Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/164

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

new the pledge of our devotion to the Constitu- tion, which, launched by the founders of the Republic and consecrated by their prayers and patriotic devotion, has for almost a century borne the hopes and the aspirations of a great people through prosperity and peace and through the shock of foreign conflicts and the perils of domestic strife and vicissitudes.

By the Father of his Country our Constitution was commended for adoption as "the result of a spirit of amity and mutual concession." In that same spirit it should be administered, in order to promote the lasting welfare of the coun- try and to secure the full measure of its price- less benefits to us and to those who will succeed to the blessings of our national life. The large variety of diverse and competing interests sub- ject to Federal control, persistently seeking the recognition of their claims, need give us no fear that *Hhe greatest good to the greatest num- ber" 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, com- pensation 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 ob-

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