nbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.

Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before
us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and
preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be
undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done,
remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is
difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as
that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely
expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we
shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past.
They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We
in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave
this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's
children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the
everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of
courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of
devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this
Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who
preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

* * * * *

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, INAUGURAL ADDRESS

THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1909

[Transcriber's note: A blizzard the night before caused the ceremonies to
be moved into the Senate Chamber in the Capitol. The oath of office was
administered for the sixth time by Chief Justice Melville Fuller. The
new President took his oath on the Supreme Court Bible, which he used
again in 1921 to take his oaths as the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. An inaugural ball that evening was held at the Pension Building.]

My Fellow-Citizens:

Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight
of responsibility. If not, he has no conception of the powers and duties
of the office upon which he is about to enter, or he is lacking in a
proper sense of the obligation which the oath imposes.

The office of an inaugural address is to give a summary outline of the
main policies of the new administration, so far as they can be
anticipated. I have had the honor to be one of the advisers of my
distinguished predecessor, and, as such, to hold up his hands in the
reforms he has initiated. I should be untrue to myself, to my promises,
and to the decl