Speech Transcript:

Proceeding, fellow-citizens, to that qualification which the
Constitution requires before my entrance on the charge again
conferred on me, it is my duty to express the deep sense I entertain
of this new proof of confidence from my fellow-citizens at large, and
the zeal with which it inspires me so to conduct myself as may best
satisfy their just expectations.

On taking this station on a former occasion I declared the principles
on which I believed it my duty to administer Commonwealth. My
conscience tells me I have on every occasion acted up the affairs of
our to that declaration according to its obvious import and to the
understanding of every candid mind.

In the transaction of your foreign affairs we have endeavored to
cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially of those with
which we have the most important relations. We have done them justice
on all occasions, favored where favor was lawful, and cherished
mutual interests and intercourse on fair and equal terms. We are
firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as
with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found
inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the
fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had
to armaments and wars to bridle others.

At home, fellow-citizens, you best know whether we have done well or
ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless
establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal
taxes. These, covering our land with officers and opening our doors
to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary
vexation which once entered is scarcely to be restrained from
reaching successively every article of property and produce. If among
these taxes some minor ones fell which had not been inconvenient, it
was because their amount would not have paid the officers who
collected them, and because, if they had any merit, the State
authorities might adopt them instead of others less approved.

The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid
chiefly by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic
comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and
incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may
be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what
mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States?
These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the
Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish
the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits,
and to apply such a surplus to our public debts as places at a short
day their final redemption, and that redemption once effected the
revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition of it among the
States and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied
'in time of peace' to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures,
education, and other great objects within each State. 'In time of
war', if injustice by ourselves or others must sometimes produce war,
increased as the same revenue will be by increased population and
consumption, and aided by other resources reserved for that crisis,
it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without
encroaching on the rights of future generations by burthening them
with the debts of the past. War will then be but a suspension of
useful works, and a return to a state of peace, a return to the
progress of improvement.

I have said, fellow-citizens, that the income reserved had enabled us
to extend our limits, but that extension may possibly pay for itself
before we are called on, and in the meantime may keep down the
accruing interest; in all events, it will replace the advances we
shall have made. I know that the acquisition of Louisiana had been
disapproved by some from a candid apprehension that the enlargement
of our territory would endanger its union. But who can limit the
extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively? The
larger our association the less will it be shaken by local passions;
and in any view is it not better that the opposite bank of the
Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than
by strangers of another family? With which should we be most likely
to live in harmony and friendly intercourse?

In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is
placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General
Government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe
the religious exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the
Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of the
church or state authorities acknowledged by the several religious
societies.

The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded with
the commiseration their history inspires. Endowed with the faculties
and the rights of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and
independence, and occupying a country which left them no desire but
to be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing population from other
regions directed itself on these shores; without power to divert or
habits to contend against it, they have been overwhelmed by the
current or driven before it; now reduced within limits too narrow for
the hunter's state, humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and
the domestic arts; to encourage them to that industry which alone can
enable them to maintain their place in existence and to prepare them
in time for that state of society which to bodily comforts adds the
improvement of the mind and morals. We have therefore liberally
furnished them with the implements of husbandry and household use; we
have placed among them instructors in the arts of first necessity, and
they are covered with the aegis of the law against aggressors from
among ourselves.

But the endeavors to enlighten them on the fate which awaits their
present course of life, to induce them to exercise their reason,
follow its dictates, and change their pursuits with the change of
circumstances have powerful obstacles to encounter; they are combated
by the habits of their bodies, prejudices of their minds, ignorance,
pride, and the influence of interested and crafty individuals among
them who feel themselves something in the present order of things and
fear to become nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a
sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that
whatsoever they did must be done through all time; that reason is a
false guide, and to advance under its counsel in their physical,
moral, or political condition is perilous innovation; that their duty
is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety and
knowledge full of danger; in short, my friends, among them also is
seen the action and counteraction of good sense and of bigotry; they
too have their antiphilosophists who find an interest in keeping
things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all
their faculties to maintain the ascendancy of habit over the duty of
improving our reason and obeying its mandates.

In giving these outlines I do not mean, fellow-citizens, to arrogate
to myself the merit of the measures. That is due, in the first place,
to the reflecting character of our citizens at large, who, by the
weight of public opinion, influence and strengthen the public
measures. It is due to the sound discretion with which they select
from among themselves those to whom they confide the legislative
duties. It is due to the zeal and wisdom of the characters thus
selected, who lay the foundations of public happiness in wholesome
laws, the execution of which alone remains for others, and it is due
to the able and faithful auxiliaries, whose patriotism has associated
them with me in the executive functions.

During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the
artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with
whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of
an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be
regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap
its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome
punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several
States against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more
urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have
therefore been left to find their punishment in the public
indignation.

Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be
fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by
power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of
truth--whether a government conducting itself in the true spirit of
its constitution, with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it
would be unwilling the whole world should witness, can be written
down by falsehood and defamation. The experiment has been tried; you
have witnessed the scene; our fellow-citizens looked on, cool and
collected; they saw the latent source from which these outrages
proceeded; they gathered around their public functionaries, and when
the Constitution called them to the decision by suffrage, they
pronounced their verdict, honorable to those who had served them and
consolatory to the friend of man who believes that he may be trusted
with the control of his own affairs.

No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States
against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced; he
who has time renders a service to public morals and public
tranquillity in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of
the law; but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and
reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league
with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal
restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasoning and
opinions on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line
can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its
demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which
this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the
censorship of public opinion.

Contemplating the union of sentiment now manifested so generally as
auguring harmony and happiness to our future course, I offer to our
country sincere congratulations. With those, too, not yet rallied to
the same point the disposition to do so is gaining strength; facts
are piercing through the veil drawn over them, and our doubting
brethren will at length see that the mass of their fellow-citizens
with whom they can not yet resolve to act as to principles and
measures, think as they think and desire what they desire; that our
wish as well as theirs is that the public efforts may be directed
honestly to the public good, that peace be cultivated, civil and
religious liberty unassailed, law and order preserved, equality of
rights maintained, and that state of property, equal or unequal,
which results to every man from his own industry or that of his
father's. When satisfied of these views it is not in human nature
that they should not approve and support them. In the meantime let us
cherish them with patient affection, let us do them justice, and more
than justice, in all competitions of interest; and we need not doubt
that truth, reason, and their own interests will at length prevail,
will gather them into the fold of their country, and will complete
that entire union of opinion which gives to a nation the blessing of
harmony and the benefit of all its strength.

I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens have
again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those principles
which they have approved. I fear not that any motives of interest may
lead me astray; I am sensible of no passion which could seduce me
knowingly from the path of justice, but the weaknesses of human
nature and the limits of my own understanding will produce errors of
judgment sometimes injurious to your interests. I shall need,
therefore, all the indulgence which I have heretofore experienced
from my constituents; the want of it will certainly not lessen with
increasing years. I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose
hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native
land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries
and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence
and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I
ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the
minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their
measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall
secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.