Thomas Jefferson
Second Inaugural Address
Monday, March 4, 1805
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 the affairs of our
Commonwealth. My conscience tells me 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 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.
