From: [email protected] (Matt Fisher)
Subject: Jefferson's 2nd Inagural Address
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Matt Fisher)
Organization: "Intergraph Corp, Huntsville AL"
Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 14:43:31 GMT
Lines: 228

I just finished typing this in.  If you find any mistakes let me
know.  I thought Clinton was the first one to use the word
contribution for tax but Jefferson had him beat.  I also notice
Jefferson refered to people 'cheerfully' paying their taxes.
Unlike Clinton, Jefferson actually lowered taxes, abolished the
IRS of the day, reduced the debt, balanced the budget,
expanded the navy, expanded the terrirtory of the USA, and shrunk
to size of the federal government!  It looks like Clinton will
raise taxes, expand the IRS, do nothing about the deficit,
increase the debt, reduce the navy, increase the size of the
federal government.  I can't believe Clinton had the gall to
compare himself to Jefferson.



Matthew E Fisher
[email protected]
______________________________________________________________________________
When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I don't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I'm innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun.
Now they've taken the first amendment and I can't say anything at all.

For an online copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, email me.

Please do your country a favor, call the Libertarian Party  1-800-682-1776







Second Inaugural Address
March 4 1804
 Procceding, fellow citizens, to that qualification which the constitution
requires, before my entrance on the charge again conferred upon 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 the affairs of our commonwealth.  My
conscience tells me that I have, on every occasion, acted up 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
when the 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 taken 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 the
process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarely to be
restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property.  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
cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts,
being collected on our seaboards and frontiers only, and incorporated with the
transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and pride of an
American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer, ever sees a
tax-gather 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 debt, as places at a short day
their final redemption, and that redemption once effected, the revenue thereby
liberated may, by a just repartition 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 increased by 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 burdening then 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 repay the advances we have made. I know that the acquisition of Louisiana
has been disapproved by some, from a candid apprehension that the enlargement
of our territory would endanger it 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 shall 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 he 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 an discipline of state or church 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 reions directed itself on these shore;
without power to divert, or habits to contend against, 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,
prejudice 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 is seen the action and counteraction of good
sense and bigotry;  they, too, have their anti-philosophers, who find an
interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and
exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendency of habit over the duty of
improving our reason, and obeying its mandates.

 In giving the outline, 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 with me in the execute
functions.

 During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the
artillery of the press has been levelled 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 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 it constitution, with zeal and purity,
and doing no act which it would 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 have 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 served them, and consolatory to the friend of man, who believes he
may be intrusted with his own affairs.

 No inference is here intended, that the laws, provided by the State against
false and defamatory publications, should not be enforced;  he who has time,
renders a service to the 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 reasonings 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 piecing through the veil
drawn over them;  and our doubting brethren will at length see, that the mass of
their fellow citizens, with whom they cannot 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 maybe directed honestly
to the public good, that peace be cultivated, civil and religious liberty
unassailed, law and order preverved;  equality of rights maintained, and that
state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man form his own
industry, or that of his fathers.  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 the country, and will complete their 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 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
weakness of human nature, and the limits of my own understanding, will produce
errors of judgement sometimes injurious to your interest.  I shall need,
therefore, all the indulgence I have heretofore experienced-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 forefathers, as Israel of old,
from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the
neccessaries 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 with me in supplications, 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.

You are viewing proxied material from gopher.quux.org. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.