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William Harrison Speech - Inaugural Address
Called from a retirement which I had supposed was to continue for the
residue of my life to fill the chief executive office of this great and
free nation, I appear before you, fellow-citizens, to take the oath which
the Constitution prescribes as a necessary qualification for the
performance of its duties; and in obedience to a custom coeval with our
Government and what I believe to be your expectations I proceed to present
to you a summary of the principles which will govern me in the discharge
of the duties which I shall be called upon to perform.
It was the remark of a Roman consul in an early period of that celebrated
Republic that a most striking contrast was observable in the conduct of
candidates for offices of power and trust before and after obtaining them,
they seldom carrying out in the latter case the pledges and promises made
in the former. However much the world may have improved in many respects
in the lapse of upward of two thousand years since the remark was made by
the virtuous and indignant Roman, I fear that a strict examination of the
annals of some of the modern elective governments would develop similar
instances of violated confidence.
Although the fiat of the people has gone forth proclaiming me the Chief
Magistrate of this glorious Union, nothing upon their part remaining to be
done, it may be thought that a motive may exist to keep up the delusion
under which they may be supposed to have acted in relation to my
principles and opinions; and perhaps there may be some in this assembly
who have come here either prepared to condemn those I shall now deliver,
or, approving them, to doubt the sincerity with which they are now
uttered. But the lapse of a few months will confirm or dispel their fears.
The outline of principles to govern and measures to be adopted by an
Administration not yet begun will soon be exchanged for immutable history,
and I shall stand either exonerated by my countrymen or classed with the
mass of those who promised that they might deceive and flattered with the
intention to betray. However strong may be my present purpose to realize
the expectations of a magnanimous and confiding people, I too well
understand the dangerous temptations to which I shall be exposed from the
magnitude of the power which it has been the pleasure of the people to
commit to my hands not to place my chief confidence upon the aid of that
Almighty Power which has hitherto protected me and enabled me to bring to
favorable issues other important but still greatly inferior trusts
heretofore confided to me by my country.
The broad foundation upon which our Constitution rests being the people--a
breath of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change, or modify
it--it can be assigned to none of the great divisions of government but to
that of democracy. If such is its theory, those who are called upon to
administer it must recognize as its leading principle the duty of shaping
their measures so as to produce the greatest good to the greatest number.
But with these broad admissions, if we would compare the sovereignty
acknowledged to exist in the mass of our people with the power claimed by
other sovereignties, even by those which have been considered most purely
democratic, we shall find a most essential difference. All others lay
claim to power limited only by their own will. The majority of our
citizens, on the contrary, possess a sovereignty with an amount of power
precisely equal to that which has been granted to them by the parties to
the national compact, and nothing beyond. We admit of no government by
divine right, believing that so far as power is concerned the Beneficent
Creator has made no distinction amongst men; that all are upon an
equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant
of power from the governed. The Constitution of the United States is the
instrument containing this grant of power to the several departments
composing the Government. On an examination of that instrument it will be
found to contain declarations of power granted and of power withheld. The
latter is also susceptible of division into power which the majority had
the right to grant, but which they do not think proper to intrust to their
agents, and that which they could not have granted, not being possessed by
themselves. In other words, there are certain rights possessed by each
individual American citizen which in his compact with the others he has
never surrendered. Some of them, indeed, he is unable to surrender, being,
in the language of our system, unalienable. The boasted privilege of a
Roman citizen was to him a shield only against a petty provincial ruler,
whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence
of death for a supposed violation of the national faith--which no one
understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of all--or
the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with or without
an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant or hated
aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Far different is the power
of our sovereignty. It can interfere with no one's faith, prescribe forms
of worship for no one's observance, inflict no punishment but after
well-ascertained guilt, the result of investigation under rules prescribed
by the Constitution itself. These precious privileges, and those scarcely
less important of giving expression to his thoughts and opinions, either
by writing or speaking, unrestrained but by the liability for injury to
others, and that of a full participation in all the advantages which flow
from the Government, the acknowledged property of all, the American
citizen derives from no charter granted by his fellow-man. He claims them
because he is himself a man, fashioned by the same Almighty hand as the
rest of his species and entitled to a full share of the blessings with
which He has endowed them. Notwithstanding the limited sovereignty
possessed by the people of the United Stages and the restricted grant of
power to the Government which they have adopted, enough has been given to
accomplish all the objects for which it was created. It has been found
powerful in war, and hitherto justice has been administered, and intimate
union effected, domestic tranquillity preserved, and personal liberty
secured to the citizen. As was to be expected, however, from the defect of
language and the necessarily sententious manner in which the Constitution
is written, disputes have arisen as to the amount of power which it has
actually granted or was intended to grant.
This is more particularly the case in relation to that part of the
instrument which treats of the legislative branch, and not only as regards
the exercise of powers claimed under a general clause giving that body the
authority to pass all laws necessary to carry into effect the specified
powers, but in relation to the latter also. It is, however, consolatory to
reflect that most of the instances of alleged departure from the letter or
spirit of the Constitution have ultimately received the sanction of a
majority of the people. And the fact that many of our statesmen most
distinguished for talent and patriotism have been at one time or other of
their political career on both sides of each of the most warmly disputed
questions forces upon us the inference that the errors, if errors there
were, are attributable to the intrinsic difficulty in many instances of
ascertaining the intentions of the framers of the Constitution rather than
the influence of any sinister or unpatriotic motive. But the great danger
to our institutions does not appear to me to be in a usurpation by the
Government of power not granted by the people, but by the accumulation in
one of the departments of that which was assigned to others. Limited as
are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to
constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments. This
danger is greatly heightened, as it has been always observable that men
are less jealous of encroachments of one department upon another than upon
their own reserved rights. When the Constitution of the United States
first came from the hands of the Convention which formed it, many of the
sternest republicans of the day were alarmed at the extent of the power
which had been granted to the Federal Government, and more particularly of
that portion which had been assigned to the executive branch. There were
in it features which appeared not to be in harmony with their ideas of a
simple representative democracy or republic, and knowing the tendency of
power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single
individual, predictions were made that at no very remote period the
Government would terminate in virtual monarchy. It would not become me to
say that the fears of these patriots have been already realized; but as I
sincerely believe that the tendency of measures and of men's opinions for
some years past has been in that direction, it is, I conceive, strictly
proper that I should take this occasion to repeat the assurances I have
heretofore given of my determination to arrest the progress of that
tendency if it really exists and restore the Government to its pristine
health and vigor, as far as this can be effected by any legitimate
exercise of the power placed in my hands.
I proceed to state in as summary a manner as I can my opinion of the
sources of the evils which have been so extensively complained of and the
correctives which may be applied. Some of the former are unquestionably to
be found in the defects of the Constitution ; others, in my judgment, are
attributable to a misconstruction of some of its provisions. Of the former
is the eligibility of the same individual to a second term of the
Presidency. The sagacious mind of Mr. Jefferson early saw and lamented
this error, and attempts have been made, hitherto without success, to
apply the amendatory power of the States to its correction. As, however,
one mode of correction is in the power of every President, and
consequently in mine, it would be useless, and perhaps invidious, to
enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of our
fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may
have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather
from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be observed,
however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error
than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which
may be calculated to create or increase the lover of power in the bosoms
of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their
affairs; and surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind
than the long continuance of an office of high trust. Nothing can be more
corrupting, nothing more destructive of all those noble feelings which
belong to the character of a devoted republican patriot. When this
corrupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love
of gold it becomes insatiable. It is the never-dying worm in his bosom,
grows with his growth and strengthens with the declining years of its
victim. If this is true, it is the part of wisdom for a republic to limit
the service of that officer at least to whom she has intrusted the
management of her foreign relations, the execution of her laws, and the
command of her armies and navies to a period so short as to prevent his
forgetting that he is the accountable agent, not the principal; the
servant, not the master. Until an amendment of the Constitution can be
effected public opinion may secure the desired object. I give my aid to it
by renewing the pledge heretofore given that under no circumstances will I
consent to serve a second term.
But if there is danger to public liberty from the acknowledged defects of
the Constitution in the want of limit to the continuance of the Executive
power in the same hands, there is, I apprehend, not much less from a
misconstruction of that instrument as it regards the powers actually
given. I can not conceive that by a fair construction any or either of its
provisions would be found to constitute the President a part of the
legislative power. It can not be claimed from the power to recommend,
since, although enjoined as a duty upon him, it is a privilege which he
holds in common with every other citizen; and although there may be
something more of confidence in the propriety of the measures recommended
in the one case than in the other, in the obligations of ultimate decision
there can be no difference. In the language of the Constitution , "all the
legislative powers" which it grants "are vested in the Congress of the
United States." It would be a solecism in language to say that any portion
of these is not included in the whole.
It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Executive
the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them
his assent. So a similar power has necessarily resulted from that
instrument to the judiciary, and yet the judiciary forms no part of the
Legislature. There is, it is true, this difference between these grants of
power: The Executive can put his negative upon the acts of the Legislature
for other cause than that of want of conformity to the Constitution ,
whilst the judiciary can only declare void those which violate that
instrument. But the decision of the judiciary is final in such a case,
whereas in every instance where the veto of the Executive is applied it
may be overcome by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress. The
negative upon the acts of the legislative by the executive authority, and
that in the hands of one individual, would seem to be an incongruity in
our system. Like some others of asimilar character, however, it appears to
be highly expedient, and if used only with the forbearance and in the
spirit which was intended by its authors it may be productive of great
good and be found one of the best safeguards to the Union. At the period
of the formation of the Constitution the principle does not appear to have
enjoyed much favor in the State governments. It existed but in two, and in
one of these there was a plural executive. If we would search for the
motives which operated upon the purely patriotic and enlightened assembly
which framed the Constitution for the adoption of a provision so
apparently repugnant to the leading democratic principle that the majority
should govern, we must reject the idea that they anticipated from it any
benefit to the ordinary course of legislation. They knew too well the high
degree of intelligence which existed among the people and the enlightened
character of the State legislatures not to have the fullest confidence
that the two bodies elected by them would be worthy representatives of
such constituents, and, of course, that they would require no aid in
conceiving and maturing the measures which the circumstances of the
country might require. And it is preposterous to suppose that a thought
could for a moment have been entertained that the President, placed at the
capital, in the center of the country, could better understand the wants
and wishes of the people than their own immediate representatives, who
spend a part of every year among them, living with them, often laboring
with them, and bound to them by the triple tie of interest, duty, and
affection. To assist or control Congress, then, in its ordinary
legislation could not, I conceive, have been the motive for conferring the
veto power on the President. This argument acquires additional force from
the fact of its never having been thus used by the first six
Presidents--and two of them were members of the Convention, one presiding
over its deliberations and the other bearing a larger share in
consummating the labors of that august body than any other person. But if
bills were never returned to Congress by either of the Presidents above
referred to upon the ground of their being inexpedient or not as well
adapted as they might be to the wants of the people, the veto was applied
upon that of want of conformity to the Constitution or because errors had
been committed from a too hasty enactment.
There is another ground for the adoption of the veto principle, which had
probably more influence in recommending it to the Convention than any
other. I refer to the security which it gives to the just and equitable
action of the Legislature upon all parts of the Union. It could not but
have occurred to the Convention that in a country so extensive, embracing
so great a variety of soil and climate, and consequently of products, and
which from the same causes must ever exhibit a great difference in the
amount of the population of its various sections, calling for a great
diversity in the employments of the people, that the legislation of the
majority might not always justly regard the rights and interests of the
minority, and that acts of this character might be passed under an express
grant by the words of the Constitution , and therefore not within the
competency of the judiciary to declare void; that however enlightened and
patriotic they might suppose from past experience the members of Congress
might be, and however largely partaking, in the general, of the liberal
feelings of the people, it was impossible to expect that bodies so
constituted should not sometimes be controlled by local interests and
sectional feelings. It was proper, therefore, to provide some umpire from
whose situation and mode of appointment more independence and freedom from
such influences might be expected. Such a one was afforded by the
executive department constituted by the Constitution . A person elected to
that high office, having his constituents in every section, State, and
subdivision of the Union, must consider himself bound by the most solemn
sanctions to guard, protect, and defend the rights of all and of every
portion, great or small, from the injustice and oppression of the rest. I
consider the veto power, therefore given by the Constitution to the
Executive of the United States solely as a conservative power, to be used
only first, to protect the Constitution from violation; secondly, the
people from the effects of hasty legislation where their will has been
probably disregarded or not well understood, and, thirdly, to prevent the
effects of combinations violative of the rights of minorities. In
reference to the second of these objects I may observe that I consider it
the right and privilege of the people to decide disputed points of the
Constitution arising from the general grant of power to Congress to carry
into effect the powers expressly given; and I believe with Mr. Madison
that "repeated recognitions under varied circumstances in acts of the
legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the Government,
accompanied by indications in different modes of the concurrence of the
general will of the nation," as affording to the President sufficient
authority for his considering such disputed points as settled.
Upward of half a century has elapsed since the adoption of the present
form of government. It would be an object more highly desirable than the
gratification of the curiosity of speculative statesmen if its precise
situation could be ascertained, a fair exhibit made of the operations of
each of its departments, of the powers which they respectively claim and
exercise, of the collisions which have occurred between them or between
the whole Government and those of the States or either of them. We could
then compare our actual condition after fifty years' trial of our system
with what it was in the commencement of its operations and ascertain
whether the predictions of the patriots who opposed its adoption or the
confident hopes of its advocates have been best realized. The great dread
of the former seems to have been that the reserved powers of the States
would be absorbed by those of the Federal Government and a consolidated
power established, leaving to the States the shadow only of that
independent action for which they had so zealously contended and on the
preservation of which they relied as the last hope of liberty. Without
denying that the result to which they looked with so much apprehension is
in the way of being realized, it is obvious that they did not clearly see
the mode of its accomplishment The General Government has seized upon none
of the reserved rights of the States. AS far as any open warfare may have
gone, the State authorities have amply maintained their rights. To a
casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the
different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has
produced no jarring. They move in their respective orbits in perfect
harmony with the central head and with each other. But there is still an
undercurrent at work by which, if not seasonably checked, the worst
apprehensions of our antifederal patriots will be realized, and not only
will the State authorities be overshadowed by the great increase of power
in the executive department of the General Government, but the character
of that Government, if not its designation, be essentially and radically
changed. This state of things has been in part effected by causes inherent
in the Constitution and in part by the never-failing tendency of political
power to increase itself. By making the President the sole distributer of
all the patronage of the Government the framers of the Constitution do not
appear to have anticipated at how short a period it would become a
formidable instrument to control the free operations of the State
governments. Of trifling importance at first, it had early in Mr.
Jefferson's Administration become so powerful as to create great alarm in
the mind of that patriot from the potent influence it might exert in
controlling the freedom of the elective franchise. If such could have then
been the effects of its influence, how much greater must be the danger at
this time, quadrupled in amount as it certainly is and more completely
under the control of the Executive will than their construction of their
powers allowed or the forbearing characters of all the early Presidents
permitted them to make. But it is not by the extent of its patronage alone
that the executive department has become dangerous, but by the use which
it appears may be made of the appointing power to bring under its control
the whole revenues of the country. The Constitution has declared it to be
the duty of the President to see that the laws are executed, and it makes
him the Commander in Chief of the Armies and Navy of the United States. If
the opinion of the most approved writers upon that species of mixed
government which in modern Europe is termed monarchy in contradistinction
to despotism is correct, there was wanting no other addition to the powers
of our Chief Magistrate to stamp a monarchical character on our Government
but the control of the public finances; and to me it appears strange
indeed that anyone should doubt that the entire control which the
President possesses over the officers who have the custody of the public
money, by the power of removal with or without cause, does, for all
mischievous purposes at least, virtually subject the treasure also to his
disposal. The first Roman Emperor, in his attempt to seize the sacred
treasure, silenced the opposition of the officer to whose charge it had
been committed by a significant allusion to his sword. By a selection of
political instruments for the care of the public money a reference to
their commissions by a President would be quite as effectual an argument
as that of Caesar to the Roman knight. I am not insensible of the great
difficulty that exists in drawing a proper plan for the safe- keeping and
disbursement of the public revenues, and I know the importance which has
been attached by men of great abilities and patriotism to the divorce, as
it is called, of the Treasury from the banking institutions It is not the
divorce which is complained of, but the unhallowed union of the Treasury
with the executive department, which has created such extensive alarm. To
this danger to our republican institutions and that created by the
influence given to the Executive through the instrumentality of the
Federal officers I propose to apply all the remedies which may be at my
command. It was certainly a great error in the framers of the Constitution
not to have made the officer at the head of the Treasury Department
entirely independent of the Executive. He should at least have been
removable only upon the demand of the popular branch of the Legislature. I
have determined never to remove a Secretary of the Treasury without
communicating all the circumstances attending such removal to both Houses
of Congress.
The influence of the Executive in controlling the freedom of the elective
franchise through the medium of the public officers can be effectually
checked by renewing the prohibition published by Mr. Jefferson forbidding
their interference in elections further than giving their own votes, and
their own independence secured by an assurance of perfect immunity in
exercising this sacred privilege of freemen under the dictates of their
own unbiased judgments. Never with my consent shall an officer of the
people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the
pliant instrument of Executive will.
There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which
might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the control
of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from the mother
country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark of civil and
religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies which they have
left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as the experience of
other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever
pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The
presses in the necessary employment of the Government should never be used
"to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent and manly examination
of the acts of the Government should be not only tolerated, but
encouraged.
Upon another occasion I have given my opinion at some length upon the
impropriety of Executive interference in the legislation of Congress--that
the article in the Constitution making it the duty of the President to
communicate information and authorizing him to recommend measures was not
intended to make him the source in legislation, and, in particular, that
he should never be looked to for schemes of finance. It would be very
strange, indeed, that the Constitution should have strictly forbidden one
branch of the Legislature from interfering in the origination of such
bills and that it should be considered proper that an altogether different
department of the Government should be permitted to do so. Some of our
best political maxims and opinions have been drawn from our parent isle.
There are others, however, which can not be introduced in our system
without singular incongruity and the production of much mischief, and this
I conceive to be one. No matter in which of the houses of Parliament a
bill may originate nor by whom introduced--a minister or a member of the
opposition-- by the fiction of law, or rather of Constitutional principle,
the sovereign is supposed to have prepared it agreeably to his will and
then submitted it to Parliament for their advice and consent. Now the very
reverse is the case here, not only with regard to the principle, but the
forms prescribed by the Constitution . The principle certainly assigns to
the only body constituted by the Constitution (the legislative body) the
power to make laws, and the forms even direct that the enactment should be
ascribed to them. The Senate, in relation to revenue bills, have the right
to propose amendments, and so has the Executive by the power given him to
return them to the House of Representatives with his objections. It is in
his power also to propose amendments in the existing revenue laws,
suggested by his observations upon their defective or injurious operation.
But the delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where
the Constitution has placed it--with the immediate representatives of the
people. For similar reasons the mode of keeping the public treasure should
be prescribed by them, and the further removed it may be from the control
of the Executive the more wholesome the arrangement and the more in
accordance with republican principle.
Connected with this subject is the character of the currency. The idea of
making it exclusively metallic, however well intended, appears to me to be
fraught with more fatal consequences than any other scheme having no
relation to the personal rights of the citizens that has ever been
devised. If any single scheme could produce the effect of arresting at
once that mutation of condition by which thousands of our most indigent
fellow-citizens by their industry and enterprise are raised to the
possession of wealth, that is the one. If there is one measure better
calculated than another to produce that state of things so much deprecated
by all true republicans, by which the rich are daily adding to their
hoards and the poor sinking deeper into penury, it is an exclusive
metallic currency. Or if there is a process by which the character of the
country for generosity and nobleness of feeling may be destroyed by the
great increase and neck toleration of usury, it is an exclusive metallic
currency.
Amongst the other duties of a delicate character which the President is
called upon to perform is the supervision of the government of the
Territories of the United States. Those of them which are destined to
become members of our great political family are compensated by their
rapid progress from infancy to manhood for the partial and temporary
deprivation of their political rights. It is in this District only where
American citizens are to be found who under a settled policy are deprived
of many important political privileges without any inspiring hope as to
the future. Their only consolation under circumstances of such deprivation
is that of the devoted exterior guards of a camp--that their sufferings
secure tranquillity and safety within. Are there any of their countrymen,
who would subject them to greater sacrifices, to any other humiliations
than those essentially necessary to the security of the object for which
they were thus separated from their fellow-citizens? Are their rights
alone not to be guaranteed by the application of those great principles
upon which all our Constitutions are founded? We are told by the greatest
of British orators and statesmen that at the commencement of the War of
the Revolution the most stupid men in England spoke of "their American
subjects." Are there, indeed, citizens of any of our States who have
dreamed of their subjects in the District of Columbia? Such dreams can
never be realized by any agency of mine. The people of the District of
Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the States, but free
American citizens. Being in the latter condition when the Constitution was
formed, no words used in that instrument could have been intended to
deprive them of that character. If there is anything in the great
principle of unalienable rights so emphatically insisted upon in our
Declaration of Independence, they could neither make nor the United States
accept a surrender of their liberties and become the subjects--in other
words, the slaves--of their former fellow-citizens. If this be true--and
it will scarcely be denied by anyone who has a correct idea of his own
rights as an American citizen--the grant to Congress of exclusive
jurisdiction in the District of Columbia can be interpreted, so far as
respects the aggregate people of the United States, as meaning nothing
more than to allow to Congress the controlling power necessary to afford a
free and safe exercise of the functions assigned to the General Government
by the Constitution . In all other respects the legislation of Congress
should be adapted to their peculiar position and wants and be conformable
with their deliberate opinions of their own interests.
I have spoken of the necessity of keeping the respective departments of
the Government, as well as all the other authorities of our country,
within their appropriate orbits. This is a matter of difficulty in some
cases, as the powers which they respectively claim are often not defined
by any distinct lines. Mischievous, however, in their tendencies as
collisions of this kind may be, those which arise between the respective
communities which for certain purposes compose one nation are much more
so, for no such nation can long exist without the careful culture of those
feelings of confidence and affection which are the effective bonds to
union between free and confederated states. Strong as is the tie of
interest, it has been often found ineffectual. Men blinded by their
passions have been known to adopt measures for their country in direct
opposition to all the suggestions of policy. The alternative, then, is to
destroy or keep down a bad passion by creating and fostering a good one,
and this seems to be the corner stone upon which our American political
architects have reared the fabric of our Government. The cement which was
to bind it and perpetuate its existence was the affectionate attachment
between all its members. To insure the continuance of this feeling,
produced at first by a community of dangers, of sufferings, and of
interests, the advantages of each were made accessible to all. No
participation in any good possessed by any member of our extensive
Confederacy, except in domestic government, was withheld from the citizen
of any other member. By aprocess attended with no difficulty, no delay, no
expense but that of removal, the citizen of one might become the citizen
of any other, and successively of the whole. The lines, too, separating
powers to be exercised by the citizens of one State from those of another
seem to be so distinctly drawn as to leave no room for misunderstanding.
The citizens of each State unite in their persons all the privileges which
that character confers and all that they may claim as citizens of the
United States, but in no case can the same persons at the same time act as
the citizen of two separate States, and he is therefore positively
precluded from any interference with the reserved powers of any State but
that of which he is for the time being a citizen. He may, indeed, offer to
the citizens of other States his advice as to their management, and the
form in which it is tendered is left to his own discretion and sense of
propriety. It may be observed, however, that organized associations of
citizens requiring compliance with their wishes too much resemble the
recommendations of Athens to her allies, supported by an armed and
powerful fleet. It was, indeed, to the ambition of the leading States of
Greece to control the domestic concerns of the others that the destruction
of that celebrated Confederacy, and subsequently of all its members, is
mainly to be attributed, and it is owing to the absence of that spirit
that the Helvetic Confederacy has for so many years been preserved. Never
has there been seen in the institutions of the separate members of any
confederacy more elements of discord. In the principles and forms of
government and religion, as well as in the circumstances of the several
Cantons, so marked a discrepancy was observable as to promise anything but
harmony in their intercourse or permanency in their alliance, and yet for
ages neither has been interrupted. Content with the positive benefits
which their union produced, with the independence and safety from foreign
aggression which it secured, these sagacious people respected the
institutions of each other, however repugnant to their own principles and
prejudices.
Our Confederacy, fellow-citizens, can only be preserved by the same
forbearance. Our citizens must be content with the exercise of the powers
with which the Constitution clothes them. The attempt of those of one
State to control the domestic institutions of another can only result in
feelings of distrust and jealousy, the certain harbingers of disunion,
violence, and civil war, and the ultimate destruction of our free
institutions. Our Confederacy is perfectly illustrated by the terms and
principles governing a common copartnership There is a fund of power to be
exercised under the direction of the joint councils of the allied members,
but that which has been reserved by the individual members is intangible
by the common Government or the individual members composing it. To
attempt it finds no support in the principles of our Constitution .
It should be our constant and earnest endeavor mutually to cultivate a
spirit of concord and harmony among the various parts of our Confederacy.
Experience has abundantly taught us that the agitation by citizens of one
part of the Union of a subject not confided to the General Government, but
exclusively under the guardianship of the local authorities, is productive
of no other consequences than bitterness, alienation, discord, and injury
to the very cause which is intended to be advanced. Of all the great
interests which appertain to our country, that of union--cordial,
confiding, fraternal union--is by far the most important, since it is the
only true and sure guaranty of all others.
In consequence of the embarrassed state of business and the currency, some
of the States may meet with difficulty in their financial concerns.
However deeply we may regret anything imprudent or excessive in the
engagements into which States have entered for purposes of their own, it
does not become us to disparage the States governments, nor to discourage
them from making proper efforts for their own relief. On the contrary, it
is our duty to encourage them to the extent of our Constitutional
authority to apply their best means and cheerfully to make all necessary
sacrifices and submit to all necessary burdens to fulfill their
engagements and maintain their credit, for the character and credit of the
several States form a part of the character and credit of the whole
country. The resources of the country are abundant, the enterprise and
activity of our people proverbial, and we may well hope that wise
legislation and prudent administration by the respective governments, each
acting within its own sphere, will restore former prosperity.
Unpleasant and even dangerous as collisions may sometimes be between the
constituted authorities of the citizens of our country in relation to the
lines which separate their respective jurisdictions, the results can be of
no vital injury to our institutions if that ardent patriotism, that
devoted attachment to liberty, that spirit of moderation and forbearance
for which our countrymen were once distinguished, continue to be
cherished. If this continues to be the ruling passion of our souls, the
weaker feeling of the mistaken enthusiast will be corrected, the Utopian
dreams of the scheming politician dissipated, and the complicated
intrigues of the demagogue rendered harmless. The spirit of liberty is the
sovereign balm for every injury which our institutions may receive. On the
contrary, no care that can be used in the construction of our Government,
no division of powers, no distribution of checks in its several
departments, will prove effectual to keep us a free people if this spirit
is suffered to decay; and decay it will without constant nurture. To the
neglect of this duty the best historians agree in attributing the ruin of
all the republics with whose existence and fall their writings have made
us acquainted. The same causes will ever produce the same effects, and as
long as the love of power is a dominant passion of the human bosom, and as
long as the understandings of men can be warped and their affections
changed by operations upon their passions and prejudices, so long will the
liberties of a people depend on their own constant attention to its
preservation. The danger to all well-established free governments arises
from the unwillingness of the people to believe in its existence or from
the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter
whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the
old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the
name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of
wealth and the danger of aristocracy. History, ancient and modern, is full
of such examples. Caesar became the master of the Roman people and the
senate under the pretense of supporting the democratic claims of the
former against the aristocracy of the latter; Cromwell, in the character
of protector of the liberties of the people, became the dictator of
England, and Bolivar possessed himself of unlimited power with the title
of his country's liberator. There is, on the contrary, no instance on
record of an extensive and well- established republic being changed into
an aristocracy. The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is
to monarchy, and the antagonist principle to liberty there is the spirit
of faction--a spirit which assumes the character and in times of great
excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of
freedom, and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the
Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and
most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it
behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have
intrusted power. And although there is at times much difficulty in
distinguishing the false from the true spirit, a calm and dispassionate
investigation will detect the counterfeit, as well by the character of its
operations as the results that are produced. The true spirit of liberty,
although devoted, persevering, bold, and uncompromising in principle, that
secured is mild and tolerant and scrupulous as to the means it employs,
whilst the spirit of party, assuming to be that of liberty, is harsh,
vindictive, and intolerant, and totally reckless as to the character of
the allies which it brings to the aid of its cause. When the genuine
spirit of liberty animates the body of a people to a thorough examination
of their affairs, it leads to the excision of every excrescence which may
have fastened itself upon any of the departments of the government, and
restores the system to its pristine health and beauty. But the reign of an
intolerant spirit of party amongst a free people seldom fails to result in
a dangerous accession to the executive power introduced and established
amidst unusual professions of devotion to democracy.
The foregoing remarks relate almost exclusively to matters connected with
our domestic concerns. It may be proper, however, that I should give some
indications to my fellow-citizens of my proposed course of conduct in the
management of our foreign relations. I assure them, therefore, that it is
my intention to use every means in my power to preserve the friendly
intercourse which now so happily subsists with every foreign nation, and
that although, of course, not well informed as to the state of pending
negotiations with any of them, I see in the personal characters of the
sovereigns, as well as in the mutual interests of our own and of the
governments with which our relations are most intimate, a pleasing
guaranty that the harmony so important to the interests of their subjects
as well as of our citizens will not be interrupted by the advancement of
any claim or pretension upon their part to which our honor would not
permit us to yield. Long the defender of my country's rights in the field,
I trust that my fellow-citizens will not see in my earnest desire to
preserve peace with foreign powers any indication that their rights will
ever be sacrificed or the honor of the nation tarnished by any admission
on the part of their Chief Magistrate unworthy of their former glory. In
our intercourse with our aboriginal neighbors the same liberality and
justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious
predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the
duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed. I
can conceive of no more sublime spectacle, none more likely to propitiate
an impartial and common Creator, than a rigid adherence to the principles
of justice on the part of a powerful nation in its transactions with
aweaker and uncivilized people whom circumstances have placed at its
disposal.
Before concluding, fellow-citizens, I must say something to you on the
subject of the parties at this time existing in our country. To me it
appears perfectly clear that the interest of that country requires that
the violence of the spirit by which those parties are at this time
governed must be greatly mitigated, if not entirely extinguished, or
consequences will ensue which are appalling to be thought of.
If parties in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance
sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law and
duty, at that point their usefulness ends. Beyond that they become
destructive of public virtue, the parent of a spirit antagonist to that of
liberty, and eventually its inevitable conqueror. We have examples of
republics where the love of country and of liberty at one time were the
dominant passions of the whole mass of citizens, and yet, with the
continuance of the name and forms of free government, not a vestige of
these qualities remaining in the bosoms of any one of its citizens. It was
the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that "in the Roman
senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but the Commonwealth had
none." Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk
of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and gaze at the statues
of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and Decii, and the people assembled
in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast
their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the
senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective
parties their share of the spoils and to shout for one or the other, as
those collected in Gaul or Egypt and the lesser Asia would furnish the
larger dividend. The spirit of liberty had fled, and, avoiding the abodes
of civilized man, had sought protection in the wilds of Scythia or
Scandinavia; and so under the operation of the same causes and influences
it will fly from our Capitol and our forums. A calamity so awful, not only
to our country, but to the world, must be deprecated by every patriot and
every tendency to a state of things likely to produce it immediately
checked. Such a tendency has existed--does exist. Always the friend of my
countrymen, never their flatterer, it becomes my duty to say to them from
this high place to which their partiality has exalted me that there exists
in the land a spirit hostile to their best interests--hostile to liberty
itself. It is a spirit contracted in its views, selfish in its objects. It
looks to the aggrandizement of a few even to the destruction of the
interests of the whole. The entire remedy is with the people. Something,
however, may be effected by the means which they have placed in my hands.
It is union that we want, not of a party for the sake of that party, but
aunion of the whole country for the sake of the whole country, for the
defense of its interests and its honor against foreign aggression, for the
defense of those principles for which our ancestors so gloriously
contended As far as it depends upon me it shall be accomplished. All the
influence that I possess shall be exerted to prevent the formation at
least of an Executive party in the halls of the legislative body. I wish
for the support of no member of that body to any measure of mine that does
not satisfy his judgment and his sense of duty to those from whom he holds
his appointment, nor any confidence in advance from the people but that
asked for by Mr. Jefferson, "to give firmness and effect to the legal
administration of their affairs."
I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify
me in expressing to my fellow-citizens a profound reverence for the
Christian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious
liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially
connected with all true and lasting happiness; and to that good Being who
has blessed us by the gifts of civil and religious freedom, who watched
over and prospered the labors of our fathers and has hitherto preserved to
us institutions far exceeding in excellence those of any other people, let
us unite in fervently commending every interest of our beloved country in
all future time.
Fellow-citizens, being fully invested with that high office to which the
partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now take an affectionate
leave of you. You will bear with you to your homes the remembrance of the
pledge I have this day given to discharge all the high duties of my
exalted station according to the best of my ability, and I shall enter
upon their performance with entire confidence in the support of a just and
generous people.
William Harrison
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