In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were
writing a new chapter in our book of self-government.

This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
Constitutional Convention which made us a nation. At that Convention
our forefathers found the way out of the chaos which followed the
Revolutionary War; they created a strong government with powers of
united action sufficient then and now to solve problems utterly beyond
individual or local solution. A century and a half ago they established
the Federal Government in order to promote the general welfare and
secure the blessings of liberty to the American people.

Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same
objectives.

Four years of new experience have not belied our historic instinct.
They hold out the clear hope that government within communities,
government within the separate States, and government of the United
States can do the things the times require, without yielding its
democracy. Our tasks in the last four years did not force democracy to
take a holiday.

Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships
increase, so power to govern them also must increase - power to stop
evil; power to do good. The essential democracy of our Nation and the
safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon
lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated
intervals through an honest and free system of elections. The
Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent.