Speech Transcript:

Fellow-Citizens:

In the presence of this vast assemblage of my countrymen I am about
to supplement and seal by the oath which I shall take the
manifestation of the will of a great and free people. In the exercise
of their power and right of self-government they have committed to one
of their fellow-citizens a supreme and sacred trust, and he here
consecrates himself to their service.

This impressive ceremony adds little to the solemn sense of
responsibility with which I contemplate the duty I owe to all the
people of the land. Nothing can relieve me from anxiety lest by any
act of mine their interests may suffer, and nothing is needed to
strengthen my resolution to engage every faculty and effort in the
promotion of their welfare.

Amid the din of party strife the people's choice was made, but its
attendant circumstances have demonstrated anew the strength and
safety of a government by the people. In each succeeding year it more
clearly appears that our democratic principle needs no apology, and
that in its fearless and faithful application is to be found the
surest guaranty of good government.

But the best results in the operation of a government wherein every
citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper limitation of purely
partisan zeal and effort and a correct appreciation of the time when
the heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the
citizen.

To-day the executive branch of the Government is transferred to new
keeping. But this is still the Government of all the people, and it
should be none the less an object of their affectionate solicitude.
At this hour the animosities of political strife, the bitterness of
partisan defeat, and the exultation of partisan triumph should be
supplanted by an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will and a
sober, conscientious concern for the general weal. Moreover, if from
this hour we cheerfully and honestly abandon all sectional prejudice
and distrust, and determine, with manly confidence in one another, to
work out harmoniously the achievements of our national destiny, we
shall deserve to realize all the benefits which our happy form of
government can bestow.

On this auspicious occasion we may well renew the pledge of our
devotion to the Constitution, which, launched by the founders of the
Republic and consecrated by their prayers and patriotic devotion, has
for almost a century borne the hopes and the aspirations of a great
people through prosperity and peace and through the shock of foreign
conflicts and the perils of domestic strife and vicissitudes.

By the Father of his Country our Constitution was commended for
adoption as "the result of a spirit of amity and mutual concession."
In that same spirit it should be administered, in order to promote
the lasting welfare of the country and to secure the full measure of
its priceless benefits to us and to those who will succeed to the
blessings of our national life. The large variety of diverse and
competing interests subject to Federal control, persistently seeking
the recognition of their claims, need give us no fear that "the
greatest good to the greatest number" will fail to be accomplished if
in the halls of national legislation that spirit of amity and mutual
concession shall prevail in which the Constitution had its birth. If
this involves the surrender or postponement of private interests and
the abandonment of local advantages, compensation will be found in
the assurance that the common interest is subserved and the general
welfare advanced.

In the discharge of my official duty I shall endeavor to be guided by
a just and unstrained construction of the Constitution, a careful
observance of the distinction between the powers granted to the
Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people,
and by a cautious appreciation of those functions which by the
Constitution and laws have been especially assigned to the executive
branch of the Government.

But he who takes the oath today to preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States only assumes the solemn obligation
which every patriotic citizen--on the farm, in the workshop, in the
busy marts of trade, and everywhere--should share with him. The
Constitution which prescribes his oath, my countrymen, is yours; the
Government you have chosen him to administer for a time is yours; the
suffrage which executes the will of freemen is yours; the laws and the
entire scheme of our civil rule, from the town meeting to the State
capitals and the national capital, is yours. Your every voter, as
surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction, though
in a different sphere, exercises a public trust. Nor is this all.
Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny
of its public servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their
fidelity and usefulness. Thus is the people's will impressed upon the
whole framework of our civil polity--municipal, State, and Federal;
and this is the price of our liberty and the inspiration of our faith
in the Republic.

It is the duty of those serving the people in public place to closely
limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the Government
economically administered, because this bounds the right of the
Government to exact tribute from the earnings of labor or the
property of the citizen, and because public extravagance begets
extravagance among the people. We should never be ashamed of the
simplicity and prudential economies which are best suited to the
operation of a republican form of government and most compatible with
the mission of the American people. Those who are selected for a
limited time to manage public affairs are still of the people, and
may do much by their example to encourage, consistently with the
dignity of their official functions, that plain way of life which
among their fellow-citizens aids integrity and promotes thrift and
prosperity.

The genius of our institutions, the needs of our people in their home
life, and the attention which is demanded for the settlement and
development of the resources of our vast territory dictate the
scrupulous avoidance of any departure from that foreign policy
commended by the history, the traditions, and the prosperity of our
Republic. It is the policy of independence, favored by our position
and defended by our known love of justice and by our power. It is the
policy of peace suitable to our interests. It is the policy of
neutrality, rejecting any share in foreign broils and ambitions upon
other continents and repelling their intrusion here. It is the policy
of Monroe and of Washington and Jefferson--"Peace, commerce, and
honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliance with none."

A due regard for the interests and prosperity of all the people
demands that our finances shall be established upon such a sound and
sensible basis as shall secure the safety and confidence of business
interests and make the wage of labor sure and steady, and that our
system of revenue shall be so adjusted as to relieve the people of
unnecessary taxation, having a due regard to the interests of capital
invested and workingmen employed in American industries, and
preventing the accumulation of a surplus in the Treasury to tempt
extravagance and waste.

Care for the property of the nation and for the needs of future
settlers requires that the public domain should be protected from
purloining schemes and unlawful occupation.

The conscience of the people demands that the Indians within our
boundaries shall be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the
Government and their education and civilization promoted with a view
to their ultimate citizenship, and that polygamy in the Territories,
destructive of the family relation and offensive to the moral sense
of the civilized world, shall be repressed.

The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of
a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of
acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits
and customs repugnant to our civilization.

The people demand reform in the administration of the Government and
the application of business principles to public affairs. As a means
to this end, civil-service reform should be in good faith enforced.
Our citizens have the right to protection from the incompetency of
public employees who hold their places solely as the reward of
partisan service, and from the corrupting influence of those who
promise and the vicious methods of those who expect such rewards; and
those who worthily seek public employment have the right to insist
that merit and competency shall be recognized instead of party
subserviency or the surrender of honest political belief.

In the administration of a government pledged to do equal and exact
justice to all men there should be no pretext for anxiety touching
the protection of the freedmen in their rights or their security in
the enjoyment of their privileges under the Constitution and its
amendments. All discussion as to their fitness for the place accorded
to them as American citizens is idle and unprofitable except as it
suggests the necessity for their improvement. The fact that they are
citizens entitles them to all the rights due to that relation and
charges them with all its duties, obligations, and responsibilities.

These topics and the constant and ever-varying wants of an active and
enterprising population may well receive the attention and the
patriotic endeavor of all who make and execute the Federal law. Our
duties are practical and call for industrious application, an
intelligent perception of the claims of public office, and, above
all, a firm determination, by united action, to secure to all the
people of the land the full benefits of the best form of government
ever vouchsafed to man. And let us not trust to human effort alone,
but humbly acknowledging the power and goodness of Almighty God, who
presides over the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been
revealed in our country's history, let us invoke His aid and His
blessings upon our labors.