struggles for freedom, our principles forbid us from taking any part
in such foreign contests. We make no wars to promote or to prevent
successions to thrones, to maintain any theory of a balance of power,
or to suppress the actual government which any country chooses to
establish for itself. We instigate no revolutions, nor suffer any
hostile military expeditions to be fitted out in the United States
to invade the territory or provinces of a friendly nation. The great
law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and
individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish
them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule
of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self-interest,
or the desire of aggrandizement. To maintain a strict neutrality in
foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every
noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously
every treaty obligation--these are the duties which we owe to other
states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to
like treatment from them; or, if that, in any case, be refused, we can
enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience.

In our domestic policy the Constitution will be my guide, and in
questions of doubt I shall look for its interpretation to the judicial
decisions of that tribunal which was established to expound it and to
the usage of the Government, sanctioned by the acquiescence of the
country. I regard all its provisions as equally binding. In all its
parts it is the will of the people expressed in the most solemn form,
and the constituted authorities are but agents to carry that will into
effect. Every power which it has granted is to be exercised for the
public good; but no pretense of utility, no honest conviction, even,
of what might be expedient, can justify the assumption of any power
not granted. The powers conferred upon the Government and their