_Secretary of the Navy_.




FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE.


WASHINGTON, D.C., _December 5, 1853_.

_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:

The interest with which the people of the Republic anticipate the
assembling of Congress and the fulfillment on that occasion of the duty
imposed upon a new President is one of the best evidences of their
capacity to realize the hopes of the founders of a political system
at once complex and symmetrical. While the different branches of the
Government are to a certain extent independent of each other, the duties
of all alike have direct reference to the source of power. Fortunately,
under this system no man is so high and none so humble in the scale of
public station as to escape from the scrutiny or to be exempt from the
responsibility which all official functions imply.

Upon the justice and intelligence of the masses, in a government thus
organized, is the sole reliance of the confederacy and the only security
for honest and earnest devotion to its interests against the usurpations
and encroachments of power on the one hand and the assaults of personal
ambition on the other.

The interest of which I have spoken is inseparable from an inquiring,