This devotion will lead us to strongly resist all impatience of
constitutional limitations of Federal power and to persistently check
the increasing tendency to extend the scope of Federal legislation into
the domain of State and local jurisdiction upon the plea of subserving
the public welfare. The preservation of the partitions between proper
subjects of Federal and local care and regulation is of such importance
under the Constitution, which is the law of our very existence, that no
consideration of expediency or sentiment should tempt us to enter upon
doubtful ground. We have undertaken to discover and proclaim the richest
blessings of a free government, with the Constitution as our guide. Let
us follow the way it points out; it will not mislead us. And surely no
one who has taken upon himself the solemn obligation to support and
preserve the Constitution can find justification or solace for
disloyalty in the excuse that he wandered and disobeyed in search of a
better way to reach the public welfare than the Constitution offers.
What has been said is deemed not inappropriate at a time when, from a
century's height, we view the way already trod by the American people
and attempt to discover their future path.
The seventh President of the United States--the soldier and statesman
and at all times the firm and brave friend of the people--in vindication
of his course as the protector of popular rights and the champion of
true American citizenship, declared:
The ambition which leads me on is an anxious desire and a fixed
determination to restore to the people unimpaired the sacred trust they
have confided to my charge; to heal the wounds of the Constitution and
to preserve it from further violation; to persuade my countrymen, so far
as I may, that it is not in a splendid government supported by powerful
monopolies and aristocratical establishments that they will find
happiness or their liberties protection, but in a plain system, void of
pomp, protecting all and granting favors to none, dispensing its
blessings like the dews of heaven, unseen and unfelt save in the
freshness and beauty they contribute to produce.
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