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James Madison
First Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1809
Unwilling to depart from examples of the most revered authority, I avail
myself of the occasion now presented to express the profound impression
made on me by the call of my country to the station to the duties of
which I am about to pledge myself by the most solemn of sanctions. So
distinguished a mark of confidence, proceeding from the deliberate and
tranquil suffrage of a free and virtuous nation, would under any
circumstances have commanded my gratitude and devotion, as well as
filled me with an awful sense of the trust to be assumed. Under the
various circumstances which give peculiar solemnity to the existing
period, I feel that both the honor and the responsibility allotted to me
are inexpressibly enhanced.
The present situation of the world is indeed without a parallel and that
of our own country full of difficulties. The pressure of these, too, is
the more severely felt because they have fallen upon us at a moment when
the national prosperity being at a height not before attained, the
contrast resulting from the change has been rendered the more striking.
Under the benign influence of our republican institutions, and the
maintenance of peace with all nations whilst so many of them were
engaged in bloody and wasteful wars, the fruits of a just policy were
enjoyed in an unrivaled growth of our faculties and resources. Proofs of
this were seen in the improvements of agriculture, in the successful
enterprises of commerce, in the progress of manufacturers and useful
arts, in the increase of the public revenue and the use made of it in
reducing the public debt, and in the valuable works and establishments
everywhere multiplying over the face of our land.
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