[Delivered At The
East Front Of The Capitol, Washington, March 4, 1885.]
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 unrestrained construction of the Constitution, a careful
observance of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal
Government and those reserved to the State 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.
SOURCE: Government Printing Office, The Public Papers of Grover Cleveland: Twenty-second President of the
United States: March 4, 1885 to March 4, 1889, p. 6-9
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