Approved, November 13, 1888.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, _December 3, 1888_.

_To the Congress of the United States_:

As you assemble for the discharge of the duties you have assumed as the
representatives of a free and generous people, your meeting is marked
by an interesting and impressive incident. With the expiration of the
present session of the Congress the first century of our constitutional
existence as a nation will be completed.

Our survival for one hundred years is not sufficient to assure us that
we no longer have dangers to fear in the maintenance, with all its
promised blessings, of a government founded upon the freedom of the
people. The time rather admonishes us to soberly inquire whether in the
past we have always closely kept in the course of safety, and whether we
have before us a way plain and clear which leads to happiness and
perpetuity.

When the experiment of our Government was undertaken, the chart adopted
for our guidance was the Constitution. Departure from the lines there
laid down is failure. It is only by a strict adherence to the direction
they indicate and by restraint within the limitations they fix that we
can furnish proof to the world of the fitness of the American people for
self-government.

The equal and exact justice of which we boast as the underlying
principle of our institutions should not be confined to the relations of
our citizens to each other. The Government itself is under bond to the
American people that in the exercise of its functions and powers it will
deal with the body of our citizens in a manner scrupulously honest and
fair and absolutely just. It has agreed that American citizenship shall
be the only credential necessary to justify the claim of equality before
the law, and that no condition in life shall give rise to discrimination
in the treatment of the people by their Government.

The citizen of our Republic in its early days rigidly insisted upon full
compliance with the letter of this bond, and saw stretching out before
him a clear field for individual endeavor. His tribute to the support of
his Government was measured by the cost of its economical maintenance,
and he was secure in the enjoyment of the remaining recompense of his
steady and contented toil. In those days the frugality of the people was
stamped upon their Government, and was enforced by the free, thoughtful,
and intelligent suffrage of the citize