Washington, D. C.
March 4, 1805
Proceeding, fellow-citizens, to that qualification which the
Constitution requires before my entrance on the charge again conferred upon 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 that 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, favor 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 taken 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 produce and
property. 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 cheerfully 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 pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what
laborer, ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States? These contributions
enable us to support the current expenses of the Government; to fulfil
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 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 increased by 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 burdening
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 mean time, may keep down the accruing
interest; in all events, it will repay the advances we have made. I know that
the acquisition of Louisiana has 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 shall 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 State and Church 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, they have been
overwhelmed by the current, or driven before it. Now reduced within limits too
narrow for the hunter 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, prejudice 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
conditions, 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 is seen the action and counteraction of good
sense and bigotry. They, too, have their anti-philosophers, who find an
interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and
exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendency 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 with me in
the executive functions.
During this course of administration, and in order to
disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled 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 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 have 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 he may be intrusted with his own affairs.
No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the
State against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced. He who
has time, renders a service to public morals and public tranquillity 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
reasonings 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 cannot 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
their 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 I have heretofore
experienced, 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
forefathers, 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 with me in supplications, 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.
SOURCE: John P. Foley, Editor, The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: A Comprehensive Collection of the Views of
Thomas Jefferson, p. 982-3
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