The Clio messenger. (Clio, Mich.) 1907-current, 1912-10-25
SOME STATEMENTS
BY PRESIDENT TAFT
Extracts From Article In Saturday
Evening Post of Last
Week.

Week.
when | took the oath of the
| highest Office in the gift of my fell
low citizens it was with no lack of
appreciation of the great honor that
had been done me, but with an in
finitely realization of the heavy, the
almost terrible, responsibility that
rests on the President of the United
Estates. To me there came as heri-
ltage the noble records of those who
had gone before, Washington and
Lincoln, Grant and Garfield, McKin-
ley and Roosevelt, great presidents
and great Republicans.
"On me rested the responsibility
of maintaining the high standard
they had set, of doing credit to my
party by serving the country to the
best of my ability, and of carrying
on to successful fruition those wise
policies devised by my predecessors,
which had become synonymous with
Republicanism as they were with
good government. And l have kept
the faith.
"Our is the party that does things
as distinguished from those who
merely oppose and those who only
propose. Under it's skillful guidance
many storms have been weathered,
many vicissitudes have been sur
vived. Fallacies have commanded
public confidence and lost it. Our
opponents have espoused such nos
trums as greenbackism mad free sill
yer, while we have preserved the
even tenor of our way, unshaken by
the storm. and ultimately it has been
given us to prove that these panaceas
were not progress and that advance
ment could be made only along
sane lines, step by step-that it was
and is liberty under the law
"The oath taken by the President
of the United States calls upon God
to witness that he will uphold the
Constitution of the United States,
and when l took that oath I took 1t
with full and unqualified conviction
that the fabric our fathers builded
will stand all shocks of faith or for
tune Bound by that pledge and
guided by that conviction, I have
spurned every attempt to undermine
that great bill of rights which is in
Idispensible to the preservation of
our liberties; and no man can say
I have ever faltered, even when, as
in more than one instance, the
course to which l was pledged for
feited a certain popular approval or
impelled the criticism of the
thoughtless or of that far greater
class, those too greatly occupied in
the turmoil of our industrial pro-
gress to investigate and reflect.
ut Is easy to handy charges and
to misrepresent motives. Any man
can bear false witness against his
neighbor, but charges are not proof
and calumnies are not evidence, and
defy any man to prove that l have
ever been false to my solemn re-
sponsibilities, have ever betrayed the
trust reposed in me. l face the fu-
ture confident that my acts will
Iprove my motives and that time will
Iconfound those who have misrepre-
sented them.
For sixty years this nation has
prospered under the policy OF pro-
lection for its own opeople against
the competition of those less well
governed. High standards Of liv-
ing for American workmen have
been maintained. Our producers
and our manufacturers have pros
pered and our wealth has increased
by leaps and bounds. To the policy
of protection l have stood committed
alike by conviction and by the plat
form on which l was chosen. In
ouppoIt VI tudt putty nave oIoOu
foursquare to all the winds that
blew, needless of unjust critism,
whether it came from the standpat
element of the party, which opposed
all tariff revision, or from those ra1
icals, fewer in number, who would
have had the Executive approve any
tariff measure that lowered the
duties, regardless of the injury it
might infllct, or from those insin
cere critics who have ruthlessly mis-
represented the facts for their own
political gain.
Unfortunately, hostility to the
judiciary and measures to take away
its power and independence consti-
tute the chief definite plans of that
class of politicians and reformere
from which the Republican party es