6592. PEOPLE, Frugality and happiness.—
Kindly separated by nature and a wide
ocean from the exterminating havoc of one
quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure
the degradations of the others; possessing
a chosen contry, with room enough for
our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth
generation; entertaining a due sense
of our equal right to the use of our own faculties,
to the acquisitions of our own industry,
to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens,
resulting, not from birth, but from our
actions, and their sense of them; enlightened
by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and
practiced in various forms, yet all of them
inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude
and the love of man; acknowledging
and adoring an overruling Providence,
which, by all its dispensations, proves that
it delights in the happiness of man here
and his greater happiness hereafter,—with
all these blessings, what more is necessary
to make us a happy and prosperous
people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal government,
which shall restrain men from injuring one
another, which shall leave them otherwise
free to regulate their own pursuits of industry
and improvement, and shall not take
from the mouth of labor the bread it has
earned. This is the sum of good government,
and this is necessary to close the circle
of our felicities.—
First Inaugural Address. Washington ed. viii, 3.
Ford ed., viii, 3.
(1801)
