relations between the two countries, which in the course of the last
summer had been commenced at Paris, has since been transferred to this
city, and will be pursued on the part of the United States in the
spirit of conciliation, and with an earnest desire that it may
terminate in an arrangement satisfactory to both parties.
Our relations with the Barbary Powers are preserved in the same state
and by the same means that were employed when I came into this office.
As early as 1801 it was found necessary to send a squadron into the
Mediterranean for the protection of our commerce, and no period has
intervened, a short term excepted, when it was thought advisable to
withdraw it. The great interests which the United States have in the
Pacific, in commerce and in the fisheries, have also made it necessary
to maintain a naval force there. In disposing of this force in both
instances the most effectual measures in our power have been taken,
without interfering with its other duties, for the suppression of the
slave trade and of piracy in the neighboring seas.
The situation of the United States in regard to their resources, the
extent of their revenue, and the facility with which it is raised
affords a most gratifying spectacle. The payment of nearly $67,000,000
of the public debt, with the great progress made in measures of defense
and in other improvements of various kinds since the late war, are
conclusive proofs of this extraordinary prosperity, especially when it
is recollected that these expenditures have been defrayed without a
burthen on the people, the direct tax and excise having been repealed
soon after the conclusion of the late war, and the revenue applied to
these great objects having been raised in a manner not to be felt. Our
great resources therefore remain untouched for any purpose which may
affect the vital interests of the nation. For all such purposes they
are inexhaustible. They are more especially to be found in the virtue,
patriotism, and intelligence of our fellow-citizens, and in the
devotion with which they would yield up by any just measure of taxation
all their property in support of the rights and honor of their country.
Under the present depression of prices, affecting all the productions
of the country and every branch of industry, proceeding from causes
explained on a former occasion, the revenue has considerably
diminished, the effect of which has been to compel Congress either to
abandon these great measures of defense or to resort to loans or
internal taxes to supply the deficiency. On the presumption that this
depression and the deficiency in the revenue arising from it would be
temporary, loans were authorized for the demands of the last and
present year. Anxious to relieve my fellow-citizens in 1817 from every
burthen which could be dispensed with, and the state of the Treasury
permitting it, I recommended the repeal of the internal taxes, knowing
that such relief was then peculiarly necessary in consequence of the
great exertions made in the late war. I made that recommendation under
a pledge that should the public exigencies require a recurrence to them
at any time while I remained in this trust, I would with equal
promptitude perform the duty which would then be alike incumbent on me.
By the experiment now making it will be seen by the next session of
Congress whether the revenue shall have been so augmented as to be
adequate to all these necessary purposes. Should the deficiency still
continue, and especially should it be probable that it would be
permanent, the course to be pursued appears to me to be obvious. I am
satisfied that under certain circumstances loans may be resorted to
with great advantage. I am equally well satisfied, as a general rule,
that the demands of the current year, especially in time of peace,
should be provided for by the revenue of that year.
I have never dreaded, nor have I ever shunned, in any situation in
which I have been placed making appeals to the virtue and patriotism of
my fellow-citizens, well knowing that they could never be made in vain,
especially in times of great emergency or for purposes of high national
importance. Independently of the exigency of the case, many
considerations of great weight urge a policy having in view a provision
of revenue to meet to a certain extent the demands of the nation,
without relying altogether on the precarious resource of foreign
commerce. I am satisfied that internal duties and excises, with
corresponding imposts on foreign articles of the same kind, would,
without imposing any serious burdens on the people, enhance the price
of produce, promote our manufactures, and augment the revenue, at the
same time that they made it more secure and permanent.
The care of the Indian tribes within our limits has long been an
essential part of our system, but, unfortunately, it has not been
executed in a manner to accomplish all the objects intended by it. We
have treated them as independent nations, without their having any
substantial pretensions to that rank. The distinction has flattered
their pride, retarded their improvement, and in many instances paved
the way to their destruction. The progress of our settlements westward,
supported as they are by a dense population, has constantly driven them
back, with almost the total sacrifice of the lands which they have been
compelled to abandon. They have claims on the magnanimity and, I may
add, on the justice of this nation which we must all feel. We should
become their real benefactors; we should perform the office of their
Great Father, the endearing title which they emphatically give to the
Chief Magistrate of our Union. Their sovereignty over vast territories
should cease, in lieu of which the right of soil should be secured to
each individual and his posterity in competent portions; and for the
territory thus ceded by each tribe some reasonable equivalent should be
granted, to be vested in permanent funds for the support of civil
government over them and for the education of their children, for their
instruction in the arts of husbandry, and to provide sustenance for
them until they could provide it for themselves. My earnest hope is
that Congress will digest some plan, founded on these principles, with
such improvements as their wisdom may suggest, and carry it into effect
as soon as it may be practicable.
Europe is again unsettled and the prospect of war increasing. Should
the flame light up in any quarter, how far it may extend it is
impossible to foresee. It is our peculiar felicity to be altogether
unconnected with the causes which produce this menacing aspect
elsewhere. With every power we are in perfect amity, and it is our
interest to remain so if it be practicable on just conditions. I see no
reasonable cause to apprehend variance with any power, unless it
proceed from a violation of our maritime rights. In these contests,
should they occur, and to whatever extent they may be carried, we shall
be neutral; but as a neutral power we have rights which it is our duty
to maintain. For like injuries it will be incumbent on us to seek
redress in a spirit of amity, in full confidence that, injuring none,
none would knowingly injure us. For more imminent dangers we should be
prepared, and it should always be recollected that such preparation
adapted to the circumstances and sanctioned by the judgment and wishes
of our constituents can not fail to have a good effect in averting
dangers of every kind. We should recollect also that the season of
peace is best adapted to these preparations.
If we turn our attention, fellow-citizens, more immediately to the
internal concerns of our country, and more especially to those on which
its future welfare depends, we have every reason to anticipate the
happiest results. It is now rather more than forty-four years since we
declared our independence, and thirty-seven since it was acknowledged.
The talents and virtues which were displayed in that great struggle
were a sure presage of all that has since followed. A people who were
able to surmount in their infant state such great perils would be more
competent as they rose into manhood to repel any which they might meet
in their progress. Their physical strength would be more adequate to
foreign danger, and the practice of self-government, aided by the light
of experience, could not fail to produce an effect equally salutary on
all those questions connected with the internal organization. These
favorable anticipations have been realized.
In our whole system, national and State, we have shunned all the
defects which unceasingly preyed on the vitals and destroyed the
ancient Republics. In them there were distinct orders, a nobility and a
people, or the people governed in one assembly. Thus, in the one
instance there was a perpetual conflict between the orders in society
for the ascendency, in which the victory of either terminated in the
overthrow of the government and the ruin of the state; in the other, in
which the people governed in a body, and whose dominions seldom
exceeded the dimensions of a county in one of our States, a tumultuous
and disorderly movement permitted only a transitory existence. In this
great nation there is but one order, that of the people, whose power,
by a peculiarly happy improvement of the representative principle, is
transferred from them, without impairing in the slightest degree their
sovereignty, to bodies of their own creation, and to persons elected by
themselves, in the full extent necessary for all the purposes of free,
enlightened and efficient government. The whole system is elective, the
complete sovereignty being in the people, and every officer in every
department deriving his authority from and being responsible to them
for his conduct.
Our career has corresponded with this great outline. Perfection in our
organization could not have been expected in the outset either in the
National or State Governments or in tracing the line between their
respective powers. But no serious conflict has arisen, nor any contest
but such as are managed by argument and by a fair appeal to the good
sense of the people, and many of the defects which experience had
clearly demonstrated in both Governments have been remedied. By
steadily pursuing this course in this spirit there is every reason to
believe that our system will soon attain the highest degree of
perfection of which human institutions are capable, and that the
movement in all its branches will exhibit such a degree of order and
harmony as to command the admiration and respect of the civilized world.
Our physical attainments have not been less eminent. Twenty-five years
ago the river Mississippi was shut up and our Western brethren had no
outlet for their commerce. What has been the progress since that time?
The river has not only become the property of the United States from
its source to the ocean, with all its tributary streams (with the
exception of the upper part of the Red River only), but Louisiana, with
a fair and liberal boundary on the western side and the Floridas on the
eastern, have been ceded to us. The United States now enjoy the
complete and uninterrupted sovereignty over the whole territory from
St. Croix to the Sabine. New States, settled from among ourselves in
this and in other parts, have been admitted into our Union in equal
participation in the national sovereignty with the original States. Our
population has augmented in an astonishing degree and extended in every
direction. We now, fellow-citizens, comprise within our limits the
dimensions and faculties of a great power under a Government possessing
all the energies of any government ever known to the Old World, with an
utter incapacity to oppress the people.
Entering with these views the office which I have just solemnly sworn
to execute with fidelity and to the utmost of my ability, I derive
great satisfaction from a knowledge that I shall be assisted in the
several Departments by the very enlightened and upright citizens from
whom I have received so much aid in the preceding term. With full
confidence in the continuance of that candor and generous indulgence
from my fellow-citizens at large which I have heretofore experienced,
and with a firm reliance on the protection of Almighty God, I shall
forthwith commence the duties of the high trust to which you have
called me.
***
John Quincy Adams
Inaugural Address
Friday, March 4, 1825
IN compliance with an usage coeval with the existence of our Federal
Constitution, and sanctioned by the example of my predecessors in the
career upon which I am about to enter, I appear, my fellow-citizens, in
your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities
of religious obligation to the faithful performance of the duties
allotted to me in the station to which I have been called.
In unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall be
governed in the fulfillment of those duties my first resort will be to
that Constitution which I shall swear to the best of my ability to
preserve, protect, and defend. That revered instrument enumerates the
powers and prescribes the duties of the Executive Magistrate, and in
its first words declares the purposes to which these and the whole
action of the Government instituted by it should be invariably and
sacredly devoted - to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to the people
of this Union in their successive generations. Since the adoption of
this social compact one of these generations has passed away. It is the
work of our forefathers. Administered by some of the most eminent men
who contributed to its formation, through a most eventful period in the
annals of the world, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war
incidental to the condition of associated man, it has not disappointed
the hopes and aspirations of those illustrious benefactors of their age
and nation. It has promoted the lasting welfare of that country so dear
to us all; it has to an extent far beyond the ordinary lot of humanity
secured the freedom and happiness of this people. We now receive it as
a precious inheritance from those to whom we are indebted for its
establishment, doubly bound by the examples which they have left us and
by the blessings which we have enjoyed as the fruits of their labors to
transmit the same unimpaired to the succeeding generation.
In the compass of thirty-six years since this great national covenant
was instituted a body of laws enacted under its authority and in
conformity with its provisions has unfolded its powers and carried into
practical operation its effective energies. Subordinate departments
have distributed the executive functions in their various relations to
foreign affairs, to the revenue and expenditures, and to the military
force of the Union by land and sea. A coordinate department of the
judiciary has expounded the Constitution and the laws, settling in
harmonious coincidence with the legislative will numerous weighty
questions of construction which the imperfection of human language had
rendered unavoidable. The year of jubilee since the first formation of
our Union has just elapsed; that of the declaration of our independence
is at hand. The consummation of both was effected by this Constitution.
Since that period a population of four millions has multiplied to
twelve. A territory bounded by the Mississippi has been extended from
sea to sea. New States have been admitted to the Union in numbers
nearly equal to those of the first Confederation. Treaties of peace,
amity, and commerce have been concluded with the principal dominions of
the earth. The people of other nations, inhabitants of regions acquired
not by conquest, but by compact, have been united with us in the
participation of our rights and duties, of our burdens and blessings.
The forest has fallen by the ax of our woodsmen; the soil has been made
to teem by the tillage of our farmers; our commerce has whitened every
ocean. The dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by
the invention of our artists. Liberty and law have marched hand in
hand. All the purposes of human association have been accomplished as
effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at a cost
little exceeding in a whole generation the expenditure of other nations
in a single year.
Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a Constitution
founded upon the republican principle of equal rights. To admit that
this picture has its shades is but to say that it is still the
condition of men upon earth. From evil - physical, moral, and political
- it is not our claim to be exempt. We have suffered sometimes by the
visitation of Heaven through disease; often by the wrongs and injustice
of other nations, even to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by
dissensions among ourselves - dissensions perhaps inseparable from the
enjoyment of freedom, but which have more than once appeared to
threaten the dissolution of the Union, and with it the overthrow of all
the enjoyments of our present lot and all our earthly hopes of the
future. The causes of these dissensions have been various, founded upon
differences of speculation in the theory of republican government; upon
conflicting views of policy in our relations with foreign nations; upon
jealousies of partial and sectional interests, aggravated by prejudices
and prepossessions which strangers to each other are ever apt to
entertain.
It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe
that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human
rights has at the close of that generation by which it was formed been
crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its
founders. Union, justice, tranquillity, the common defense, the general
welfare, and the blessings of liberty - all have been promoted by the
Government under which we have lived. Standing at this point of time,
looking back to that generation which has gone by and forward to that
which is advancing, we may at once indulge in grateful exultation and
in cheering hope. From the experience of the past we derive instructive
lessons for the future. Of the two great political parties which have
divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the
just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents,
spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to
the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have
required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and
error. The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the
moment when the Government of the United States first went into
operation under this Constitution, excited a collision of sentiments
and of sympathies which kindled all the passions and imbittered the
conflict of parties till the nation was involved in war and the Union
was shaken to its center. This time of trial embraced a period of five
and twenty years, during which the policy of the Union in its relations
with Europe constituted the principal basis of our political divisions
and the most arduous part of the action of our Federal Government. With
the catastrophe in which the wars of the French Revolution terminated,
and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of
party strife was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle,
connected either with the theory of government or with our intercourse
with foreign nations, has existed or been called forth in force
sufficient to sustain a continued combination of parties or to give
more than wholesome animation to public sentiment or legislative
debate. Our political creed is, without a dissenting voice that can be
heard, that the will of the people is the source and the happiness of
the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth; that the
best security for the beneficence and the best guaranty against the
abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency
of popular elections; that the General Government of the Union and the
separate governments of the States are all sovereignties of limited
powers, fellow-servants of the same masters, uncontrolled within their
respective spheres, uncontrollable by encroachments upon each other;
that the firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of
the defenses of war; that a rigorous economy and accountability of
public expenditures should guard against the aggravation and alleviate
when possible the burden of taxation; that the military should be kept
in strict subordination to the civil power; that the freedom of the
press and of religious opinion should be inviolate; that the policy of
our country is peace and the ark of our salvation union are articles of
faith upon which we are all now agreed. If there have been those who
doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a
government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common
concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled; if there
have been projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the
ruins of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds; if there
have been dangerous attachments to one foreign nation and antipathies
against another, they have been extinguished. Ten years of peace, at
home and abroad, have assuaged the animosities of political contention
and blended into harmony the most discordant elements of public
opinion. There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice
of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the
nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political party.
It is that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other, of
embracing as countrymen and friends, and of yielding to talents and
virtue alone that confidence which in times of contention for principle
was bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.
The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative opinions
or in different views of administrative policy are in their nature
transitory. Those which are founded on geographical divisions, adverse
interests of soil, climate, and modes of domestic life are more
permanent, and therefore, perhaps, more dangerous. It is this which
gives inestimable value to the character of our Government, at once
federal and national. It holds out to us a perpetual admonition to
preserve alike and with equal anxiety the rights of each individual
State in its own government and the rights of the whole nation in that
of the Union. Whatsoever is of domestic concernment, unconnected with
the other members of the Union or with foreign lands, belongs
exclusively to the administration of the State governments. Whatsoever
directly involves the rights and interests of the federative fraternity
or of foreign powers is of the resort of this General Government. The
duties of both are obvious in the general principle, though sometimes
perplexed with difficulties in the detail. To respect the rights of the
State governments is the inviolable duty of that of the Union; the
government of every State will feel its own obligation to respect and
preserve the rights of the whole. The prejudices everywhere too
commonly entertained against distant strangers are worn away, and the
jealousies of jarring interests are allayed by the composition and
functions of the great national councils annually assembled from all
quarters of the Union at this place. Here the distinguished men from
every section of our country, while meeting to deliberate upon the
great interests of those by whom they are deputed, learn to estimate
the talents and do justice to the virtues of each other. The harmony of
the nation is promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the
sentiments of mutual respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the
ties of personal friendship formed between the representatives of its
several parts in the performance of their service at this metropolis.
Passing from this general review of the purposes and injunctions of the
Federal Constitution and their results as indicating the first traces
of the path of duty in the discharge of my public trust, I turn to the
Administration of my immediate predecessor as the second. It has passed
away in a period of profound peace, how much to the satisfaction of our
country and to the honor of our country's name is known to you all. The