors to transmit the
same unimpaired to the succeeding generation.
In the compass of thirty-six years since this great national
covenant was instituted a body of laws enacted under its
authority and in conformity with its provisions has unfolded its
powers and carried into practical operation its effective
energies. Subordinate departments have distributed the executive
functions in their various relations to foreign affairs, to the
revenue and expenditures, and to the military force of the Union
by land and sea. A coordinate department of the judiciary has
expounded the Constitution and the laws, settling in harmonious
coincidence with the legislative will numerous weighty questions
of construction which the imperfection of human language had
rendered unavoidable. The year of jubilee since the first
formation of our Union has just elapsed that of the declaration
of our independence is at hand. The consummation of both was
effected by this Constitution .
Since that period a population of four millions has multiplied
to twelve. A territory bounded by the Mississippi has been
extended from sea to sea. New States have been admitted to the
Union in numbers nearly equal to those of the first
Confederation. Treaties of peace, amity, and commerce have been
concluded with the principal dominions of the earth. The people
of other nations, inhabitants of regions acquired not by
conquest, but by compact, have been united with us in the
participation of our rights and duties, of our burdens and
blessings. The forest has fallen by the ax of our woodsmen; the
soil has been made to teem by the tillage of our farmers; our
commerce has whitened every ocean. The dominion of man over
physical nature has been extended by the invention of our
artists. Liberty and law have Marched hand in hand. All the
purposes of human association have been accomplished as
effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at a
cost little exceeding in a whole generation the expenditure of
other nations in a single year.
Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a
Constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal
rights. To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say
that it is still the condition of men upon earth. From evil--
physical, moral, and political--it is not our claim to be
exempt. We have suffered sometimes by the visitation of Heaven
through disease; often by the wrongs and injustice of other
nations, even to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by
dissensions among ourselves--dissensions perhaps inseparable
from the enjoyment of freedom, but which have more than once
appeared to threaten the dissolution of the Union, and with it
the overthrow of all the enjoyments of our present lot and all
our earthly hopes of the future. The causes of these dissensions
have been various, founded upon differences of speculation in
the theory of republican government; upon conflicting views of
policy in our relations with foreign nations; upon jealousies of
partial and sectional interests, aggravated by prejudices and
prepossessions which strangers to each other are ever apt to
entertain.
It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to
observe that the great result of this experiment upon the theory
of human rights has at the close of that generation by which it
was formed been crowned with success equal to the most sanguine
expectations of its founders. Union, justice, tranquillity, the
common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of
liberty--all have been promoted by the Government under which we
have lived. Standing at this point of time, looking back to that
generation which has gone by and forward to that which is
advancing, we may at once indulge in grateful exultation and in
cheering hope. From the experience of the past we derive
instructive lessons for the future. Of the two great political
parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our
country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have
contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent
patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and
administration of this Government, and that both have required a
liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error.
The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the
moment when the Government of the United States first went into
operation under this Constitution, excited a collision of
sentiments and of sympathies which kindled all the passions and
imbittered the conflict of parties till the nation was involved
in war and the Union was shaken to its center. This time of
trial embraced a period of five and twenty years, during which
the policy of the Union in its relations with Europe constituted
the principal basis of our political divisions and the most
arduous part of the action of our Federal Government. With the
catastrophe in which the wars of the French Revolution
terminated, and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain,
this baneful weed of party strife was uprooted. From that time
no difference of principle, connected either with the theory of
government or with our intercourse with foreign nations, has
existed or been called forth in force sufficient to sustain a
continued combination of parties or to give more than wholesome
animation to public sentiment or legislative debate. Our
political creed is, without a dissenting voice that can be
heard, that the will of the people is the source and the
happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government
upon earth; that the best security for the beneficence and the
best guaranty against the abuse of power consists in the
freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections;
that the General Government of the Union and the separate
governments of the States are all sovereignties of limited
powers, fellow- servants of the same masters, uncontrolled
within their respective spheres, uncontrollable by encroachments
upon each other; that the firmest security of peace is the
preparation during peace of the defenses of war; that a rigorous
economy and accountability of public expenditures should guard
against the aggravation and alleviate when possible the burden
of taxation; that the military should be kept in strict
subordination to the civil power; that the freedom of the press
and of religious opinion should be inviolate; that the policy of
our country is peace and the ark of our salvation union are
articles of faith upon which we are all now agreed. If there
have been those who doubted whether a confederated
representative democracy were a government competent to the wise
and orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty
nation, those doubts have been dispelled; if there have been
projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the ruins
of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds; if there
have been dangerous attachments to one foreign nation and
antipathies against another, they have been extinguished. Ten
years of peace, at home and abroad, have assuaged the
animosities of political contention and blended into harmony the
most discordant elements of public opinion There still remains
one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and
passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who
have heretofore followed the standards of political party. It is
that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other,
of embracing as countrymen and friends, and of yielding to
talents and virtue alone that confidence which in times of
contention for principle was bestowed only upon those who bore
the badge of party communion.
The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative
opinions or in different views of administrative policy are in
their nature transitory. Those which are founded on geographical
divisions, adverse interests of soil, climate, and modes of
domestic life are more permanent, and therefore, perhaps, more
dangerous. It is this which gives inestimable value to the
character of our Government, at once federal and national. It
holds out to us a perpetual admonition to preserve alike and
with equal anxiety the rights of each individual State in its
own government and the rights of the whole nation in that of the
Union. Whatsoever is of domestic concernment, unconnected with
the other members of the Union or with foreign lands, belongs
exclusively to the administration of the State governments.
Whatsoever directly involves the rights and interests of the
federative fraternity or of foreign powers is of the resort of
this General Government. The duties of both are obvious in the
general principle, though sometimes perplexed with difficulties
in the detail. To respect the rights of the State governments is
the inviolable duty of that of the Union; the government of
every State will feel its own obligation to respect and preserve
the rights of the whole. The prejudices everywhere too commonly
entertained against distant strangers are worn away, and the
jealousies of jarring interests are allayed by the composition
and functions of the great national councils annually assembled
from all quarters of the Union at this place. Here the
distinguished men from every section of our country, while
meeting to deliberate upon the great interests of those by whom
they are deputed, learn to estimate the talents and do justice
to the virtues of each other. The harmony of the nation is
promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the sentiments
of mutual respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the
ties of personal friendship formed between the representatives
of its several parts in the performance of their service at this
metropolis.
Passing from this general review of the purposes and injunctions
of the Federal Constitution and their results as indicating the
first traces of the path of duty in the discharge of my public
trust, I turn to the Administration of my immediate predecessor
as the second. It has passed away in a period of profound peace,
how much to the satisfaction of our country and to the honor of
our country's name is known to you all. The great features of
its policy, in general concurrence with the will of the
Legislature, have been to cherish peace while preparing for
defensive war; to yield exact justice to other nations and
maintain the rights of our own; to cherish the principles of
freedom and of equal rights wherever they were proclaimed; to
discharge with all possible promptitude the national debt; to
reduce within the narrowest limits of efficiency the military
force; to improve the organization and discipline of the Army;
to provide and sustain a school of military science; to extend
equal protection to all the great interests of the nation; to
promote the civilization of the Indian tribes, and to proceed in
the great system of internal improvements within the limits of
the constitutional power of the Union. Under the pledge of these
promises, made by that eminent citizen at the time of his first
induction to this office, in his career of eight years the
internal taxes have been repealed; sixty millions of the public
debt have been discharged; provision has been made for the
comfort and relief of the aged and indigent among the surviving
warriors of the Revolution; the regular armed force has been
reduced and its constitution revised and perfected; the
accountability for the expenditure of public moneys has been
made more effective; the Floridas have been peaceably acquired,
and our boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean; the
independence of the southern nations of this hemisphere has been
recognized, and recommended by example and by counsel to the
potentates of Europe; progress has been made in the defense of
the country by fortifications and the increase of the Navy,
toward the effectual suppression of the African traffic in
slaves; in alluring the aboriginal hunters of our land to the
cultivation of the soil and of the mind, in exploring the
interior regions of the Union, and in preparing by scientific
researches and surveys for the further application of our
national resources to the internal improvement of our country.
In this brief outline of the promise and performance of my
immediate predecessor the line of duty for his successor is
clearly delineated To pursue to their consummation those
purposes of improvement in our common condition instituted or
recommended by him will embrace the whole sphere of my
obligations. To the topic of internal improvement, emphatically
urged by him at his inauguration, I recur with peculiar
satisfaction. It is that from which I am convinced that the
unborn millions of our posterity who are in future ages to
people this continent will derive their most fervent gratitude
to the founders of the Union; that in which the beneficent
action of its Government will be most deeply felt and
acknowledged. The magnificence and splendor of their public
works are among the imperishable glories of the ancient
republics. The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been the
admiration of all after ages, and have survived thousands of
years after all her conquests have been swallowed up in
despotism or become the spoil of barbarians. Some diversity of
opinion has prevailed with regard to the powers of Congress for
legislation upon objects of this nature. The most respectful
deference is due to doubts originating in pure patriotism and
sustained by venerated authority. But nearly twenty years have
passed since the construction of the first national road was
commenced. The authority for its construction was then
unquestioned. To how many thousands of our countrymen has it
proved a benefit? To what single individual has it ever proved
an injury? Repeated, liberal, and candid discussions in the
Legislature have conciliated the sentiments and approximated the
opinions of enlightened minds upon the question of
constitutional power. I can not but hope that by the same
process of friendly, patient, and persevering deliberation all
constitutional objections will ultimately be removed. The extent
and limitation of the powers of the General Government in
relation to this transcendently important interest will be
settled and acknowledged to the common satisfaction of all, and
every speculative scruple will be solved by a practical public
blessing.
Fellow-citizens, you are acquainted with the peculiar
circumstances of the recent election, which have resulted in
affording me the opportunity of addressing you at this time. You
have heard the exposition of the principles which will direct me
in the fulfillment of the high and solemn trust imposed upon me
in this station. Less possessed of your confidence in advance
than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the
prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your
indulgence. Intentions upright and pure, a heart devoted to the
welfare of our country, and the unceasing application of all the
faculties allotted to me to her service are all the pledges that
I can give for the faithful performance of the arduous duties I
am to undertake. To the guidance of the legislative councils, to
the assistance of the executive and subordinate departments, to
the friendly cooperation of the respective State governments, to
the candid and liberal support of the people so far as it may be
deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever
success may attend my public service; and knowing that "except
the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain," with
fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling
providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own
fate and the future destinies of my country.
John Quincy Adams |
