Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7) — John Shaqi
Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)Roosevelt, Theodore
History
Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)
Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that Ex-president
Roosevelt retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes
containing these speeches. He feels that the material contained in
these addresses has been dedicated to the public, and that it
is, therefore, not to be handled as copyrighted material from
which Mr. Roosevelt should receive any pecuniary return.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS
APRIL 7, 1904
TO
MAY 9, 1905
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
REMARKS AT THE DINNER OF THE PERIODICAL PUBLISHERS’ ASSOCIATION OF
AMERICA. THE NEW WILLARD, WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 7, 1904
_Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen_:
It is always a pleasure to a man in public life to meet the real
governing classes. I wish to bid you welcome to Washington this
evening, and to say but one word of greeting to you, and that word
shall take the form of a warning. I did not speak in jest when I
alluded to you as representatives of the governing classes. I think
that we of the United States can not keep too fresh in our minds the
fact that the men ultimately responsible for the Government are not
the representatives of the people, but the people themselves, and that
therefore heavy is the responsibility that lies upon the people and
above all upon those who do the most toward shaping the thought of
the people. In the days of my youth I was a literary man myself. In
reading a book recently, a series of essays, I was immensely struck by
one thought developed in it. The writer, one of our greatest scholars,
was speaking of the fact that freedom could not exist unless there
went with it a thorough appreciation of responsibility, and he used
a phrase somewhat like this—that among all peoples there must be
restraint; if there is no restraint the result is inevitably anarchy.
That means the negation of all government, and the negation of all
government of course means the negation of popular government; and that
therefore there must be restraint, and that therefore a free people
had merely substituted self-restraint for external restraint; and the
permanence of our freedom as a people, the permanence of our liberties,
depends upon the way in which we show and exercise that self-restraint.
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