INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Gentlemen of the Senate

and House of Delegates

The will of the people of Maryland, whose voice you have to
day declared, has elevated me to the highest office in their gift.
For this great honor, freely bestowed, by a majority almost un-
precedented in our State, I desire to express my most grateful
acknowledgments: and deeply sensible of the disproportion be-
tween my abilities, and the responsible duties they have devolved
upon me, I must ask beforehand that they judge me with some-
what of the partiality they have already shown; and accept as
the best acknowledgment I can make of their confidence, an en-
tire devotion to their interest and the public service.

In that service it shall be my highest ambition to reflect in my
official conduct, the will of the people whose servant I am. And
now, at my entrance into that office, with whose duties I am
charged, it is due to myself, no less than to those who have
chosen me, that I should frankly and plainly declare the purposes
they desired to accomplish by their choice, and the principles
which will direct my administration of their affairs. Those
principles I regard as more vital to our institutions, than any
that have been called in question since the beginning of our
government. That they animate the people of this State, is
proven by their triumph in three successive expressions of the
popular will, by majorities constantly and regularly increasing;
until now they have filled every department of political power in
our commonwealth, with those whose duty it is, each in his
sphere, to embody those principles in the administration, the
laws, and it may be hereafter in the Constitution of the State.

The people of Maryland have seriously considered those words
of the Father of his Country. "Against the insidious wiles of
foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens,
the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.
Since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one
of the most baneful foes of republican government."
The administration of that great man was embarrassed by the