I want to congratulate you on having room enough in this Territory to grow.
Bill Taft
The Public Record
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States, serving from 1909 to 1913. A member of the Republican Party, he was known for his trust-busting policies and efforts to promote international trade. After his presidency, Taft continued to serve the nation as the 10th Chief Justice of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1930, making him the only person to have held both the presidency and the chief justiceship. His tenure as Chief Justice was marked by a commitment to judicial restraint and the rule of law.
You give me great courage, and give me great inspiration as I look into your eyes and see that you are deliberate men, that you are intelligent men, and that you propose to exercise your suffrage in such a way as to have a government of…
I am inclined to think that the ladies before me generally follow that course.
After that dose which your Chairman administered to me, I feel like drawing the long bow more than ever on this trip.
A constitution is for the purpose of laying down fundamental limitations upon your legislature and your Executive.
In the first place, I want to commend myself, and that is by having appointed Judge Sloan your Governor.
Now, that is the spirit I have found everywhere, and I am proud to be an American, and to know that such a spirit is actuating our people, because its continuance assures the greatness of our country and the making of it such that we can…
My fellow citizens, I am glad to see you because I am glad to know that the population of Arizona, which I believe will soon become a State, is of a character to deserve it.
The greatest Constitution that was ever made is the Constitution of the United States; and you can go through that in a very short time.
I am willing to admit, as I suppose you will, the truth of the statement of the Chairman, that I have not anywhere had an audience of which this is not a peer.
It is only through the foreign missionaries who go there pledging their lives to the cause of the advancement of Christianity that we have presented to those whom we would convince of the strength and efficacy of Christian civilization…
I don't misconstrue it, but I know that Californians are loyal to the backbone and they are glad to welcome to the borders of their great State the representative of the Nation of which they are proud to be a part.
When we have any past of a picturesque character we ought not to destroy it.
The truth is that the honor of unveiling the tablet to the Rev. Father Serra was one that I had not anticipated, but which I was glad to perform.
We are in the habit, we Anglo-Saxons, of looking back to our ancestors with a smug satisfaction and thinking that no one has exactly the right to that pride of ancestry that we have.
But jesting aside, my dear friends, there is no experience in my life more delightful than that which I have had in California.
Now I want to respond to what the Governor has said with respect to California.
We haven't any Englishmen and we haven't any Irishmen... we only have Americans.
There is nothing that an American can not achieve and can not overcome.





