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 to-day 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,