There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be Democratic. The offices of President and Vice-President have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean? That is the question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion. 政府已经发生了更替。两年前，众议院以决定性多数转由民主党掌握，这一变化由此开始，如今已经完成。即将开会的参议院也将由民主党掌控。总统和副总统的职位都已交到民主党人手中。这一变化意味着什么？这是今天我们心中最关注的问题，也是我准备努力回答的问题，以便尽我所能阐明这一时刻的意义。
It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view. 它的意义远不止一个政党的胜利。只有当国家借助一个政党去实现宏大而明确的目标时，政党的胜利才有意义。没有人会误解国家现在为何要借助民主党：国家要通过它来诠释自身计划和观点的转变。
Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life. 有些我们早已熟悉、甚至逐渐渗入思想和生活习惯的旧事物，在我们近来以清醒的新眼光加以审视时改变了面貌；它们卸下伪装，显露出异己而险恶的本质。另一些新事物，当我们坦率地观察并愿意理解其真实性质时，却呈现出我们长久信奉、倍感熟悉的样貌，仿佛本就是我们信念的一部分。对自身生活的新认识使我们精神焕发。
We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. 我们看到，国家生活在许多方面都十分伟大。它的物质成就无与伦比：财富雄厚，活力多样而磅礴，个人的天赋和群体无穷的进取心孕育并建立了众多产业。它的道德力量同样伟大，极其伟大。
Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance. 世界上没有任何地方的高尚男女，能以更鲜明的方式展现同情、援助和劝导的美与力量；他们努力纠正不公、减轻苦难，引导弱者走向力量与希望。此外，我们建立了一套伟大的政府制度。漫长岁月以来，它在许多方面一直是典范，供那些希望把自由奠定在牢固基础上、使其经受意外变迁、风暴和灾难的人借鉴。我们的生活拥有一切伟大事物，而且极为丰盛。
But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. 然而，善果也伴随着恶果，许多纯金已经锈蚀。财富带来了不可原谅的浪费。我们挥霍了本可利用的大量资源，也没有停下来保护大自然无比丰厚的馈赠；没有这些馈赠，我们的进取天赋便毫无价值、无能为力。我们蔑视谨慎，既有令人赞叹的效率，也有可耻的挥霍。
We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. 我们一直为工业成就自豪，却从未认真停下来计算其人力代价：生命被扼杀，精力被过度消耗乃至摧毁；沉重负担年复一年无情地压在男人、女人和儿童身上，造成可怕的肉体与精神损失。所有这些呻吟与痛苦，那从矿井、工厂以及每个深受挣扎之苦的家庭中升起的、庄严而动人的生活低音，尚未传入我们的耳中。
With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people. 宏大的政府背后还隐藏着许多幽暗的秘密，我们拖延太久，未曾以坦率无畏的目光调查和审视。我们所热爱的伟大政府太多次被用于私人和自私的目的，而利用它的人忘记了人民。
At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. 我们终于有幸看清国家生活的全貌。我们既看见善，也看见恶；既看见健全而有活力的部分，也看见卑劣而衰败的部分。带着这种认识，我们走向新的事务。我们的责任是清理、反思、恢复，在不损害良善的前提下纠正邪恶，净化共同生活的每一个过程并使之更具人性，而不是削弱它或使它流于感伤。
There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves. 我们急于成功、急于强盛，因而显得粗暴、冷酷而麻木。我们曾经认为“人人只须照顾自己，代代只须照顾自身”，与此同时却建造了庞大的机器，使得除了掌握控制杆的人之外，其他任何人都没有机会照顾自己。
We had not forgotten our morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy which was meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with an eye single to the standards of justice and fair play, and remembered it with pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great. 我们并未忘记道德。我们清楚记得，自己建立的政策本应既服务最卑微者，也服务最有权势者，唯一注视的是正义与公平的标准；想到这一点，我们深感自豪。然而，我们过于轻率，只顾匆忙追求强盛。
We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration. 如今，我们已经进入冷静反思的阶段。轻率蒙在我们眼前的鳞片已经脱落。我们下定决心，要让国家生活的每一个过程重新符合那些我们在建国之初自豪确立、并始终珍藏于心的标准。我们的事业是一项恢复工作。
We have itemized with some degree of particularity the things that ought to be altered and here are some of the chief items: A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world, violates the just principles of taxation, and makes the Government a facile instrument in the hand of private interests; a banking and currency system based upon the necessity of the Government to sell its bonds fifty years ago and perfectly adapted to concentrating cash and restricting credits; 我们已经相当具体地列出应当改变的事项，主要包括：一种把我们排除在应有的世界贸易份额之外、违反公平征税原则、并使政府轻易沦为私人利益工具的关税制度；一种源自五十年前政府出售债券需要、极其适合集中现金和限制信贷的银行与货币制度；
an industrial system which, take it on all its sides, financial as well as administrative, holds capital in leading strings, restricts the liberties and limits the opportunities of labor, and exploits without renewing or conserving the natural resources of the country; 一种从金融和管理等各方面看都束缚资本、限制劳动者自由和机会，并且只开采而不补充、不保护国家自然资源的工业制度；
a body of agricultural activities never yet given the efficiency of great business undertakings or served as it should be through the instrumentality of science taken directly to the farm, or afforded the facilities of credit best suited to its practical needs; watercourses undeveloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests untended, fast disappearing without plan or prospect of renewal, un-regarded waste heaps at every mine. 一套从未获得大型商业活动那般效率的农业体系：科学未能以应有方式直接服务农场，也没有提供最适合实际需要的信贷便利；河道未经开发，荒地未获复垦，森林无人照管，在没有更新计划和前景的情况下迅速消失，每座矿山都堆着无人理会的废料。
We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or as individuals. 我们研究最高效生产方式的程度也许超过任何国家，但无论作为产业组织者、政治家还是个人，我们都没有按应有的程度研究成本与经济效益。
Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of the Nation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well as their rights in the struggle for existence. This is no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are matters of justice. 我们也没有认真研究并完善让政府服务于人类的方法，以保障国民——男人、女人和儿童——的健康，并维护他们在生存竞争中的权利。这绝不是出于感伤的责任。政府的坚实基础是正义，而不是怜悯。这些都是正义问题。
There can be no equality or opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not alter, control, or singly cope with. 如果男女和儿童的生命乃至活力，不能免受他们无力改变、控制或独自应对的重大工业与社会进程所造成的后果，那么政治共同体中正义的首要条件，也就是平等与机会，便无从谈起。
Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency. 社会必须确保自己不去压垮、削弱或伤害自身的组成部分。法律的首要职责，是使它所服务的社会保持健全。卫生法、纯净食品法，以及规定个人无力自行决定之劳动条件的法律，都是实现正义和法律效能这一根本事业的组成部分。
These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's conscience and vision of the right. 这些是我们应当去做的一部分事情，同时也不能忽略其他事项，尤其是那些传统而永远不可疏忽的根本职责：保障财产权和个人权利。新时代的崇高事业，就是把一切关乎国家生活的事物，都置于每个人良知的炉火和正义愿景所照耀的光明之中。
It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; 我们不可能以党派之见完成这项事业，也不可能在不了解事实或盲目仓促的情况下完成它。我们要恢复，而不是摧毁。我们将面对现有且可以改进的经济制度，而不是把它当成一张可以随意重写的白纸；
and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto. 我们将一步一步，使它成为应有的样子。我们要像那些质疑自身智慧、寻求忠告和知识的人那样行动，而不是追求肤浅的自满，也不是因不知终点的冒险而兴奋。正义，而且唯有正义，将永远是我们的箴言。
And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. 然而，这并不是一个纯凭冷静科学推演的过程。国家已被深深震动，被庄严的热情所激荡，因为我们认识到不公、理想的失落，以及政府屡遭败坏、沦为作恶工具的事实。面对这个充满正义与机会的新时代，我们的情感如同来自上帝身边的乐声，拨动心弦；在那里，正义与仁慈彼此调和，审判者与兄弟合而为一。
We know our task to be no mere task of politics but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action. 我们知道，面前的绝非普通政治任务，而是一场对我们的彻底检验：检验我们能否理解自己的时代和人民的需要，能否真正成为他们的代言人和阐释者，能否以纯洁之心理解这一切，并以端正的意志选择崇高的行动道路。
This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me! 今天不是胜利之日，而是奉献之日。聚集于此的不是党派力量，而是人类的力量。人们的心在等待我们；人们的生命悬于天平；人们的希望呼唤我们说明将采取何种行动。谁能不负这份重大托付？谁敢不去尝试？我召唤所有诚实的人、所有爱国的人、所有面向未来的人来到我身边。愿上帝帮助我；只要他们给予忠告和支持，我就绝不会辜负他们！