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The Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress October 19 1765. The members of this Congress, sincerely devoted, with the warmest sentiments of affection and duty to His Majesty's Person and Government, inviolably attached to the present happy establishment of the Protestant succession, and with minds deeply impressed by a sense of the present and impending misfortunes of the British colonies on this continent; having considered as maturely as time will permit the circumstances of the said colonies, esteem it our indispensable duty to make the following declarations of our humble opinion, respecting the most essential rights and liberties Of the colonists, and of the grievances under which they labour, by reason of several late Acts of Parliament. That His Majesty's subjects in these colonies, owe the same allegiance to the Crown of Great-Britain, that is owing from his subjects born within the realm, and all due subordination to that august body the Parliament of Great Britain. That His Majesty's liege subjects in these colonies, are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great-Britain. That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives. That the people of these colonies are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great-Britain. That the only representatives of the people of these colonies, are persons chosen therein by themselves, and that no taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures. That all supplies to the Crown, being free gifts of the people, it is unreasonable and inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the British Constitution, for the people of Great-Britain to grant to His Majesty the property of the colonists. That trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies. That the late Act of Parliament, entitled, An Act for granting and applying certain Stamp Duties, and other Duties, in the British colonies and plantations in America, etc., by imposing taxes on the inhabitants of these colonies, and the said Act, and several other Acts, by extending the jurisdiction of the courts of Admiralty beyond its ancient limits, have a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists. That the duties imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, from the peculiar circumstances of these colonies, will be extremely burthensome and grievous; and from the scarcity of specie, the payment of them absolutely impracticable. That as the profits of the trade of these colonies ultimately center in Great-Britain, to pay for the manufactures which they are obliged to take from thence, they eventually contribute very largely to all supplies granted there to the Crown. That the restrictions imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, on the trade of these colonies, will render them unable to purchase the manufactures of Great-Britain. That the increase, prosperity, and happiness of these colonies, depend on the full and free enjoyment of their rights and liberties, and an intercourse with Great-Britain mutually affectionate and advantageous. That it is the right of the British subjects in these colonies, to petition the King, Or either House of Parliament. Lastly, That it is the indispensable duty of these colonies, to the best of sovereigns, to the mother country, and to themselves, to endeavour by a loyal and dutiful address to his Majesty, and humble applications to both Houses of Parliament, to procure the repeal of the Act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, of all clauses of any other Acts of Parliament, whereby the jurisdiction of the Admiralty is extended as aforesaid, and of the other late Acts for the restriction of American commerce. Text Source: http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1751-1775/the-resolutions-of-the-stamp-act-congress-october-19-1765.php Image Source: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/no-taxation-without-representation.html

A Brief State of the Claim of the Colonies and the Interest of the Nation with Respect to Them By Thomas Hutchinson [11–23 July 1764] Sir, The Oftner I read your remarks upon the rights of the Colonists & the late proceedings in parliament with respect to them the more I am pleased with your Candor as well as good Sense and if I carry some points a little further in their favour than you do perhaps it is owing to an insensible bias which I am under from being a Colonist myself. Before I enter upon the Subject give me leave to observe to you that the Colonists like all the rest of his Majesties subjects ^the human race^ are of different Spirits & dispositions some more calm & moderate others more violent & extravagant, and if now & then some rude & indecent things are thrown out in print in one place & another I hope such things will not be considered as coming from the Colonists in general but from particular persons warmed by the ^intemperate^ zeal shall I say of Englishmen in support of what upon a sudden appears to them to be their rights. I intirely agree with you & I think the body of the people in the several Colonies do so likewise. That it is reasonable British Colonies should ever remain subject to the controul of Britain & consequently must be bound by the determinations of the supreme authority there the British parliament. You allow that it is possible for such a parliament to pass Acts which may abridge British Subjects of what are generally called natural rights and I am willing to go farther & will suppose that in some cases it is reasonable & necessary even though such rights should have been strengthned & confirmed by the most solemn Sanctions & engagements. The rights of parts & individuals must be given up when the safety of the whole ^shall^ depen[d upon] it. If the Kentish privileges of Gavelkind shall be found prejudicial to th[e pub]lick the parliament may very justly take them away and shall I go too far [if I all]ow that even the Charter of London may be vacated or which is ^supposed to be^ still far[ther] that any Article of the union with Scotland may be repealed not for sm[all re]asons but for the sake of the publick safety. On the other hand such is the [wis]dom & justice of a British Parliament that in all Acts a tender rega[rd w]ill be had to all rights natural & acquired of every Subject. Now I sub[mit i]t to your Consideration whether the Case of the Colonists is not somewh[at sim]ilar to that of the Inhabitants of Scotland. The Scotch would not agr[ee to] the Union without certain Stipulations one of which was that they [shou]ld be taxed ever after in such manner & such proportion as was agree[d and n]o other; the Colonists would not leave their native Country unt[il it] was stipulated & agreed either by Charter or Commissions for I consi[der] them both as a perpetual rule of Government for the respective Colo[nie]s that they should have Assemblies of their own chusing to ma[ke] laws for their government to raise monies by taxes &c besides this [gen]eral Clause in all Charters &Commissions that the Inhabitants should enjoy all the privileges ^&^ immunities of free & natural Subjects. I do not say that the proportion of Taxes which Scotland shall pay shall never be altered, nor that the parliament shall never tax the ^Inhabitants of the^ Colonies but I think they never will do the one or the other without some manifest special Reason which did not subsist nor was foreseen at the time of the respective Stipulations. If it should occurr to you that the agreement with Scotland was by the parliament that with the Colonists by the prince only I have no idea of an Act of parliament which it will not be in the power of a subsequent parliament to alter or repeal & if the agreement made by the prince was no more than what he had a right to make the parliament will always be equally tender of violating such agreement as they would the Acts of any former parliaments. Now I conceive these engagements made by the Prince were no more than what by his prerogative as it was then understood he had good right to make & that the Subject has just the same security from it as he would have from an Act of parlt. The right to new acquired Countreys according to the Constitution of England two hundred years ago for the Constitution alters, ^I take it^ was allowed to be in the Crown, & how far can that proof be ^If it should be said that this^ is a Subject perhaps ^which^ has never been fully discussed & I am not anxious ^do not know^ that it ever should be ^has been however^ it seems enough for my purpose that the Crown from time to time disposed of these Countries not only to their own Subjects but to foreign princes particularly Acadie & Nova Scotia began to be settled by British Subjects were ceded to France although France had no better claim to them than to New England, & Surinam was sold to or exchanged with the Dutch. The agreements made with the Subjects who went into the Colonies were known to all the world, the parliament from time to time instead of discouraging have shewn all countenance to the proceeding & at the Revolution the House of Commons resolved that the prosecution of quo warrantos against the Colonies & the surrender of their Charters to the violation of their ancient Rights & Privileges grievances. Will it not be then accounted an unfair proceeding with the Colonists after above an hundred years more than tacit approbation of such Contracts to call in question the right of the Crown to make itself a party to them—Let us then consider what this Privilege is which the Colonists claim & how far it is reasonable it should be continued to them. They claim a power of making Law & a privilege of exemption from taxes except by their own Representatives. This power & privilege they say is granted in express Terms in the Commissions & Charters & it is implied in the general term the privileges of natural born English Subjects. Here I readily acknowledge that in the very nature of a Colony they are ^it is^ to remain the Appendage of the Mother State, any Laws therefore of the Colonies that should ^may^ have a tendency to break off this Connection it cannot be supposed should have any force, but it is highly reasonable that by the Laws of the mother Country a restraint should be laid as from time to time shall be necessary, nor it cannot besupposed that a Colony should be tolerated either in any branch of Trade or in any other matter or thing which shall cause advantage to a foreign State & prejudice to the mother Country & although this restraint deprives them of privileges which their fellow Subjects in the mother Country enjoy yet as you very justly observe it is no more than is reasonable to part with in return for the protection received against foreign Enemies. I am therefore far from imagining the Colonists to be independent of the parliament but I consider the parliament as suspending the exercise of certain powers over the Colonists which would ha[ve] been in constant exercise if they had remained in the mother Count[ry.] I am mistaken if Rome did not treat her Colonies in this manner. You know the Territories dependent on ancient Rome were distinguished by Provinciæ Municipiæ & Coloniæ. The first being conquered Countries were subject to such Magistrates & such Regulations as the Senate thought fit to appoint & determine. Such were Sicily Sardinia &c. From these whilst the Lands were suffered to remain to the Conquered arose the vestigalia the Genus of which there were many Species as Stipendium Tribatum Decuma, Scriptura Portorium &c. The Municipiæ are said to be Cities not originally part of the Roman State but such as had voluntarily or otherwise been annexed to it & were allowed to use their old form of Magistracy & to be governed by their own Laws unless the Inhabitants were admitted to a Suffrage at Rome & then they were obliged wholly to submit to Roman Laws & renounce their own. The Coloniæ which are to my purpose were formed out of Roman Citizens or inhabitants of Latium & led forth to take possession of & inhabit Countries acquired by the Roman People & one reason given for settling Colonies was to increase the Roman [ blank space in MS ]. Those that were not too remote from the City retained the Privileges of Citizens to all intents & purposes. Cicero was a native of Appinium & that part of Gaul had a voice in Elections appears from one of his Epistles to Atticus Quoniam videtur in Suffragiis multum posse Gallia. The distant Colonies could not exercise the Privileges of Citizens in Rome. They were therefore allowed them within themselves, they retained the same form of Government a Colony was called the Effigies Parva of the mother State. The Duumviratus was a magistracy with much the same power as that of the Consuls or perhaps with both Consular & prætorian power for it is said Prætors are not mentioned by ancient Authors among Colony Officers. The Decuriones were the Senators & every Colony had an Assembly of the people. They had Censors Ædiles & Questors of their own electing. Indeed When Cæsar deprived Rome itself of her Liberties no wonder he did her Colonies also. I remember mention of his appointing an Officer in one of the Colonies, somewhere in Ciceros Epistles. Not only the Coloniæ when first planted but also the provinciæ when changed into Coloniæ as was sometimes the case were freed from the vestigal of every sort. The Campanian fields paid large tribute to Rome and Rullus attempted a popular measure to turn them into a Colony but was prevented by Cicero. A passage in his Oration against Rullus setts this matter in aclear light. I know Plutarch says that before the time of the Grachi the Colonies contributed to the support of the State & that Livius Drusus a Tribune of the people decreed the planting twelve Colonies to consist of 3000 ^men^ to be free from all payments, & that this was contrary to what before had been the practice, and this seems to have been reasonable in the early days of Rome when the inhabitants of the Colonies retained all the Privileges of Citizens not being remote from the City. By the removal of their Persons & Estates there was a deficiency in the census & yet they received protection in common with the Inhabitants of Rome. The deficiency therefore was made good by a pension from the Colony to which they removed; but all Authors agree that in after times when Colonies were sent to a greater distance and supported a magistracy & government within themselves they were free from every kind of tribute. It can be to no purpose to mention the modern Colonies. The French Spaniards & Danes are content with their Chains they use to wear them at home & are not intitled to greater privileges abroad. The Dutch & Genoese some may say are free States & yet they govern their Colonies as arbitrarily as the French or Spaniards. The Subjects of the States in Europe under the name of a Commonwealth & of Genoa under that of an Aristocracy are perhaps as great Slaves as those of France or Spain. If I must have an absolute master I had rather have but one especially if he be a wise one than a great number. A Dutchman therefore is as content to have his Life & Liberty at the mercy of a Governor at Surinam or Curasoe as of Deputies & Burg[o]masters in Holland for he has no more concern in the Election or rem[ova]l of one than of the other. The Inhabitants of Britain only are free in Europe & the Inhabitants of Bri[tish] Colonies only feel the loss of freedom, they feel it the more sensibly because they never expected it they thought it doubly secured as their natural rights & by virtue of the most solemn engagements. I will only add that it does not seem to be an unreasonable proposition, that the inhabitants of Colony are intitled to all the privileges they enjoyed in their mother Country which will consist with their dependance upon it. I expect you are ready to ask me what I am afraid of. The Parliament you will say as I acknowledge have a right to regulate & restrain the trade of the Colonies & even absolutely to prohibit certain branches by laing Duties then surely you have less reason to complain than if you were altogether restrained from trading in such Articles upon which the Duties are laid. When the Parliament touches your interior parts by excises Stamp Duties poll taxes & it may be quitrents you will have some reason to complain. I cannot help wondering at this distinction which I have often heard made by men every way superior to myself. Is it for the sake of regulating trade or to raise money from the Colonies that the Duties are laid by the late Act of Parliament? If the former why should not the money arising by such duties be paid into the Treasuries of the Colonies respectively where it is raised rather than into the Exchequer besides what need was there of any Regulation of the Trade to Madera or the Western Islands? It must therefore be for the sake of the money arising from the Duties &if so how are the privileges of the people less affected than by an internal tax. Is it any difference to me whether I pay three pounds ten shillings duty for a pipe of wine to an officer of Impost or whether I pay the same Sum by an excise of ninepence per Gall to an excise Officer or would an old Roman have thought his Privileges less affected by the Portorium than by the Stipendium or Decumæ. However if there appears to the parliament to be an esssential difference & it be a favour to us that we have no interior taxes laid I acquiesce & if I can not have all I would am willing to obtain as much of it as may be. ^But are we sure of Retaining even this.^ You have sufficiently answered the objection made to our claim of freedom from taxes unless represented in parliament vizt. that the people of England cannot be said one tenth part of them to be represented as no greater proportion have a Voice in Elections & therefore the Colonies can have no claim to it, but besides your observation that every man of property in England has his influence in Elections & may have his voice if he will. I begg leave to add that Acts of Parliament do not generally respect individuals. I am ^either^ a landed man in trade of this or that part of the Kingdom, whatever my interest is it is represented & the concern of particular Members or set of Members in Parliament but what Member can be said to be the representative of the Colonies more than all the rest. Are not the Colonies considered as detached & having a distinct interest from the Interest of the Nation. Is not the Parliament Party & Judge. Is it not a general question what can be done to make the Colonies further beneficial to the Nation? Nobody adds consistent with their Rights. In short do you not consider us as your property to improve in the best way you can for your Advantage. One of my Neighbours a poor man in the Country has ten or twelve Sons, as soon as they came to be capable of Labour he seemed to have less Affection for them than he had for his Cattle, some he sent upon Wages to Sea some he sold as Soldiers to relieve men who had been impressed. I asked him how he could be so unnatural to his own flesh & Blood he replied the boys had been a Charge to him until they were eight or ten years Old & he thought it reasonable they should reimburse what they had cost him. I could not help thinking of the Nation & her Colonies & they were in danger of being treated in the same manner but without the same reason most of them having been settled without any expence to the Mother Country. [I h]ave not forgot the Concession I made that whatever opinion we have of our Rights the parliament must be the final Judges & it is possible that it may be determined that the natural right of a Colonist is not the same with the natural right of an Inhabitant of Britain & that the Colonists have no sufficient Plea from their Charters or Commissions for exemption from parliamentary taxes &c the Authority of Parliament not being liable to controul from such Charters or Commissions. I would humbly hope notwithstanding that we shall be considered in equity & if we have not ^strictly^ a claim of right we have of favour. I know of none of the Colonies except the two last settled Georgia & Halifax which occasioned any Charge to the Crown or Kingdom in the Settlement of them. Virginia indeed was along time burdensome to particular undertakers & great Sums of money were expended for there was no Spirit for Colonizing, everybody who could do it chose to stay at home. Sir Ferdinando Gorges who was a principal adventurer in settling Colonies in the beginning of the last Century says in a History of some of the Colonies published by his grandson after his death that he could not get people for money to reside there. A new Cause arose or else you would have had no Colonies at this day. Arbitrary measures in the reigns of King James & King Charles drove such as were & who expected an entire change of the Constitution in England to seek an Asylum in America. The people of the Massachusetts were the first who fled for the sake of civil & Religious Liberty, from them all the other Colonies in New England Sprang. This was about the year 1630 & between that & 1640 multides left England & flocked over to America but with this expectation & assur^depend^ance that what^ever^ changes ^should^ come upon England their Liberties should be safe. After 1640 we hear of no great Embarkations from England for America. The bare charge of transporting themselves Families Stock of Cattle & necessary houshold stuff amounted to Two hundred thousand pounds Sterling. They had most of them Estates in England which they Sold & laid out the produce of them in improving the Lands in America which were of no value without, & they & their posterity for 130 years together have been continually spending their strength & their Acquisitions of every sort in rendering the Country more & more valuable. They have enjoyed their civil & Religious ^Liberties^ to their content which has caused them with greater chearfulness to endure all the hardships of settling new Countries. No ill use has been made of these privileges unless now & then a mistaken apprehension of their Rights soon corrected may be called such. Some of the Colonies have been engaged in wars for their defence against the natives & the neighbouring French in which for an hundred years together they received no Assistance from England. The New England Colonies unhappily undertook an expedition against Cape Breton & succeeded & you know of what importance it was at the peace of Aix la Chapelle, but still I say unhappily for the Colonies because it made them the object of French resentment and caused a great national Expence in the last war which is now given as a reason for new measures with respect to them. Give me leave to ask whether it is not equitable when such an amazing addition is made to the Dominion & wealth of Britain that the persons who procured & have been the Instruments of it & their posterity should continue in the enjoyment of as great Liberties & privileges as if they had continued themselves in Britain? As great I say but still with this reserve as far as will consist with their dependance upon Britain and we desire no greater. Give us an equivalent for all this Labour & expence & remove us where our Ancestors came from & we shall think ourselves very happy. Settle such Inhabitants in America & under such Government as you think proper. Surely the Services we have rendered the Nation have not subjected us to any forfeitures. If it should be said the Lands we are upon belonged to the Crown or ifyou will to the Nation, I answer the Crown had granted them to particular Subjects of whom the Colonists many of them at least purchased before they left England & afterwards purchased them again of the Indian princes who had the best if not the sole right to them besides it is well known American Lands in their natural State are of no value there is not any Colony which has not cost more to make it capable of rendering profit than it is now worth. If America was now a wilderness & an offer was to be made of the best tracts of Lands we would stay at home & it might remain a wilderness forever. I know it is said the Colonies are a charge to the Nation & it is reasonable they should contribute to their own defence & protection. It must be allowed that great part of the Charge of the last war was for the defence of the Colonies & a dispute about boundaries was the Occasion of the war. But it must be remembred that during the war the Colonies annually contributed to the charge of it & some of them so largely that the parliament was convinced that the burden would be insupportable & from year to year made them compensations notwithstanding which they shall remain in Debt & must continue so some of them many years. It is certain several of the Colonies raised a greater number of men for several years together in proportion to their Inhabitants then were in the pay of the Nation in proportion to its Inhabitants although Land & Sea Service both be considered as well in Europe as in America. In the trading Towns in some of the Colonies one fourth part of the profit of the trade was annually paid to the support of the War & other publick charges. In the Country Towns a farm which would not Rent for twenty pounds a year paid ten pounds taxes. I must observe to you that but few farms in the Colonies are in the hands of Tenants & the owner being the occupier by estimating the whole produce of the farm or what you call the three Rents in England pleases himself that he pays only between three & four shillings in the pound when you would call it ten. If we add the impost & excises so large a proportion of the Estates of the Inhabitants of some of the Colonies has been annually paid during the war that if the Inhabitants of Britain had paid in the same proportion there would have been no great increase of the national Debt. But let me ask whether it was from a parental Affection to the Colonists & to save them from french Vassalage that Britain was at this Expence or was it from fear of losing that advantageous trade she had so long carried on with her Colonies? And pray will the Nation or will the Colonies reap the benefit of the successes obtained by this expence. I know of no advantage which can arise to the northern Colonies. If you should tell me their fishery will be increased I am not sure of that but I am sure if it should Britain will reap the benefit & any extraordinary profit will center there for an extraordinary purchase of her Manufactures & I may say the same of any other extraordinary profit in trade if any such should be. An additional Country has been acquired and our Inhabitants among others are permitted to settle there. Why this will damage to us that remain & in fact the improved Lands of most of the Colonies have sunk 25 per Ct. in their from the advance upon Labour whereas every newfarm makes a new demand for British Manufactures. But a further charge will be necessary for our protection & it will be reasonable we should contribute to that. I am very sensible that if in any future wars any Nation in Europe should make the Colonies their object a British Navy must protect or they will become a prey and in case of such a war I cannot doubt the Colonies would contribute as liberally to their own protection as they have done in the last. But when there is peace in Europe what occasion is there for any national expence in America. For one hundred years together the New England Colonies were from time to time engaged in war with the Indians encouraged & assisted by the French & yet received no aid f[rom] Britain nor from the neighbouring Colonies. New York, Pensilvania, Maryland Virginia and the Carolinas are as able to defend their respect[tive] frontiers as the New England Colonies were to defend theirs & if they [had] no aid from the Crown, they would do it. The Indians may har[rass] them for a Short time but as soon as the Inhabitants have learned to [hunt] the Indians as the New England Men did in their own territories [and] lay waste their Corn fields & break up their Settlements they will grow tired & sue for peace. And as the Governments who have been molested heretofore have born the charge of their own defence it seems reasonable that those Governments who are now molested should bear their Charges and no doubt they had rather do the whole of it by a tax of their own raising than pay their proportion in any other way. If a Garrison is necessary to keep the new acquired Subjects of Canada to their duty they are a Conquered people & cannot complain of the charge if it is laid upon them. If a cover be necessary for new Settlers in the new Countries moderate quitrents will bear the expence of it. It may after all be the determination of Parliament that the Colonists have neither a legal nor equitable claim to exemption from parliamentary Taxes but if it should they have another Argument in their favour vizt. that it cannot be good policy & must be prejudicial to the national interest to impose such taxes. The Advantages proposed by an increase of the revenue are fallacious & delusive you will lose more than you will gain. And here I shall observe what I might have done with propriety when I was considering the equity of claim made by the Colonists, vizt. that Britain reaps the profit of all their Trade and of the increase of their Substance for they are enabled thereby to take off so much more of British manufactures. And experience must have shewn to the nation that in proportion to the increase of the numbers & Estates of the Colonists in like proportion the exports from Britian have continually increased. How have your own writers boasted & with how much reason of the amazing wealth arising from the trade with the Colonies? Every trading Colonist is perpetually contriving to make every branch of his trade produce him Silver & Gold or some commodity that will serve for returns to discharge the debt always due to Britain. Is this the Case with most other Branches of your trade? Is not the balance of ^with^ most other Countries against you? and the Specie you receive from your Colonies going from you to discharge it? Are not the other commercialStates able to afford their manufactures cheaper than you can? Does not France every day pour in their woollen goods among the Spaniards your old Customers & do not your Supplies decrease in proportion. The prospect is that in a short time you will have only your Colonies with whom you can carry on any advantageous commerce. That indeed will be enough if you encourage them to increase the consumption of your manufactures for fifty years to come as they have done for fifty years past and with no more than reasonable encouragement they infallibly will do it & in much greater proportion. For your own sake therefore as well as out of regard to the Colonists let me give you a little Sketch of their present turn of mind & leave you to judge whether it is a wise measure to check or change it & whether by humouring & cherishing it you will not serve your own interest to a much greater degree than by your present Schemes. In all the Colonies upon the Continent but the northermost more especially the Inhabitants are generally freeholders where there is one farm in the hands of a Tenant. I suppose there are fifty occupied by him who has the fee of it. [Th]is is the ruling passion to be a Freeholder. Most men as soon as their [Sons] grow up endeavour to procure tracts in some new Townships where [all e]xcept the eldest go out one after another with a wife a yoke of Oxen [a ho]rse a Cow or two & maybe a few Goats & husbandry Tools [a sm]all hut is built the man & his family fare hard for a few AC (Massachusetts Archives, SC1/series 45X, 26:90–96); in EH’s hand with some corrections in TH’s hand; untitled; the MS has deteriorated badly over the years, and on one page a strip of paper approximately an inch wide and five inches long has been lost; before this large tear occurred, Bernhard Knollenberg secured a photocopy of the MS, although it was not found in his papers at Yale University; Malcolm Freiberg had a photocopy of the partially torn MS, presumably made shortly after Knollenberg’s; Edmund S. Morgan’s work on the essay apparently relied on a slightly later photocopy of the document, made after the MS had been torn, a rendition of which he published in NEQ 21 (December 1948): 480–92; Knollenberg made a few corrections to Morgan’s work in the following issue, NEQ 22 (March 1949): 98. To produce the current text, the editors relied on Freiberg’s photocopy, compared it to Morgan’s published essay (which is substantially the same, barring some differences in punctuation, capitalization, and editorial style), and accepted Knollenberg’s corrections, the latter of which have been indicated by footnotes if the editors could not confirm them in a review of the now-incomplete MS in the Massachusetts Archives. Source: https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/2529#chsect1404

October 18, 1764 Assembly Chamber, New York City William Nicole, Speaker To the Honourable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, representing the Commons of Great-Britain, in Parliament assembled. The Representation and Petition of the General-Assembly of the Colony of New York. Most humbly Shew, THAT from the year 1683, to this Day, there have been three Legislative Branches in this Colony; consisting of the Governor and Council appointed by the Crown, and the Representatives chosen by the people, who, besides the Power of making Laws for the Colony, have enjoyed the Right of Taxing the Subject for the Support of the Government. Under this Political Frame, the Colony was settled by Protestant Emigrants from several Parts of Europe, and more especially from Great-Britain and Ireland: And as it was originally modeled with the Intervention of the Crown, and not excepted to by the Realm of England before, nor by Great-Britain, since the Union, the Planters, and Settlers conceived, which, so far at least as the Rights and Privileges of the People were concerned, would remain permanent, and be transmitted tot their latest Posterity. It is therefore with equal Concern and Surprise, that they have received Intimations of certain Designs lately formed, if possible, to induce the Parliament of Great-Britain, to impose Taxes upon the Subjects here, by Laws to be passed there; and as we who have the Honour to represent them, conceive that this Innovation, will greatly affect the Interest of the Crown and the Nation, and reduce the Colony to absolute Ruin; it became our indispensible Duty, to trouble you with a seasonable Representation of the Claim of our Constituents, to an Exemption from the Burthen of all Taxes not granted by themselves, and their Foresight of the tragical Consequences of an Adoption of the contrary Principle, to the Crown, the Mother Country, themselves and their Posterity. Had the Freedom from all Taxes not granted by ourselves been enjoyed as a Privilege, we are confident the Wisdom and Justice of the British Parliament, would rather establish than destroy it, unless by our abuse of it, the Forfeiture was justly incurred; but his Majesty’s Colony of New-York, can not only defy the whole World to impeach their Fidelity, but appeal to all the Records of their past Transactions, as well for the fullest Proof of their steady Affection to the Mother Country, as for their strenuous Efforts to support the Government, and advance the general Interest of the whole British Empire. It has been their particular Misfortune, to be always most exposed to the Incursions of the Canadians, and the more barbarous Irruptions of the Savages of the Desert, as may appear by all the Maps of this Country; and in many Wars we have suffered an immense Loss both of Blood and Treasure, to repel the Foe, and maintain a valuable Dependency upon the British Crown. On no Occasion can we be justly reproached for with-holding a necessary Supply, our Taxes have been equal to our Abilities, and confessed to be so by the Crown; for Proof of which we refer to the Speeches of our Governors in all Times of War; and though we remember with great Gratitude, that in those grand and united Struggles, which were lately directed for the Conquest of Canada, Part of our Expenses was reimbursed, yet we cannot suppress the Remark, that our Contribution surpassed our Strength, even in the Opinion of the Parliament, who under that Conviction, thought it but just to take off Part of the Burthen, to which we had loyally and voluntarily submitted; in a Word, if there is any Merit in facilitating on all Occasions, the publick Measures in the remote Extremes of the national Dominion, and in preserving untainted Loyalty and cheerful Obedience, it is ours; and (with Submission) unabused, nay more, well improved Privileges cannot, ought not, to be taken away from any People. But an Exemption from the Burthen of ungranted, involuntary Taxes, must be the grand Principle of every free State.-Without such a Right vested in themselves, exclusive of all others, there can be no Liberty, no Happiness, no Security; it is inseparable from the very Idea of Property, for who can call that his own, which may be taken away at the Pleasure of another? And so evidently does this appear to be the natural Right of Mankind, that even conquered tributary States, though subject to the Payment of a fixed periodical Tribute, never were reduced to so abject and forlorn a Condition, as to yield to all the Burthens which their Conquerors might at any future Time think fit to impose. The Tribute paid, the Debt was discharged; and the Remainder they could call their own. And if conquered Vassals upon the Principle even of natural justice, may claim a Freedom from Assessments unbounded and unassented to, without which they would sustain the Loss of every Thing, and Life itself become intolerable, with how much Propriety and Boldness may we proceed to inform the Commons of Great-Britain, who, to their distinguished Honour, have in all Ages asserted the Liberties of Mankind, that the People of this Colony inspired by the Genius of their Mother Country, nobly disdain the thought of claiming that Exemption as a Privilege.-They found it on a Basis more honourable, solid and stable; they challenge it, and glory in it as their Right. That Right their Ancestors enjoyed in Great-Britain and Ireland; their Descendents returning to those Kingdoms, enjoy it again: And that it may be exercised by his Majesty’s Subjects at Home, and justly denied to those who submitted to Poverty, Barbarian Wars, Loss of Blood, Loss of Money, personal Fatigues, and ten Thousand unutterable Hardships, to enlarge the Trade, Wealth, and Dominion of the Nation; or, to speak with the most unexceptionable Modesty, that when as Subjects, all have equal Merit; a Fatal, nay the most odius Discrimination should nevertheless be made between them, so Sophistry can recommend to the Sober, impartial Decision of common Sense. Our Constituents exult in that glorious Model of Government, of which your Hon. House is so essential a Part; and earnestly pray the Almighty Governor of all, long to support the due Distribution of the Power of the Nation in the three great Legislative Branches. But the Advocates for divesting us of the Right to tax ourselves, would by the Success of their Machination; render the Devolution of all civil Power upon the Crown alone, a Government more favourable, and therefore more eligible to these American Dependencies. The supreme Ruler in a Monarchy, even in a despotic Monarchy, will naturally consider his Relation to be, what it is, equal to all his good Subjects: An equal Dispension of Favours will be the natural Consequence of those views; and the Increase of mutual Affection must be productive of an Increase of the Felicity of all. But no History can furnish an Instance of a Constitution to permit one Part of a Dominion to be taxed by another, and that too in Effect, but by a Branch of that other Part; who in all Bills for public Aids, suffer not the least Alteration.-And if such an absurd and unequal Constitution should be adopted, who, that considers the natural Reluctance of Mankind to burthens, and their Inclination to cast them upon the Shoulders of others, cannot foresee, that while the People on one Side of the Atlantic, enjoy an Exemption from the Load, those on the other, must submit to the most unsupportable Oppression and Tyranny. Against these Evils, the Indulgence of the present Parliament, of which we have had such large Experience, cannot provide, if the grand Right to tax ourselves is invaded. Depressed by the Prospect of an endless Train of the most distressing Mischiefs, naturally attendant upon such an Innovation, his Majesty’s American Subjects, will think it no inconsiderable Augmentation of their Misery, that the Measure itself implies the most severe and unmerited Censure, and is urged, as far they are acquainted, by no good Reasons of State. They are unconscious of any Conduct, that brings the least Imputation upon their Love and Loyalty, and whoever has accused them, has abused both the Colonies and their Mother Country; more faithful Subjects his Majesty has not, in any Part of his Dominions, nor Britain more submissive and affectionate Sons. And if our Contributions to the Support of the Government upon this Continent, or for the Maintenance of an army, to awe and subdue the Savages should be thought necessary, why shall it be presumed, without a Trial, that we more than others, will refuse to hearken to a just Requisition from the Crown? To Requisitions for Aids salutary to our own Interests? Or why should a more incorrigible and unreasonable Spirit be imputed to us, than to the Parliament of Ireland, or any other of his Majesty’s Subjects? Left to the Enjoyment of our antient Rights, the Government will be truly informed when a Tax is necessary, and of the Abilities of the People; and there will be an equitable Partition of the Burthen. And as the publick Charges will necessary increase with the Increase of the Country, and the Augmention or Reduction of the Force kept up, be regulated by the Power and Temper of our barbarian Enemy, the Necessity for continuing the present Model must appear to be most strongly inforced.-At the remote Distance of the British Commons from the sequestered Shades of the interior Parts of this Desert, false Intelligence of the State of the Indians may be detect all false Alarms, and check all fraudulent Accounts, but urge them by the never failing Motive of Self-Preservation, to oppose any hostile Attempts upon their Borders. Nor will the Candor of the Commons of Great Britain, contrueour Earnestness to maintain this Plea, to arise from a Desire of Independency upon the supreme Power of the Parliament. Of so extravagant a Disregard to our own Interests we cannot be guilty.-From what other Quarter can we hope for Protection? We reject the Thought with the utmost Abhorrence; and a perfect Knowledge of this Country will afford the fullest Proof, that nothing in our Temper can give the least Ground for such a Jealousy. The peaceable and invariable Submission of the Colonies, for a Century past, forbids the Imputation, or proves it a Calumny.- What can be more apparent, than that the State which exercises a Sovereignty in Commerce can draw all the Wealth of its Colonies into its own Stock? And has not the whole Trade of North-America, that growing Magazine of Wealth, been from the Beginning, directed, restrained, and prohibited at the sole Pleasure of the Parliament? And whatever some may pretend, his Majesty’s American Subjects are far from a Desire to invade the just Rights of Great-Britain, in all commercial Regulations. They humbly conceive, that a very manifest Distinction presents itself, which while it leaves to the Mother Country an incontestable Power, to give Laws for the Advancement of her own Commerce will, at the same Time, do no Violence to the Rights of the Plantations. The Authority of the Parliament of Great-Britain, to model the Trade of the whole Empire, so as to subserve the Interest of her own, we are ready to recognize in the most extensive and positive Terms. Such a Preference is naturally founded upon her Superiority, and indissolubly connected with the Principle of Self-Preservation.-And therefore, to assign one Instance, instead of many, the Colonies cannot, would not ask for a Licence to import woolen Manufactures from France; or to go into the most lucrative Branches of Commerce, in the least Degree incompatible with Trade and Interest of Great-Britain. But a Freedom to drive all Kinds of Traffick in a Subordination to, and not inconsistent with, the British Trade; and an Exemption from all Duties in such a Course of Commerce, is humbly claimed by the Colonies, as the most essential of all the Rights to which they are intitled, as Colonists from, and connected, in the common Bond of Liberty, with the uninslaved Sons of Great-Britain. For, with Submission, since all Impositions, whether they be internal Taxes, or Duties paid, for what we consume, equally diminish the Estates upon which they are charged; what avails it to any People, by which of them they are impoverished? Every Thing will be given up to preserve Life; and though there is a Diversity in the Means, yet, the whole Wealth of a Country may be effectually drawn off, by the Exaction of Duties, as by any other Tax upon their Estates. And therefore, the General Assembly of New-York, in Fidelity to their Constituents, cannot but express the most earnest Supplication, that the Parliament will charge our Commerce with no other Duties, than a necessary Regard to the Particular Trade of Great-Britain, evidently demands; but leave it to the legislative Power of the Colony, to impose all other Burthens upon it’s own People, which the publick Exigences may require. Latterly, the Laws of Trade seem to have been framed without an Attention to this fundamental Claim. Permit us, also, in Defence of our Attachment to the Mother Country, to add, what your Merchants (to whom we boldly make the Appeal) know to be an undoubted Truth; that this Continent contains some of the most useful of her Subjects.-Such is the Nature of our Produce, that all we acquire is less than sufficient to purchase what we want of your Manufactures; and, be the Policy of your Commerce what it will, all our Riches must flow into Great-Britain.-Immense have been our Contributions to the National Stock.-Our Staple, Industry, Trade and Wealth, all conduce to the particular Advantage of our fellow Subjects there.-The natural State of this Country, necessarily forms the Balance of Trade in her Favour.-Her growing Opulence must elevate her above all Fear and Jealousy or these Dependences. How much stronger then the Reasons for leaving us free from ungranted Impositions? Whoever will give full Scope to his Meditations on this Topic, will see it the Interest of Great-Britain, to adopt the Maxim, that her own Happiness is the most imtimately connected with the Freedom, Ease and Prosperity of her Colonies: The more extensive our Traffick, the Greater her Gains; we carry all to her Hive, and consume our Returns; and we are content with any constitutional Regulation that inriches her, though it impoverishes ourselves. But a fuller Display of these Principles, being prepared by our Merchants, to be laid before the honourable House, at the last Sitting, we shall only beg Leave to add, that any Information, repugnant to this Account of the low State of our Traffick, must proceed from partial, or incompetent Witnesses; who may have formed their Estimate of Spanish West-Indies, were laid open to our Trade, and those immense Profits acquired there, for the Manufactures of Great-Britain and Ireland, flowed into the Colonies, and Luxury advanced upon us slower than our Gains.-But Trade being now confined to it’s old Channels, and indeed still more restricted, and the late acquired Cash, remitted home for necessary Cloathing, other very indifferent Appearances begin to take place, and the British Merchants are, or will soon be convinced to their Sorrow, that our Splendor was not supported by solid Riches. The honourable House will permit us to observe next, that the Act of the last Session of Parliament, inhibiting all Intercourse between the Continent and the foreign Sugar Colonies, will prove equally detrimental to us and Great-Britain.-That Trade, gave a value to a vast, but now alas unsaleable Staple, which being there converted into Cash and Merchandize, made necessary Remittances for the British Manufactures we consumed:-The same Law contains a Clause unfriendly to the Linen Manufactory in Ireland, for the Restraint upon the Exportation of Lumber to that Kingdom, prevents even our dunnaging the Flax-Seed Casks sent there with Staves.-And when we consider the Wisdom of our Ancestors in contriving Trials by Juries, we cannot stifle our Regret, that the Laws of Trade in general, change the Current of Justice from the common Law, and subject Controversies of the utmost Importance to the Decisions of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, who proceed not according the old wholesome Laws of the Land, nor are always filled with Judges of approved Knowledge and Integrity.-To this Objection, the aforementioned Statute will at first View appear to be so evidently open, that we shall content ourselves with barely suggesting, that the amazing Confidence it reposes in the Judges, gives great Grief to his Majesty’s American Subjects; and pass on to a few Remarks on that other Law of the same Session, which renders our Paper Money no legal Tender. The Use of this Sort of Currency in procuring a speedy Supply on Emergencies, all the Colonies have often experienced.-We have had Recourse to this Expedient in every War, since the Reign of King William the Third; and without it we could not have co-operated so vigorously in the Reduction of Canada, that grand stroke which secured to Great-Britain, the immense Dominion of the Continent of North-America. We had no other Alternative but that, or the taking up Money upon Loan, Lenders could not have been easily found, and if they were, the Interest upon all the Sums raised in that Way, would have exceeded our Ability now to discharge. Happy for us, therefore, that we fell upon the Project of giving a Credit to Paper, which was always supported by seasonable Taxes on our Estates; the Currency of the Bills being prolonged only till we were able to burn up the Quantity from Time to Time emitted. -Our Laws, or the Copies transmitted to the Plantation Office, will evidence that of the numerous Emissions we have made since the first, which was on the 8th of June, 1709, all were for the urgent Service of the Crown. -One Instance is so recent, and shows the Necessity of the Continuation of such a Power in the Colonies, in so striking a Point of Light, that it deserves more particular Notice. The Operations of the Year 1759, were nearly at a Stand for want of Money. The military Chest being exhausted, the General was alarmed, and seeing no other Method to ward of the impending Disaster, was obliged to ask the Colony for a loan of One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds: We immediately gratified his Request. -Such was our Concern for the publick Weal! We wish his Majesty’s Service may suffer no Impediment, by this new Restraint in an Article which has been of so much Utility.-The Traffick of the Colony certainly will, for want of a competent Medium; and on that Account, and in behalf of those miserable Debtors, whose Estates, through the Scarcity of legal Value, to the Ruin of many Families, permit us to implore your tender Commiseration. The General Assembly of this Colony have no desire to derogate from the Power of the Parliament of Great-Britain; but they cannot avoid deprecating the Loss of such Rights as they have hitherto enjoyed, Rights established in the first Dawn of our Constitution, founded upon the most substantial Reasons, confirmed by invariable Usage, conducive to the best Ends; never abused to bad Purposes, and with the Loss, of which Liberty, Property, and all the Benefits of Life, tumble into Insecurity and Ruin: Rights, the Deprivation of which, will dispirit the People, abate their Industry, discourage Trade, introduce Discord, Poverty and Slavery; or, by depopulating the Colonies, turn a vast, fertile, prosperous Region, into a dreary Widlerness; impoverish Great-Britain, and shake the Power and Independency of the most opulent and flourishing Empire in the World. All which your Petitioners (who repose the highest Confidence in your Wisdom and Justice) humbly pray, may be now taken into your seasonable Consideration, and such Measures pursued, as the Event may prove to have been concerted for the Common-Weal, of all the Subjects of Great-Britain, both at home and abroad. Source: https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/new-york-petition-house-of-commons-october-18-1764.html

April 12, 1921   Members of the Congress: You have been called in extraordinary session to give your consideration to national problems far too pressing to be long neglected. We face our tasks of legislation and administration amid conditions as difficult as our government has ever contemplated. Under our political system the people of the United States have charged the new Congress and the new Administration with the solution—the readjustments, reconstruction, and restoration which must follow in the wake of war. It may be regretted that we were so illy prepared for war's aftermath, so little made ready to return to the ways of peace, but we are not to be discouraged. Indeed, we must be the more firmly resolved to undertake our work with high hope, and invite every factor in our citizenship to join in the effort to find our normal, onward way again. The American people have appraised the situation, and with that tolerance and patience which go with understanding they will give to us the influence of deliberate public opinion which ultimately becomes the edict of any popular government. They are measuring some of the stern necessities, and will join in the give and take which is so essential to firm reestablishment. First in mind must be the solution of our problems at home, even though some phases of them are inseparably linked with our foreign relations. The surest procedure in every government is to put its own house in order. I know of no more pressing problem at home than to restrict our national expenditures within the limits of our national income, and at the same time measurably lift the burdens of war taxation from the shoulders of the American people. One can not be unmindful that economy is a much-employed cry most frequently stressed in preelection appeals, but it is ours to make it an outstanding and ever-impelling purpose in both legislation and administration. The unrestrained tendency to heedless expenditure and the attending growth of public indebtedness, extending from federal authority to that of state and municipality and including the smallest political subdivision, constitute the most dangerous phase of government today. The nation can not restrain except in its own activities, but it can be exemplar in a wholesome reversal. The staggering load of war debt must be cared for in orderly funding and gradual liquidation. We shall hasten the solution and aid effectively in lifting the tax burdens if we strike resolutely at expenditure. It is far more easily said than done. In the fever of war our expenditures were so little questioned, the emergency was so impelling, appropriation was so unimpeded that we little noted millions and counted the Treasury inexhaustible. It will strengthen our resolution if we ever keep in mind that a continuation of such a course means inevitable disaster. Our current expenditures are running at the rate of approximately five billions a year, and the burden is unbearable. There are two agencies to be employed in correction: One is rigid resistance in appropriation and the other is the utmost economy in administration. Let us have both. I have already charged department heads with this necessity. I am sure Congress will agree; and both Congress and the Administration may safely count on the support of all right-minded citizens, because the burden is theirs. The pressure for expenditure, swelling the flow in one locality while draining another, is sure to defeat the imposition of just burdens, and the effect of our citizenship protesting outlay will be wholesome and helpful. I wish it might find its reflex in economy and thrift among the people themselves, because therein lies quicker recovery and added security for the future. The estimates of receipts and expenditures and the statements as to the condition of the Treasury which the Secretary of the Treasury is prepared to present to you will indicate what revenues must be provided in order to carry on the government's business and meet its current requirements and fixed-debt charges. Unless there are striking cuts in the important fields of expenditure, receipts from internal taxes can not safely be permitted to fall below $4,000,000,000 in the fiscal years 1922 and 1923. This would mean total internal tax collections of about one billion less than in 1920 and one-half billion less than m 1921. The most substantial relief from the tax burden must come for the present from the readjustment of internal taxes, and the revision or repeal of those taxes which have become unproductive and are so artificial and burdensome as to defeat their own purpose. A prompt and thoroughgoing revision of the internal tax laws, made with due regard to the protection of the revenues, is, in my judgment, a requisite to the revival of business activity in this country. It is earnestly hoped, therefore, that the Congress will be able to enact without delay a revision of the revenue laws and such emergency tariff measures as are necessary to protect American trade and industry. It is of less concern whether internal taxation or tariff revision shall come first than has been popularly imagined, because we must do both, but the practical course for earliest accomplishment will readily suggest itself to the Congress. We are committed to the repeal of the excess-profits tax and the abolition of inequities and unjustifiable exasperations in the present system. The country does not expect and will not approve a shifting of burdens. It is more interested in wiping out the necessity for imposing them and eliminating confusion and cost in the collection. The urgency for an instant tariff enactment, emergency in character and understood by our people that it is for the emergency only, can not be too much emphasized. I believe in the protection of American industry, and it is our purpose to prosper America first. The privileges of the American market to the foreign producer are offered too cheaply today, and the effect on much of our own productivity is the destruction of our self-reliance which is the foundation of the independence and good fortune of our people. Moreover, imports should pay their fair share of our cost of government. One who values American prosperity and maintained American standards of wage and living can have no sympathy with the proposal that easy entry and the flood of imports will cheapen our cost of living. It is more likely to destroy our capacity to buy. Today American agriculture is menaced, and its products are down to prewar normals, yet we are endangering our fundamental industry through the high cost - of transportation from farm to market and through the influx of foreign farm products, because we offer, essentially unprotected, the best market in the world. It would be better to err in protecting our basic food industry than paralyze our farm activities in the world struggle for restored exchanges. The maturer revision of our tariff laws should be based on the policy of protection, resisting that selfishness which turns to greed, but ever concerned with that productivity at home which is the source of all abiding good fortune. It is agreed that we can not sell unless we buy, but ability to sell is based on home development and the fostering of home markets. There is little sentiment in the trade of the world. Trade can and ought to be honorable, but it knows no sympathy. While the delegates of the nations at war were debating peace terms at Paris, and while we later debated our part in completing the peace, commercial agents of other nations were opening their lines and establishing their outposts, with a forward look to the morrow's trade. It was wholly proper, and has been advantageous to them. Tardy as we are, it will be safer to hold our own markets secure, and build thereon for our trade with the world. A very important matter is the establishment of the Government's business on a business basis. There was toleration of the easy-going, unsystematic method of handling our fiscal affairs, when indirect taxation held the public unmindful of the Federal burden. But there is knowledge of the high cost of government today, and high cost of living is inseparably linked with high cost of government. There can be no complete correction of the high living cost until government's cost is notably reduced. Let me most heartily commend the enactment of legislation providing for the national budget system. Congress has already recorded its belief in the budget. It will be a very great satisfaction to know of its early enactment, so that it may be employed in establishing the economies and business methods so essential to the minimum of expenditure. I have said to the people we meant to have less of Government in business as well as more business in Government. It is well to have it understood that business has a right to pursue its normal, legitimate, and righteous way unimpeded, and it ought have no call to meet government competition where all risk is borne by the public Treasury. There is np challenge to honest and lawful business success. But government approval of fortunate, untrammeled business does not mean toleration of restraint of trade or of maintained prices by unnatural methods. It is well to have legitimate business understand that a just government, mindful of the interests of all the people, has a right to expect the co-operation of that legitimate business in stamping out the practices which add to unrest and inspire restrictive legislation. Anxious as we are to restore the onward flow of business, it is fair to combine assurance and warning in one utterance. One condition in the business world may well receive your inquiry. Deflation has been in progress but has failed to reach the mark where it can be proclaimed to the great mass of consumers. Reduced cost of basic production has been recorded, but high cost of living has not yielded in like proportion. For example, the prices on grains and live stock have been deflated, but the cost of bread and meats is not adequately reflected therein. It is to be expected that non-perishable staples will be slow in yielding to lower prices, but the maintained retail costs in perishable foods can not be justified. I have asked the Federal Trade Commission for a report of its observations, and it attributes, in the main, the failure to adjust consumers' cost to basic production costs to the exchange of information by "open-price associations," which operate, evidently, within the law, to the very great advantage of their members and equal disadvantage to the consuming public. Without the spirit of hostility or haste in accusation of profiteering, some suitable inquiry by Congress might speed the price readjustment to normal relationship, with helpfulness to both producer and consumer. A measuring, rod of fair prices will satisfy the country and give us a business revival to end all depression and unemployment. The great interest of both the producer and consumer—indeed, all our industrial and commercial life, from agriculture to finance—in the problems of transportation will find its reflex in your concern to aid reestablishment, to restore efficiency, and bring transportation cost into a helpful relationship rather than continue it as a hindrance to resumed activities. It is little to be wondered that ill-considered legislation, the war strain, Government operation in heedlessness of cost, and the conflicting programs, or the lack of them, for restoration have brought about a most difficult situation, made doubly difficult by the low tide of business. All are so intimately related that no improvement will be permanent until the railways are operated efficiently at a cost within that which the traffic can bear. If we can have it understood that. Congress has no sanction for government ownership, that Congress does not levy taxes upon the people to cover deficits in a service which should be self-sustaining, there will be an avowed foundation on which to rebuild. Freight-carrying charges have mounted higher and higher until commerce is halted and production discouraged. Railway rates and costs of operation must be reduced. Congress may well investigate and let the public understand wherein our system and the federal regulations are lacking in helpfulness or hindering in restrictions. The remaining obstacles which are the heritance of capitalistic exploitation must be removed, and labor must join management in understanding that the public which pays is the public to be served, and simple justice is the right and will continue to be the right of all the people. Transportation over the highways is little less important, but the problems relate to construction and development, and deserve your most earnest attention, because we are laying a foundation for a long time to come, and the creation is very difficult to visualize, in its great possibilities. The highways are not only feeders to the railroads and afford relief from their local burdens, they are actually lines of motor traffic in interstate commerce. They are the smaller arteries of the larger portion of our commerce, and the motor car has become an indispensable instrument in our political, social, and industrial life. There is begun a new era in highway construction, the outlay for which runs far into hundreds of millions of dollars. Bond issues by road districts, counties, and States mount to enormous figures, and the country is facing such an outlay that it is vital that every effort shall be directed against wasted effort and unjustifiable expenditure. The federal government can place no inhibition on the expenditure in the several States; but, since Congress has embarked upon a policy of assisting the states in highway improvement, wisely, I believe, it can assert a wholly becoming influence in shaping policy. With the principle of federal participation acceptably established, probably never to be abandoned, it is important to exert federal influence in developing comprehensive plans looking to the promotion of commerce, and apply our expenditures in the surest way to guarantee a public return for money expended. Large federal outlay demands a federal voice in the program of expenditure. Congress can not justify a mere gift from the federal purse to the several states, to be prorated among counties for road betterment. Such a course will invite abuses which it were better to guard against in the beginning. The laws governing federal aid should be amended and strengthened. The federal agency of administration should be elevated to the importance and vested with authority comparable to the work before it. And Congress ought to prescribe conditions to federal appropriations which will necessitate a consistent program of uniformity which will justify the federal outlay. I know of nothing more shocking than the millions of public funds wasted in improving highways, wasted because there is no policy of maintenance. The neglect is not universal, but it is very near it. There is nothing the. Congress can do more effectively to end this shocking waste than condition all federal aid on provisions for maintenance. Highways, no matter how generous the outlay for construction, can not be maintained without patrol and constant repair. Such conditions insisted upon in the grant of federal aid will safeguard the public which pays and guard the federal government against political abuses, which tend to defeat the very purposes for which we authorize federal expenditure. Linked with rail and highway is the problem of water transportation —inland, coastwise, and transoceanic. It is not possible, on this occasion, to suggest to Congress the additional legislation needful to meet the aspirations of our people for a merchant marine. In the emergency of war we have constructed a tonnage equaling our largest expectations. Its war cost must be discounted to the actual values of peace, and the large difference charged to the war emergency, and the pressing task is to turn our assets in tonnage to an agency of commerce. It is not necessary to say it to Congress, but I have thought this to be a befitting occasion to give notice that the United States means to establish and maintain a great merchant marine. Our differences of opinion as to a policy of upbuilding have been removed by the outstanding fact of our having builded. If the intelligent and efficient administration under the existing laws makes established service impossible, the Executive will promptly report to you. Manifestly if our laws governing American activities on the seas are such as to give advantage to those who compete with us for the carrying of our own cargoes and those which should naturally come in American bottoms through trade exchanges, then the spirit of American fair play will assert itself to give American carriers their equality of opportunity. This republic can never realize its righteous aspirations in commerce, can never be worthy the traditions of the early days of the expanding republic until the millions of tons of shipping which we now possess are coordinated with our inland transportation and our shipping has government encouragement, not government operation, in carrying our cargoes under our flag, over regularly operated routes, to every market in the world agreeable to American exchanges. It will strengthen American genius and management to have it understood that ours is an abiding determination, because carrying is second only to production in establishing and maintaining the flow of commerce to which we rightfully aspire. It is proper to invite your attention to the importance of the question of radio communication and cables. To meet strategic, commercial, and political needs, active encouragement should be given to the extension of American-owned and operated cable and radio services. Between the United States and its possessions there should be ample communication facilities providing direct services at reasonable rates. Between the United States and other countries not only should there be adequate facilities, but these should be, so far as practicable, direct and free from foreign intermediation. Friendly cooperation should be extended to international efforts aimed at encouraging improvement of international communication facilities and designed to further the exchange of messages. Private monopolies tending to prevent the development of needed facilities should be prohibited. Government- owned facilities, wherever possible without unduly interfering with private enterprise or government needs, should be made available for general uses. Particularly desirable is the provision of ample cable and radio services at reasonable rates for the transmission of press matter, so that the American reader may receive a wide range of news, and the foreign reader receive full accounts of American activities. The daily press of all countries may well be put in position to contribute to international understandings by the publication of interesting foreign news. Practical experience demonstrates the need for effective regulation of both domestic and international radio operation if this newer means of intercommunication is to be fully utilized. Especially needful is the provision of ample radio facilities for those services where radio only can be used, such as communication with ships at sea, with aircraft, and with out-of-the-way places. International communication by cable and radio requires co-operation between the powers concerned. Whatever the degree of control deemed advisable within the United States, government licensing of cable landings and of radio stations transmitting and receiving international traffic seems necessary for the protection of American interests and for the security of satisfactory reciprocal privileges. Aviation is inseparable from either the army or the navy, and the Government must, in the interests of national defense, encourage its development for military and civil purposes. The encouragement of the civil development of aeronautics is especially desirable as relieving the government largely of the expense of development, and of maintenance of an industry, how almost entirely borne by the government through appropriations for the military, naval, and postal air services. The Air Mail Service is an important initial step in the direction of commercial aviation. It has become a pressing duty of the federal government to provide for the regulation of air navigation; otherwise independent and conflicting legislation will be enacted by the various states which will hamper the development of aviation. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, in a special report on this subject, has recommended the establishment of a Bureau of Aeronautics in the Department of Commerce for the federal regulation of air navigation, which recommendation ought to have legislative approval. I recommend the enactment of legislation establishing a Bureau of Aeronautics in the Navy Department to centralize the control of naval activities in aeronautics, and removing the restrictions on the personnel detailed to aviation in the navy. The army air service should be continued as a coordinate combatant of the army, and its existing organization utilized in cooperation with other agencies of the government in the establishment of national transcontinental airways, and in cooperation with the states in the establishment of local airdromes and landing fields. The American people expect Congress unfailingly to voice the gratitude of the republic in a generous and practical way to its defenders in the World War, who need the supporting arm of the Government. Our very immediate concern is for the crippled soldiers and those deeply needing the helping hand of Government. Conscious of the generous intent of Congress, and the public concern for the crippled and dependent, I invited the services of a volunteer committee to inquire into the administration of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, the Federal Board for Vocational Training and other agencies of government in caring for the ex-soldiers, sailors, and marines of the World War. This committee promptly reported the chief difficulty to be the imperfect organization of government effort, the same lack of co-ordination which hinders Government efficiency in many undertakings, less noticed because the need for prompt service is less appealing. This committee has recommended, and I convey the recommendations to you with cordial approval, that all Government agencies looking to the welfare of the ex-service men should be placed under one directing head, so that the welfare of these disabled saviors of our civilization and freedom may have the most efficient direction. It may be well to make such an official the Director General of Service to War Veterans, and place under his direction all hospitalization, vocational training, war insurance, rehabilitation, and all pensions. The immediate extension and utilization of the government's hospital facilities in Army and Navy will bring relief to the acute conditions most complained of, and the hospital building program may be worked out to meet the needs likely to be urgent at the time of possible completion. The whole program requires the most thoughtful attention of Congress, for we are embarking on the performance of a sacred obligation which involves the expenditure of billions in the half century before us. Congress must perfect the policy of generous gratitude, and conscientious administration must stamp out abuses in the very beginning. We must strengthen rather than weaken the moral fiber of the beneficiaries, and humanize all efforts so that rehabilitation shall be attended by respiritualization. During the recent political canvass the proposal was made that a department of public welfare should be created. It was indorsed and commended so strongly that I venture to call it to your attention and to suggest favorable legislative consideration. Government's obligation affirmatively to encourage development of the highest and most efficient type of citizenship is modernly accepted, almost universally. Government rests upon the body of citizenship; it can not maintain itself on a level that keeps it out of touch and understanding with the community it serves. Enlightened governments everywhere recognize this and are giving their recognition effect in policies and programs. Certainly no government is more desirous than our own to reflect the human attitude, the purpose of making better citizens—physically, intellectually, spiritually. To this end I am convinced that such a department in the government would be of real value. It could be made to crystallize much of rather vague generalization about social justice into solid accomplishment. Events of recent years have profoundly impressed thinking people with the need to recognize new social forces and evolutions, to equip our citizens for dealing rightly with problems of life and social order. In the realms of education, public health, sanitation, conditions of workers in industry, child welfare, proper amusement and recreation, the elimination of social vice, and many other subjects, the government has already undertaken a considerable range of activities. I assume the maternity bill, already strongly approved, will be enacted promptly, thus adding to our manifestation of human interest. But these undertakings have been scattered through many departments and bureaus without coordination and with much overlapping of functions which fritters energies and magnifies the cost. Many subjects of the greatest importance are handled by bureaus within government departments which logically have no apparent relation to them. Other subjects which might well have the earnest consideration of federal authority have been neglected or inadequately provided for. To bring these various activities together in a single department, where the whole field could be surveyed, and where their interrelationships could be properly appraised, would make for increased effectiveness, economy, and intelligence of direction. In creating such a department it should be made plain that there is no purpose to invade fields which the states have occupied, in respect of education, for example, control and administration have rested with the states, yet the federal government has always aided them. National appropriations in aid of educational purposes the last fiscal year were no less than $65,000,000. There need be no fear of undue centralization or of creating a federal bureaucracy to dominate affairs better to be left in state control. We must, of course, avoid overlapping the activities by the several states, and we must ever resist the growing demand on the federal Treasury for the performance of service for which the state is obligated to its citizenship. Somewhat related to the foregoing human problems is the race question. Congress ought to wipe the stain of barbaric lynching from the banners of a free and orderly, representative democracy. We face the fact that many millions of people of African descent are numbered among our population, and that in a number of states they constitute a very large proportion of the total population. It is unnecessary to recount the difficulties incident to this condition, nor to emphasize the fact that it is a condition which can not be removed. There has been suggestion, however, that some of its difficulties might be ameliorated by a humane and enlightened consideration of it, a study of its many aspects, and an effort to formulate, if not a policy, at least a national attitude of mind calculated to bring about the most satisfactory possible adjustment of relations between the races, and of each race to the national life. One proposal is the creation of a commission embracing representatives of both races, to study and report on the entire subject. The proposal has real merit. I am convinced that in mutual tolerance, understanding, charity, recognition of the interdependence of the races, and the maintenance of the rights of citizenship lies the road to righteous adjustment. It is needless to call your attention to the unfinished business inherited from the preceding Congress. The appropriation bills for army and navy will have your early consideration. Neither branch of the government can be unmindful of the call for reduced expenditure for these departments of our national defense. The government is in accord with the wish to eliminate the burdens of heavy armament. The United States ever will be in harmony with such a movement toward the higher attainments of peace. But we shall not entirely discard our agencies for defense until there is removed the need to defend. We are ready to cooperate with other nations to approximate disarmament, but merest prudence forbids that we disarm alone. The naval program which had its beginning in what seemed the highest assurances of peace can carry no threat after the latest proof of our national unselfishness. The reasonable limitation of personnel may be combined with economies of administration to lift the burdens of excessive outlay. The War Department is reducing the personnel of the Army from the maximum provided by law in June, 1920, to the minimum directed by Congress in a subsequent enactment. When further reduction is compatible with national security, it may well have the sanction of Congress, so that a system of voluntary military training may offer to our young manhood the advantages of physical development, discipline, and commitment to service, and constitute the Army reserve in return for the training. Nearly two and a half years ago the World War came to an end, and yet we find ourselves today in the technical state of war, though actually at peace, while Europe is at technical peace, far from tranquility and little progressed toward the hoped-for restoration. It ill becomes us to express impatience that the European belligerents are not yet in full agreement, when we ourselves have been unable to bring constituted authority into accord in our own relations to the formally proclaimed peace. Little avails in reciting the causes of delay in Europe or our own failure to agree. But there is no longer excuse for uncertainties respecting some phases of our foreign relationship. In the existing League of Nations, world-governing with its superpowers, this republic will have no part. There can be no misinterpretation, and there will be no betrayal of the deliberate expression of the American people in the recent election; and, settled in our decision for ourselves, it is only fair to say to the world in general, and to our associates in war in particular, that the League covenant can have no sanction by us. The aim to associate nations to prevent war, preserve peace, and promote civilization our people most cordially applauded. We yearned for this new instrument of justice, but we can have no part in a committal to an agency of force in unknown contingencies; we can recognize no super-authority. Manifestly the highest purpose of the League of Nations was defeated in linking it with the treaty of peace and making it the enforcing agency of the victors of the war. International association for permanent peace must be conceived solely as an instrumentality of justice, unassociated with the passions of yesterday, and not so constituted as to attempt the dual functions of a political instrument of the conquerors and of an agency of peace. There can be no prosperity for the fundamental purposes sought to be achieved by any such association so long as it is an organ of any particular treaty, or committed to the attainment of the special aims of any nation or group of nations. The American aspiration, indeed, the world aspiration, was an association of nations, based upon the application of justice and right, binding us in conference and cooperation for the prevention of war and pointing the way to a higher civilization and international fraternity in which all the world might share. In rejecting the League covenant and uttering that rejection to our own people, and to the world, we make no surrender of our hope and aim for an association to promote peace in which we would most heartily join. We wish it to be conceived in peace and dedicated to peace, and will relinquish no effort to bring the nations of the world into such fellowship, not in the surrender of national sovereignty but rejoicing in a nobler exercise of it in the advancement of human activities, amid the compensations of peaceful achievement. In the national referendum to which I have adverted we pledged our efforts toward such association, and the pledge will be faithfully kept. In the plight of policy and performance, we told the American people we meant to seek an early establishment of peace. The United States alone among the Allied and associated powers continues in a technical state of war against the Central Powers of Europe. This anomalous condition ought not to be permitted to continue. To establish the state of technical peace without further delay, I should approve a declaratory resolution by Congress to that effect, with the qualifications essential to protect all our rights. Such action would be the simplest keeping of faith with ourselves, and could in no sense be construed as a desertion of those with whom we shared our sacrifices in war, for these Powers are already at peace. Such a resolution should undertake to do no more than thus to declare the state of peace, which all America craves. It must add no difficulty in effecting, with just reparations, the restoration for which all Europe yearns, and upon which the world's recovery must be founded. Neither former enemy nor ally can mistake America's position, because our attitude as to responsibility for the war and the necessity for just reparations already has had formal and very earnest expression. It would be unwise to undertake to make a statement of future policy with respect to European affairs in such a declaration of a state of peace. In correcting the failure of the Executive, in negotiating the most important treaty in the history of the Nation, to recognize the constitutional powers of the Senate we would go to the other extreme, equally objectionable, if Congress or the Senate should assume the function of the executive. Our highest duty is the preservation of the constituted powers of each, and the promotion of the spirit of cooperation so essential to our common welfare. It would be idle to declare for separate treaties of peace with the Central Powers on the assumption that these alone would be adequate, because the situation is so involved that our peace engagements can not ignore the Old World relationship and the settlements already effected, nor is it desirable to do so in preserving our own rights and contracting our future relationships. The wiser course would seem to be the acceptance of the confirmation of our rights and interests as already provided and to engage under the existing treaty, assuming of course, that this can be satisfactorily accomplished by such explicit reservations and modifications as will secure our absolute freedom from inadvisable commitments and safeguard all our essential interests. Neither Congress nor the people needs my assurance that a request to negotiate needed treaties of peace would be as superfluous and unnecessary as it is technically ineffective, and I know in my own heart there is none who would wish to embarrass the Executive in the performance of his duty when we are all so eager to turn disappointment and delay into gratifying accomplishment. Problems relating to our foreign relations bear upon the present and the future, and are of such a nature that the all important future must be deliberately considered, with greater concern than mere immediate relief from unhappy conditions. We have witnessed, yea, we have participated in the supremely tragic episode of war, but our deeper concern is in the continuing life of nations and the development of civilization. We must not allow our vision to be impaired by the conflict among ourselves. The weariness at home and the disappointment to the world have been compensated in the proof that this republic will surrender none of the heritage of nationality, but our rights in international relationship have to be asserted; they require establishment in compacts of amity; our part in readjustment and restoration can not be ignored, and must be defined. With the supergoverning league definitely rejected and with the world so informed, and with the status of peace proclaimed at home, we may proceed to negotiate the-covenanted relationship so essential to the recognition of all the rights everywhere of our own nation and play our full part in joining the peoples of the world in the pursuits of peace once more. Our obligations in effecting European tranquility, because of war's involvements, are not less impelling than our part in the war itself. This restoration must be wrought before the human procession can go onward again. We can be helpful because we are moved by no hatreds and harbor no fears. Helpfulness does not mean entanglement, and participation in economic adjustments does not mean sponsorship for treaty commitments which do not concern us, and in which we will have no part. In an all-impelling wish to do the most and best for our own republic and maintain its high place among nations and at the same time make, the fullest offering of justice to them, I shall invite in the most practical way the advice of the Senate, after acquainting it with all the conditions to be met and obligations to be discharged, along with our own rights to be safeguarded. Prudence in making the program and confident cooperation in making it effective can not lead us far astray. We can render no effective service to humanity until we prove anew our own capacity for cooperation in the coordination of powers contemplated in the Constitution, and no covenants which ignore our associations in the war can be made for the future. More, no helpful society of nations can be founded on justice and committed to peace until the covenants reestablishing peace are sealed by the nations which were at war. To Such accomplishment—to the complete reestablishment of peace and its contracted relationships, to the realization of our aspirations for nations associated for world helpfulness without world government, for world stability on which humanity's hope are founded, we shall address ourselves, fully mindful of the high privilege and the paramount duty of the United States in this critical period of the world. Text Source: Warren G. Harding, Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Urgent National Problems Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/329271 Image Source: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002695734/

December 06, 1921 MR. SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESS: It is a very gratifying privilege to come to the Congress with the Republic at peace with all the nations of the world. More, it is equally gratifying to report that our country is not only free from every impending, menace of war, but there are growing assurances of the permanency of the peace which we so deeply cherish. For approximately ten years we have dwelt amid menaces of war or as participants in war's actualities, and the inevitable aftermath, with its disordered conditions, bits added to the difficulties of government which adequately can not be appraised except by, those who are in immediate contact and know the responsibilities. Our tasks would be less difficult if we had only ourselves to consider, but so much of the world was involved, the disordered conditions are so well-nigh universal, even among nations not engaged in actual warfare, that no permanent readjustments can be effected without consideration of our inescapable relationship to world affairs in finance and trade. Indeed, we should be unworthy of our best traditions if we were unmindful of social, moral, and political conditions which are not of direct concern to us, but which do appeal to the human sympathies and the very becoming interest of a people blest with our national good fortune. It is not my purpose to bring to you a program of world restoration. In the main such a program must be worked out by the nations more directly concerned. They must themselves turn to the heroic remedies for the menacing conditions under which they are struggling, then we can help, and we mean to help. We shall do so unselfishly because there is compensation in the consciousness of assisting, selfishly because the commerce and international exchanges in trade, which marked our high tide of fortunate advancement, are possible only when the nations of all continents are restored to stable order and normal relationship. In the main the contribution of this Republic to restored normalcy in the world must come through the initiative of the executive branch of the Government, but the best of intentions and most carefully considered purposes would fail utterly if the sanction and the cooperation of Congress were not cheerfully accorded. I am very sure we shall have no conflict of opinion about constitutional duties or authority. During the anxieties of war, when necessity seemed compelling there were excessive grants of authority and all extraordinary concentration of powers in the Chief Executive. The repeal of war-time legislation and the automatic expirations which attended the peace proclamations have put an end to these emergency excesses but I have the wish to go further than that. I want to join you in restoring, in the most cordial way, the spirit of coordination and cooperation, and that mutuality of confidence and respect which is necessary ill representative popular government. Encroachment upon the functions of Congress or attempted dictation of its policy are not to be thought of, much less attempted, but there is all insistent call for harmony of purpose and concord of action to speed the solution of the difficult problems confronting both the legislative and executive branches of the Government. It is worth while to make allusion here to the character of our Clove Government, mindful as one must be that an address to you is no less it message to all our people, for whom you speak most intimately. Ours is it popular Government through political parties. We divide along political lines, and I would ever have it so. I do not mean that partisan preferences should hinder any public servant in the performance of a conscientious and patriotic official duty. We saw partisan lines utterly obliterated when war imperiled, and our faith in the Republic was riveted anew. We ought not to find these partisan lines obstructing the expeditious solution of the urgent problems of peace. Granting that we are fundamentally a representative popular Government, with political parties the governing agencies, I believe the political party in power should assume responsibility, determine upon policies ill the conference which supplements conventions and election campaigns, and then strive for achievement through adherence to the accepted policy. There is vastly greater security, immensely more of the national viewpoint, much larger and prompter accomplishment where our divisions are along party lines, in the broader and loftier sense, than to divide geographically, or according to pursuits, or personal following. For a century and a third, parties have been charged with responsibility and held to strict accounting. When they fail, they are relieved of authority; and the system has brought its to a national eminence no less than a world example. Necessarily legislation is a matter of compromise. The full ideal is seldom attained. In that meeting of minds necessary to insure results, there must and will be accommodations and compromises, but in the estimate of convictions and sincere purposes the supreme responsibility to national interest must not be ignored. The shield to the high-minded public servant who adheres to party policy is manifest, but the higher purpose is the good of the Republic as a whole. It would be ungracious to withhold acknowledgment of the really large volume and excellent quality of work accomplished by the extraordinary session of Congress which so recently adjourned. I am not unmindful of the very difficult tasks with which you were called to deal, and no one can ignore the insistent conditions which, during recent years, have called for the continued and almost exclusive attention of your membership to public work. It would suggest insincerity if I expressed complete accord with every expression recorded in your roll calls, but we are all agreed about the difficulties and the inevitable divergence of opinion in seeking the reduction, amelioration and readjustment of the burdens of taxation. Later on, when other problems are solved, I shall make some recommendations about renewed consideration of our tax program, but for the immediate time before us we must be content with the billion dollar reduction in the tax draft upon the people, and diminished irritations, banished uncertainty and improved methods of collection. By your sustainment of the rigid economies already inaugurated, with hoped-for extension of these economies and added efficiencies in administration, I believe further reductions may be enacted and hindering burdens abolished. In these urgent economies we shall be immensely assisted by the budget system for which you made provision in the extraordinary session. The first budget is before you. Its preparation is a signal achievement, and the perfection of the system, a thing impossible in the few months available for its initial trial, will mark its enactment as the beginning of the greatest reformation in governmental practices since the beginning of the Republic. There is pending a grant of authority to the administrative branch of the Government for the funding and settlement of our vast foreign loans growing out of our grant of war credits. With the hands of the executive branch held impotent to deal with these debts we are hindering urgent readjustments among our debtors and accomplishing nothing for ourselves. I think it is fair for the Congress to assume that the executive branch of the Government would adopt no major policy in dealing with these matters which would conflict with the purpose of Congress in authorizing the loans, certainly not without asking congressional approval, but there are minor problems incident to prudent loan transactions and the safeguarding of our interests which can not even be attempted without this authorization. It will be helpful to ourselves and it will improve conditions among our debtors if funding and the settlement of defaulted interest may be negotiated. The previous Congress, deeply concerned in behalf of our merchant marine, in 1920 enacted the existing shipping law, designed for the upbuilding of the American merchant marine. Among other things provided to encourage our shipping on the world's seas, the Executive was directed to give notice of the termination of all existing commercial treaties in order to admit of reduced duties on imports carried in American bottoms. During the life of the act no Executive has complied with this order of the Congress. When the present administration came into responsibility it began an early inquiry into the failure to execute the expressed purpose of the Jones Act. Only one conclusion has been possible. Frankly, Members of House and Senate, eager its I am to join you in the making of an American merchant marine commensurate with our commerce, the denouncement of out- commercial treaties would involve us in a chaos of trade relationships and add indescribably to the confusion of the already disordered commercial world. Our power to do so is not disputed, but power and ships, without comity of relationship, will not give us the expanded trade which is inseparably linked with a great merchant marine. Moreover, the applied reduction of duty, for which the treaty denouncements were necessary, encouraged only the carrying of dutiable imports to our shores, while the tonnage which unfurls the flag on the seas is both free and dutiable, and the cargoes which make it nation eminent in trade are outgoing, rather than incoming. It is not my thought to lay the problem before you in detail today. It is desired only to say to you that the executive branch of the Government, uninfluenced by the protest of any nation, for none has been made, is well convinced that your proposal, highly intended and heartily supported here, is so fraught with difficulties and so marked by tendencies to discourage trade expansion, that I invite your tolerance of noncompliance for only a few weeks until a plan may be presented which contemplates no greater draft upon the Public Treasury, and which, though yet too crude to offer it to-day, gives such promise of expanding our merchant marine, that it will argue its own approval. It is enough to say to-day that we are so possessed of ships, and the American intention to establish it merchant marine is so unalterable, that a plain of reimbursement, at no other cost than is contemplated in the existing act, will appeal to the pride and encourage the hope of all the American people. There is before you the completion of the enactment of what has been termed a "permanent " tariff law, the word " permanent " being used to distinguish it from the emergency act which the Congress expedited early in the extraordinary session, and which is the law today. I can not too strongly urge in early completion of this necessary legislation It is needed to stabilize our industry at home; it is essential to make more definite our trade relations abroad. More, it is vital to the preservation of many of our own industries which contribute so notably to the very lifeblood of our Nation. There is now, and there always will be, a storm of conflicting opinion about any tariff revision. We can not go far wrong when we base our tariffs on the policy of preserving the productive activities which enhance employment and add to our national prosperity. Again comes the reminder that we must not be unmindful of world conditions, that peoples are struggling for industrial rehabilitation and that we can not dwell in industrial and commercial exclusion and at the same time do the just thing in aiding world reconstruction and readjustment. We do not seek a selfish aloofness, and we could not profit by it, were it possible. We recognize the necessity of buying wherever we sell, and the permanency of trade lies in its acceptable exchanges. In our pursuit of markets we must give as well as receive. We can not sell to others who do not produce, nor can we buy unless we produce at home. Sensible of every obligation of humanity, commerce and finance, linked as they are in the present world condition, it is not to be argued that we need destroy ourselves to be helpful to others. With all my heart I wish restoration to the peoples blighted by the awful World War, but the process of restoration does not lie in our acceptance of like conditions. It were better to, remain on firm ground, strive for ample employment and high standards of wage at home, and point the way to balanced budgets, rigid economies, and resolute, efficient work as the necessary remedies to cure disaster. Everything relating to trade, among ourselves and among nations, has been expanded, excessive, inflated, abnormal, and there is a madness in finance which no American policy alone will cure. We are a creditor Nation, not by normal processes, but made so by war. It is not an unworthy selfishness to seek to save ourselves, when the processes of that salvation are not only not denied to others, but commended to them. We seek to undermine for others no industry by which they subsist; we are obligated to permit the undermining of none of our own which make for employment and maintained activities. Every contemplation, it little matters in which direction one turns, magnifies the difficulty of tariff legislation, but the necessity of the revision is magnified with it. Doubtless we are justified in seeking a more flexible policy than we have provided heretofore. I hope a way will be found to make for flexibility and elasticity, so that rates may be adjusted to meet unusual and changing conditions which can not be accurately anticipated. There are problems incident to unfair practices, and to exchanges which madness in money have made almost unsolvable. I know of no manner in which to effect this flexibility other than the extension of the powers of the Tariff Commission so that it can adapt itself to it scientific and wholly just administration of the law. I am not unmindful of the constitutional difficulties. These can be met by giving authority to the Chief Executive, who could proclaim-additional duties to meet conditions which the Congress may designate. At this point I must disavow any desire to enlarge the Executive's powers or add to the responsibilities of the office. They are already too large. If there were any other plan I would prefer it. The grant of authority to proclaim would necessarily bring the Tariff Commission into new and enlarged activities, because no Executive could discharge. such a duty except upon the information acquired and recommendations made by this commission. But the plan is feasible, and the proper functioning of the board would give its it better administration of a defined policy than ever can be made possible by tariff duties prescribed without flexibility. There is a manifest difference of opinion about the merits of American valuation. Many nations have adopted delivery valuation as the basis for collecting duties; that is, they take the cost of the imports delivered at the port of entry as the basis for levying duty. It is no radical departure, in view of varying conditions and the disordered state of money values, to provide for American valuation, but there can not be ignored the danger of such a valuation, brought to the level of our own production costs, making our tariffs prohibitive. It might do so in many instances where imports ought to be encouraged. I believe Congress ought well consider the desirability of the only promising alternative, namely, a provision authorizing proclaimed American valuation, under prescribed conditions, on any given list of articles imported. In this proposed flexibility, authorizing increases to meet conditions so likely to change, there should also be provision for decreases. A rate may be just to-day, and entirely out of proportion six months from to-day. If our tariffs are to be made equitable, and not necessarily burden our imports and hinder our trade abroad, frequent adjustment will be necessary for years to come. Knowing the impossibility of modification by act of Congress for any one or a score of lines without involving a long array of schedules, I think we shall go a long ways toward stabilization, if there is recognition of the Tariff Commission's fitness to recommend urgent changes by proclamation. I am sure about public opinion favoring the early determination of our tariff policy. There have been reassuring signs of a business revival from the deep slump which all the world has been experiencing. Our unemployment, which gave its deep concern only a few weeks ago, has grown encouragingly less, and new assurances and renewed confidence will attend the congressional declaration that American industry will be held secure. Much has been said about the protective policy for ourselves making it impossible for our debtors to discharge their obligations to us. This is a contention not now pressing for decision. If we must choose between a people in idleness pressing for the payment of indebtedness, or a people resuming the normal ways of employment and carrying the credit, let us choose the latter. Sometimes we appraise largest the human ill most vivid in our minds. We have been giving, and are giving now, of our influence and appeals to minimize the likelihood of war and throw off the crushing burdens of armament. It is all very earnest, with a national soul impelling. But a people unemployed, and gaunt with hunger, face a situation quite as disheartening as war, and our greater obligation to-day is to do the Government's part toward resuming productivity and promoting fortunate and remunerative employment. Something more than tariff protection is required by American agriculture. To the farmer has come the earlier and the heavier burdens of readjustment. There is actual depression in our agricultural industry, while agricultural prosperity is absolutely essential to the general prosperity of the country. Congress has sought very earnestly to provide relief. It has promptly given such temporary relief as has been possible, but the call is insistent for the permanent solution. It is inevitable that large crops lower the prices and short crops advance them. No legislation can cure that fundamental law. But there must be some economic solution for the excessive variation in returns for agricultural production. It is rather shocking to be told, and to have the statement strongly supported, that 9,000,000 bales of cotton, raised on American plantations in a given year, will actually be worth more to the producers than 13,000,000 bales would have been. Equally shocking is the statement that 700,000,000 bushels of wheat, raised by American farmers, would bring them more money than a billion bushels. Yet these are not exaggerated statements. In a world where there are tens of millions who need food and clothing which they can not get, such a condition is sure to indict the social system which makes it possible. In the main the remedy lies in distribution and marketing. Every proper encouragement should be given to the cooperative marketing programs. These have proven very helpful to the cooperating communities in Europe. In Russia the cooperative community has become the recognized bulwark of law and order, and saved individualism from engulfment in social paralysis. Ultimately they will be accredited with the salvation of the Russian State. There is the appeal for this experiment. Why not try it? No one challenges the right of the farmer to a larger share of the consumer's pay for his product, no one disputes that we can not live without the farmer. He is justified in rebelling against the transportation cost. (liven a fair return for his labor, he will have less occasion to appeal for financial aid; and given assurance that his labors shall not be in vain, we reassure all the people of a production sufficient to meet our National requirement and guard against disaster. The base of the pyramid of civilization which rests upon the soil is shrinking through the drift of population from farm to city. For a generation we have been expressing more or less concern about this tendency. Economists have warned and statesmen have deplored. We thought for at time that modern conveniences and the more intimate contact would halt the movement, but it has gone steadily on. Perhaps only grim necessity will correct it, but we ought to find a less drastic remedy. The existing scheme of adjusting freight rates hits been favoring the basing points, until industries are attracted to some centers and repelled from others. A great volume of uneconomic and wasteful transportation has attended, and the cost increased accordingly. The grain-milling and meat-packing industries afford ample illustration, and the attending concentration is readily apparent. The menaces in concentration are not limited to the retardingly influences on agriculture. Manifestly the. conditions and terms of railway transportation ought not be permitted to increase this undesirable tendency. We have a just pride in our great cities, but we shall find a greater pride in the Nation, which has it larger distribution of its population into the country, where comparatively self-sufficient smaller communities may blend agricultural and manufacturing interests in harmonious helpfulness and enhanced good fortune. Such a movement contemplates no destruction of things wrought, of investments made, or wealth involved. It only looks to a general policy of transportation of distributed industry, and of highway construction, to encourage the spread of our population and restore the proper balance between city and country. The problem may well have your earnest attention. It has been perhaps the proudest claim of our American civilization that in dealing with human relationships it has constantly moved toward such justice in distributing the product of human energy that it has improved continuously the economic status of the mass of people. Ours has been a highly productive social organization. On the way up from the elemental stages of society we have eliminated slavery and serfdom and are now far on the way to the elimination of poverty. Through the eradication of illiteracy and the diffusion of education mankind has reached a stage where we may fairly say that in the United States equality of opportunity has been attained, though all are not prepared to embrace it. There is, indeed, a too great divergence between the economic conditions of the most and the least favored classes in the community. But even that divergence has now come to the point where we bracket the very poor and the very rich together as the least fortunate classes. Our efforts may well be directed to improving the status of both. While this set of problems is commonly comprehended under the general phrase "Capital and labor," it is really vastly broader. It is a question of social and economic organization. Labor has become a large contributor, through its savings, to the stock of capital; while the people who own the largest individual aggregates of capital are themselves often hard and earnest laborers. Very often it is extremely difficult to draw the line of demarcation between the two groups; to determine whether a particular individual is entitled to be set down as laborer or as capitalist. In a very large proportion of cases lie is both, and when lie is both lie is the most useful citizen. The right of labor to organize is just as fundamental and necessary as is the right of capital to organize. The right of labor to negotiate, to deal with and solve its particular problems in an organized way, through its chosen agents, is just as essential as is the right of capital to organize, to maintain corporations, to limit the liabilities of stockholders. Indeed, we have come to recognize that the limited liability of the citizen as a member of a labor organization closely parallels the limitation of liability of the citizen as a stockholder in a corporation for profit. Along this line of reasoning we shall make the greatest progress toward solution of our problem of capital and labor. In the case of the corporation which enjoys the privilege of limited liability of stockholders, particularly when engaged in in the public service, it I's recognized that the outside public has a large concern which must be protected; and so we provide regulations, restrictions, and in some cases detailed supervision. Likewise in the case of labor organizations, we might well apply similar and equally well-defined principles of regulation and supervision in order to conserve the public's interests as affected by their operations. Just as it is not desirable that a corporation shall be allowed to impose undue exactions upon the public, so it is not desirable that a labor organization shall be permitted to exact unfair terms of employment or subject the public to actual distresses in order to enforce its terms. Finally, just as we are earnestly seeking for procedures whereby to adjust and settle political differences between nations without resort to war, so we may well look about for means to settle the differences between organized capital and organized labor without resort to those forms of warfare which we recognize under the name of strikes, lockouts, boycotts, and the like. As we have great bodies of law carefully regulating the organization and operations of industrial and financial corporations, as we have treaties and compacts among nations which look to the settlement of differences without the necessity of conflict in arms, so we might well have plans of conference, of common counsel, of mediation, arbitration, and judicial determination in controversies between labor and capital. To accomplish this would involve the necessity to develop a thoroughgoing code of practice in dealing with such affairs It might be well to frankly set forth the superior interest of the community as a whole to either the labor group or the capital group. With rights, privileges, immunities, and modes of organization thus carefully defined, it should be possible to set up judicial or quasi judicial tribunals for the consideration and determination of all disputes which menace the public welfare. In an industrial society such as ours the strike, the lockout, and the boycott are as much out of place and as disastrous in their results as is war or armed revolution in the domain of politics. The same disposition to reasonableness, to conciliation, to recognition of the other side's point of view, the same provision of fair and recognized tribunals and processes, ought to make it possible to solve the one set of questions its easily as the other. I believe the solution is possible. The consideration of such a policy would necessitate the exercise of care and deliberation in the construction of a code and a charter of elemental rights, dealing with the relations of employer and employee. This foundation in the law, dealing with the modern conditions of social and economic life, would hasten the building of the temple of peace in industry which a rejoicing nation would acclaim. After each war, until the last, the Government has been enabled to give homes to its returned soldiers, and a large part of our settlement and development has attended this generous provision of land for the Nation's defenders. There is yet unreserved approximately 200,000,000 acres in the public domain, 20,000,000 acres of which are known to be susceptible of reclamation and made fit for homes by provision for irrigation. The Government has been assisting in the development of its remaining lands, until the estimated increase in land values in the irrigated sections is full $500,000,000 and the crops of 1920 alone on these lands are estimated to exceed $100,000,000. Under the law authorization these expenditures for development the advances are to be returned and it would be good business for the Government to provide for the reclamation of the remaining 20,000,000 acres, in addition to expediting the completion of projects long under way. Under what is known as the coal and gas lease law, applicable also to deposits of phosphates and other minerals on the public domain, leases are now being made on the royalty basis, and are producing large revenues to the Government. Under this legislation, 10 per centum of all royalties is to be paid directly to the Federal Treasury, and of the remainder 50 per centum is to be used for reclamation of arid lands by irrigation, and 40 per centum. is to be paid to the States, in which the operations are located, to be used by them for school and road purposes. These resources are so vast, and the development is affording so reliable a basis of estimate, that the Interior Department expresses the belief that ultimately the present law will add in royalties and payments to the treasuries of the Federal Government and the States containing these public lands a total of $12,000,000,000. This means, of course, an added wealth of many times that sum. These prospects seem to afford every justification of Government advances in reclamation and irrigation. Contemplating the inevitable and desirable increase of population, there is another phase of reclamation full worthy of consideration. There are 79,000,000 acres of swamp and cut-over lands which may be reclaimed and made as valuable as any farm lands we possess. These acres are largely located in Southern States, and the greater proportion is owned by the States or by private citizens. Congress has a report of the survey of this field for reclamation, and the feasibility is established. I gladly commend Federal aid, by way of advances, where State and private participation is assured. Home making is one of the greater benefits which government can bestow. Measures are pending embodying this sound policy to which we may well adhere. It is easily possible to make available permanent homes which will provide, in turn, for prosperous American families, without injurious competition with established activities, or imposition on wealth already acquired. While we are thinking of promoting the fortunes of our own people I am sure there is room in the sympathetic thought of America for fellow human beings who are suffering and dying of starvation in Russia. A severe drought in the Valley of the Volga has plunged 15,000,000 people into grievous famine. Our voluntary agencies are exerting themselves to the utmost to save the lives of children in this area, but it is now evident that unless relief is afforded the loss of life will extend into many millions. America can not be deaf to such a call as that. We do not recognize the government of Russia, nor tolerate the propaganda which emanates therefrom, but we do not forget the traditions of Russian friendship. We may put aside our consideration of all international politics and fundamental differences in government. The big thing is the call of the suffering and the dying. Unreservedly I recommend the appropriation necessary to supply the American Relief Administration with 10,000,000 bushels of corn and 1,000,000 bushels of seed grains, not alone to halt the wave of death through starvation, but to enable spring planting in areas where the seed grains have been exhausted temporarily to stem starvation. The American Relief Administration is directed in Russia by former officers of our own armies, and has fully demonstrated its ability to transport and distribute relief through American hands without hindrance or loss. The time has come to add the Government's support to the wonderful relief already wrought out of the generosity of the American private purse. I am not unaware that we have suffering and privation at home. When it exceeds the capacity for the relief within the States concerned, it will have Federal consideration. It seems to me we should be indifferent to our own heart promptings, and out of accord with the spirit which acclaims the Christmastide, if we do not give out of our national abundance to lighten this burden of woe upon a people blameless and helpless in famine's peril. There are it full score of topics concerning which it would be becoming to address you, and on which I hope to make report at a later time. I have alluded to the things requiring your earlier attention. However, I can not end this limited address without a suggested amendment to the organic law. Many of us belong to that school of thought which is hesitant about altering the fundamental law. I think our tax problems, the tendency of wealth to seek nontaxable investment, and the menacing increase of public debt, Federal, State and municipal-all justify a proposal to change the Constitution so as to end the issue of nontaxable bonds. No action can change the status of the many billions outstanding, but we can guard against future encouragement of capital's paralysis, while a halt in the growth of public indebtedness would be beneficial throughout our whole land. Such a change in the Constitution must be very thoroughly considered before submission. There ought to be known what influence it will have on the inevitable refunding of our vast national debt, how it will operate on the necessary refunding of State and municipal debt, how the advantages of Nation over State and municipality, or the contrary, may be avoided. Clearly the States would not ratify to their own apparent disadvantage. I suggest the consideration because the drift of wealth into nontaxable securities is hindering the flow of large capital to our industries, manufacturing, agricultural, and carrying, until we are discouraging the very activities which make our wealth. Agreeable to your expressed desire and in complete accord with the purposes of the executive branch of the Government, there is in Washington, as you happily know, an International Conference now most earnestly at work on plans for the limitation of armament, a naval holiday, and the just settlement of problems which might develop into causes of international disagreement. It is easy to believe a world-hope is centered on this Capital City. A most gratifying world-accomplishment is not improbable. Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-19

FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1921 My Countrymen: When one surveys the world about him after the great storm, noting the marks of destruction and yet rejoicing in the ruggedness of the things which withstood it, if he is an American he breathes the clarified atmosphere with a strange mingling of regret and new hope. We have seen a world passion spend its fury, but we contemplate our Republic unshaken, and hold our civilization secure. Liberty--liberty within the law--and civilization are inseparable, and though both were threatened we find them now secure; and there comes to Americans the profound assurance that our representative government is the highest expression and surest guaranty of both. Standing in this presence, mindful of the solemnity of this occasion, feeling the emotions which no one may know until he senses the great weight of responsibility for himself, I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers. Surely there must have been God's intent in the making of this new-world Republic. Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring. We have seen the world rivet its hopeful gaze on the great truths on which the founders wrought. We have seen civil, human, and religious liberty verified and glorified. In the beginning the Old World scoffed at our experiment; today our foundations of political and social belief stand unshaken, a precious inheritance to ourselves, an inspiring example of freedom and civilization to all mankind. Let us express renewed and strengthened devotion, in grateful reverence for the immortal beginning, and utter our confidence in the supreme fulfillment. The recorded progress of our Republic, materially and spiritually, in itself proves the wisdom of the inherited policy of noninvolvement in Old World affairs. Confident of our ability to work out our own destiny, and jealously guarding our right to do so, we seek no part in directing the destinies of the Old World. We do not mean to be entangled. We will accept no responsibility except as our own conscience and judgment, in each instance, may determine. Our eyes never will be blind to a developing menace, our ears never deaf to the call of civilization. We recognize the new order in the world, with the closer contacts which progress has wrought. We sense the call of the human heart for fellowship, fraternity, and cooperation. We crave friendship and harbor no hate. But America, our America, the America builded on the foundation laid by the inspired fathers, can be a party to no permanent military alliance. It can enter into no political commitments, nor assume any economic obligations which will subject our decisions to any other than our own authority. I am sure our own people will not misunderstand, nor will the world misconstrue. We have no thought to impede the paths to closer relationship. We wish to promote understanding. We want to do our part in making offensive warfare so hateful that Governments and peoples who resort to it must prove the righteousness of their cause or stand as outlaws before the bar of civilization. We are ready to associate ourselves with the nations of the world, great and small, for conference, for counsel; to seek the expressed views of world opinion; to recommend a way to approximate disarmament and relieve the crushing burdens of military and naval establishments. We elect to participate in suggesting plans for mediation, conciliation, and arbitration, and would gladly join in that expressed conscience of progress, which seeks to clarify and write the laws of international relationship, and establish a world court for the disposition of such justiciable questions as nations are agreed to submit thereto. In expressing aspirations, in seeking practical plans, in translating humanity's new concept of righteousness and justice and its hatred of war into recommended action we are ready most heartily to unite, but every commitment must be made in the exercise of our national sovereignty. Since freedom impelled, and independence inspired, and nationality exalted, a world supergovernment is contrary to everything we cherish and can have no sanction by our Republic. This is not selfishness, it is sanctity. It is not aloofness, it is security. It is not suspicion of others, it is patriotic adherence to the things which made us what we are. Today, better than ever before, we know the aspirations of humankind, and share them. We have come to a new realization of our place in the world and a new appraisal of our Nation by the world. The unselfishness of these United States is a thing proven; our devotion to peace for ourselves and for the world is well established; our concern for preserved civilization has had its impassioned and heroic expression. There was no American failure to resist the attempted reversion of civilization; there will be no failure today or tomorrow. The success of our popular government rests wholly upon the correct interpretation of the deliberate, intelligent, dependable popular will of America. In a deliberate questioning of a suggested change of national policy, where internationality was to supersede nationality, we turned to a referendum, to the American people. There was ample discussion, and there is a public mandate in manifest understanding. America is ready to encourage, eager to initiate, anxious to participate in any seemly program likely to lessen the probability of war, and promote that brotherhood of mankind which must be God's highest conception of human relationship. Because we cherish ideals of justice and peace, because we appraise international comity and helpful relationship no less highly than any people of the world, we aspire to a high place in the moral leadership of civilization, and we hold a maintained America, the proven Republic, the unshaken temple of representative democracy, to be not only an inspiration and example, but the highest agency of strengthening good will and promoting accord on both continents. Mankind needs a world-wide benediction of understanding. It is needed among individuals, among peoples, among governments, and it will inaugurate an era of good feeling to make the birth of a new order. In such understanding men will strive confidently for the promotion of their better relationships and nations will promote the comities so essential to peace. We must understand that ties of trade bind nations in closest intimacy, and none may receive except as he gives. We have not strengthened ours in accordance with our resources or our genius, notably on our own continent, where a galaxy of Republics reflects the glory of new-world democracy, but in the new order of finance and trade we mean to promote enlarged activities and seek expanded confidence. Perhaps we can make no more helpful contribution by example than prove a Republic's capacity to emerge from the wreckage of war. While the world's embittered travail did not leave us devastated lands nor desolated cities, left no gaping wounds, no breast with hate, it did involve us in the delirium of expenditure, in expanded currency and credits, in unbalanced industry, in unspeakable waste, and disturbed relationships. While it uncovered our portion of hateful selfishness at home, it also revealed the heart of America as sound and fearless, and beating in confidence unfailing. Amid it all we have riveted the gaze of all civilization to the unselfishness and the righteousness of representative democracy, where our freedom never has made offensive warfare, never has sought territorial aggrandizement through force, never has turned to the arbitrament of arms until reason has been exhausted. When the Governments of the earth shall have established a freedom like our own and shall have sanctioned the pursuit of peace as we have practiced it, I believe the last sorrow and the final sacrifice of international warfare will have been written. Let me speak to the maimed and wounded soldiers who are present today, and through them convey to their comrades the gratitude of the Republic for their sacrifices in its defense. A generous country will never forget the services you rendered, and you may hope for a policy under Government that will relieve any maimed successors from taking your places on another such occasion as this. Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way. Reconstruction, readjustment, restoration all these must follow. I would like to hasten them. If it will lighten the spirit and add to the resolution with which we take up the task, let me repeat for our Nation, we shall give no people just cause to make war upon us; we hold no national prejudices; we entertain no spirit of revenge; we do not hate; we do not covet; we dream of no conquest, nor boast of armed prowess. If, despite this attitude, war is again forced upon us, I earnestly hope a way may be found which will unify our individual and collective strength and consecrate all America, materially and spiritually, body and soul, to national defense. I can vision the ideal republic, where every man and woman is called under the flag for assignment to duty for whatever service, military or civic, the individual is best fitted; where we may call to universal service every plant, agency, or facility, all in the sublime sacrifice for country, and not one penny of war profit shall inure to the benefit of private individual, corporation, or combination, but all above the normal shall flow into the defense chest of the Nation. There is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national preservation. Out of such universal service will come a new unity of spirit and purpose, a new confidence and consecration, which would make our defense impregnable, our triumph assured. Then we should have little or no disorganization of our economic, industrial, and commercial systems at home, no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition, no pitiable slackerism, no outrage of treason. Envy and jealousy would have no soil for their menacing development, and revolution would be without the passion which engenders it. A regret for the mistakes of yesterday must not, however, blind us to the tasks of today. War never left such an aftermath. There has been staggering loss of life and measureless wastage of materials. Nations are still groping for return to stable ways. Discouraging indebtedness confronts us like all the war-torn nations, and these obligations must be provided for. No civilization can survive repudiation. We can reduce the abnormal expenditures, and we will. We can strike at war taxation, and we must. We must face the grim necessity, with full knowledge that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. We contemplate the immediate task of putting our public household in order. We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice, and it must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring for the future. The business world reflects the disturbance of war's reaction. Herein flows the lifeblood of material existence. The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management have been strained. We must seek the readjustment with care and courage. Our people must give and take. Prices must reflect the receding fever of war activities. Perhaps we never shall know the old levels of wages again, because war invariably readjusts compensations, and the necessaries of life will show their inseparable relationship, but we must strive for normalcy to reach stability. All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed. There is no way of making them so. There is no instant step from disorder to order. We must face a condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is the oldest lesson of civilization. I would like government to do all it can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved. No altered system will work a miracle. Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of our proven system. The forward course of the business cycle is unmistakable. Peoples are turning from destruction to production. Industry has sensed the changed order and our own people are turning to resume their normal, onward way. The call is for productive America to go on. I know that Congress and the Administration will favor every wise Government policy to aid the resumption and encourage continued progress. I speak for administrative efficiency, for lightened tax burdens, for sound commercial practices, for adequate credit facilities, for sympathetic concern for all agricultural problems, for the omission of unnecessary interference of Government with business, for an end to Government's experiment in business, and for more efficient business in Government administration. With all of this must attend a mindfulness of the human side of all activities, so that social, industrial, and economic justice will be squared with the purposes of a righteous people. With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and her influence to exalt the social order. We count upon her exercise of the full privileges and the performance of the duties of citizenship to speed the attainment of the highest state. I wish for an America no less alert in guarding against dangers from within than it is watchful against enemies from without. Our fundamental law recognizes no class, no group, no section; there must be none in legislation or administration. The supreme inspiration is the common weal. Humanity hungers for international peace, and we crave it with all mankind. My most reverent prayer for America is for industrial peace, with its rewards, widely and generally distributed, amid the inspirations of equal opportunity. No one justly may deny the equality of opportunity which made us what we are. We have mistaken unpreparedness to embrace it to be a challenge of the reality, and due concern for making all citizens fit for participation will give added strength of citizenship and magnify our achievement. If revolution insists upon overturning established order, let other peoples make the tragic experiment. There is no place for it in America. When World War threatened civilization we pledged our resources and our lives to its preservation, and when revolution threatens we unfurl the flag of law and order and renew our consecration. Ours is a constitutional freedom where the popular will is the law supreme and minorities are sacredly protected. Our revisions, reformations, and evolutions reflect a deliberate judgment and an orderly progress, and we mean to cure our ills, but never destroy or permit destruction by force. I had rather submit our industrial controversies to the conference table in advance than to a settlement table after conflict and suffering. The earth is thirsting for the cup of good will, understanding is its fountain source. I would like to acclaim an era of good feeling amid dependable prosperity and all the blessings which attend. It has been proved again and again that we cannot, while throwing our markets open to the world, maintain American standards of living and opportunity, and hold our industrial eminence in such unequal competition. There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports. Today, as never before, when peoples are seeking trade restoration and expansion, we must adjust our tariffs to the new order. We seek participation in the world's exchanges, because therein lies our way to widened influence and the triumphs of peace. We know full well we cannot sell where we do not buy, and we cannot sell successfully where we do not carry. Opportunity is calling not alone for the restoration, but for a new era in production, transportation and trade. We shall answer it best by meeting the demand of a surpassing home market, by promoting self- reliance in production, and by bidding enterprise, genius, and efficiency to carry our cargoes in American bottoms to the marts of the world. We would not have an America living within and for herself alone, but we would have her self-reliant, independent, and ever nobler, stronger, and richer. Believing in our higher standards, reared through constitutional liberty and maintained opportunity, we invite the world to the same heights. But pride in things wrought is no reflex of a completed task. Common welfare is the goal of our national endeavor. Wealth is not inimical to welfare; it ought to be its friendliest agency. There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty. We ought to find a way to guard against the perils and penalties of unemployment. We want an America of homes, illumined with hope and happiness, where mothers, freed from the necessity for long hours of toil beyond their own doors, may preside as befits the hearthstone of American citizenship. We want the cradle of American childhood rocked under conditions so wholesome and so hopeful that no blight may touch it in its development, and we want to provide that no selfish interest, no material necessity, no lack of opportunity shall prevent the gaining of that education so essential to best citizenship. There is no short cut to the making of these ideals into glad realities. The world has witnessed again and again the futility and the mischief of ill-considered remedies for social and economic disorders. But we are mindful today as never before of the friction of modern industrialism, and we must learn its causes and reduce its evil consequences by sober and tested methods. Where genius has made for great possibilities, justice and happiness must be reflected in a greater common welfare. Service is the supreme commitment of life. I would rejoice to acclaim the era of the Golden Rule and crown it with the autocracy of service. I pledge an administration wherein all the agencies of Government are called to serve, and ever promote an understanding of Government purely as an expression of the popular will. One cannot stand in this presence and be unmindful of the tremendous responsibility. The world upheaval has added heavily to our tasks. But with the realization comes the surge of high resolve, and there is reassurance in belief in the God-given destiny of our Republic. If I felt that there is to be sole responsibility in the Executive for the America of tomorrow I should shrink from the burden. But here are a hundred millions, with common concern and shared responsibility, answerable to God and country. The Republic summons them to their duty, and I invite co-operation. I accept my part with single-mindedness of purpose and humility of spirit, and implore the favor and guidance of God in His Heaven. With these I am unafraid, and confidently face the future. I have taken the solemn oath of office on that passage of Holy Writ wherein it is asked: "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" This I plight to God and country. Source: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/harding.asp

November 30, 1860 Whereas, The Constitutional Union was formed by the several States in their separate soverign capacity for the purpose of mutual advantage and protection; That the several States are distinct sovereignities, whose supremacy is limited so far only as the same has been delegated by voluntary compact to a Federal Government, and when it fails to accomplish the ends for which it was established, the parties to the compact have the right to resume, each State for itself, such delegated powers; That the institution of slavery existed prior to the formation of the Federal Constitution, and is recognized by its letter, and all efforts to impair its value or lessen its duration by Congress, or any of the free States, is a violation of the compact of Union and is destructive of the ends for which it was ordained, but in defiance of the principles of the Union thus established, the people of the Northern States have assumed a revolutionary position toward the Southern States; That they have set at defiance that provision of the Constitution which was intended to secure domestic tranquility among the States and promote their general welfare, namely: "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom the Service or Labour may be due;" That they have by voluntary associations, individual agencies and State legislation inteferred with slavery as it prevails in the slaveholding States; That they have enticed our slaves from us and, by State intervention obstructed and prevented their rendition under the fugitive slave law; That they continue their system of agitation obviously for the purpose of encouraging other slaves to escape from service, to weaken the institution in the slave-holding States by rendering the holding of such property insecure, and as a consequence its ultimate abolition certain; That they claim the right and demand its execution by Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories, but claim the right of protection for every species of property owned by themselves; That they declare in every manner in which public opinion is expressed their unalterable determination to exclude from admittance into the Union any new State that tolerates slavery in its Constitution, and thereby force Congress to a condemnation of that species of property; That they thus seek by an increase of abolition States "to acquire two-thirds of both houses" for the purpose of preparing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery in the States, and so continue the agitation that the proposed amendment shall be ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States; That they have in violation of the comity of all civilized nations, and in violation of the comity established by the Constitution of the United States, insulted and outraged our citizens when traveling among them for pleasure, health, or business, by taking their servants and liberating the same, under the forms of State laws, and subjecting their owners to degrading and ignominious punishment; That to encourage the stealing of our property they have put at defiance that provision of the Constitution which declares that fugitives from justice (escaping) into another State, on demand of the Executive authority of that state from which he fled, shall be delivered up; That they have sought to create domestic discord in the Southern States by incendiary publications; That they have encouraged a hostile invasion of a Southern State to excite insurrection, murder, and rapine; That they have deprived Southern citizens of their property and continue an unfriendly agitation of their domestic institutions, claiming for themselves perfect immunity from external interference with their domestic policy; We of the Southern States alone made an exception to that universal quiet; That they have elected a majority of Electors for President and Vice-President on the ground that there exists an irreconcilable conflict between the two sections of the Confederacy in reference to their respective systems of labor and in pursuance of their hostility to us and our institutions, thus declaring to the civilized world that the powers of this Government are to be used for the dishonor and overthrow of the Southern Section of this great Confederacy. Therefore: Be it resolved by the Legislature of the State of Mississippi, That in the opinion of those who now constitute the said Legislature, the secession of each aggrieved State is the proper remedy for these injuries. Source: Laws of the state of Mississippi, Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature held in ... Jackson, November, 1860

Democratic Platform of 1860 (Douglas faction) June 18, 1860 Baltimore, Maryland 1. Resolved , That we, the Democracy of the Union in Convention assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolutions unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles by the Democratic convention at Cincinnati, in the year 1856, believing that Democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature, when applied to the same subject matters; and we recommend, as the only further resolutions, the following:   2. Inasmuch as difference of opinion exists in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress, under the Constitution of the United States, over the institution of slavery within the Territories, Resolved,  That the Democratic party will abide by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon these questions of Constitutional law.   3. Resolved , That it is the duty of the United States to afford ample and complete protection to all its citizens, whether at home or abroad, and whether native or foreign born.   4. Resolved , That one of the necessities of the age, in a military, commercial, and postal point of view, is speedy communication between the Atlantic and Pacific States; and the Democratic party pledge such Constitutional Government aid as will insure the construction of a Railroad to the Pacific coast, at the earliest practicable period.   5. Resolved , That the Democratic party are in favor of the acquisition of the Island of Cuba on such terms as shall be honorable to ourselves and just to Spain.   6. Resolved , That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.   7. Resolved , That it is in accordance with the interpretation of the Cincinnati platform, that during the existence of the Territorial Governments the measure of restriction, whatever it may be, imposed by the Federal Constitution on the power of the Territorial Legislature over the subject of the domestic relations, as the same has been, or shall hereafter be finally determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, should be respected by all good citizens, and enforced with promptness and fidelity by every branch of the general government. Source: National Party Platforms: Volume I 1840--1956 , compiled by Donald Bruce Johnson, University of Illinois Press, p. 30--31).

Democratic Platform of 1860 (Breckinridge Faction) June, 1860 Richmond, Virginia Resolved , That the platform adopted by the Democratic party at Cincinnati be affirmed, with the following explanatory resolutions:   1. That the Government of a Territory organized by an act of Congress is provisional and temporary, and during its existence all citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle with their property in the Territory, without their rights, either of person or property, being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation.   2. That it is the duty of the Federal Government, in all its departments, to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and property in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends.   3. That when the settlers in a Territory, having an adequate population, form a State Constitution, the right of sovereignty commences, and being consummated by admission into the Union, they stand on an equal footing with the people of other States, and the State thus organized ought to be admitted into the Federal Union, whether its constitution prohibits or recognizes the institution of slavery.   Resolved , That the Democratic party are in favor of the acquisition of the Island of Cuba, on such terms as shall be honorable to ourselves and just to Spain, at the earliest practicable moment.   Resolved , That the enactments of State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.   Resolved , That the Democracy of the United States recognize it as the imperative duty of this Government to protect the naturalized citizen in all his rights, whether at home or in foreign lands, to the same extent as its native-born citizens.   WHEREAS, One of the greatest necessities of the age, in a political, commercial, postal and military point of view, is speedy communication between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Therefore be it   Resolved , that the National Democratic party do hereby pledge themselves to use every means in their power to secure the passage of some bill, to the extent of the constitutional authority of Congress, for the construction of a Pacific Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, at the earliest practicable moment. Source: National Party Platforms: Volume I 1840--1956 , compiled by Donald Bruce Johnson, University of Illinois Press, p. 31).