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William Henry Harrison's
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 oaths 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 States 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 a similar 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 a process 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 a weaker 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 a union 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. |
Back
to William Henry Harrison
Executive Oath of Office
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of
President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States."
United States Constitution, Article II,
Section 1, Clause 8
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Monroe, 6John Quincy Adams, 7Andrew Jackson, 8Martin
Van Buren,9William H Harrison,10John Tyler,11James K
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Pierce,15James Buchanan,16Abraham Lincoln, 17Andrew
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B Johnson, 37RichardN. Nixon, 38Gerald R Ford, 39James E
Carter,40Ronald
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HerbertW. Bush, 42Bill Clinton,
43George Walker Bush
last updated
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