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State of the Union Addresses

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Title: State of the Union Addresses

Author: Andrew Jackson


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5016]
                Most recently updated: November 20, 2014

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by James Linden.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESSES ***




Produced by James Linden.  HTML version by Al Haines.








State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson



Dates of addresses by Andrew Jackson in this eBook:

  December 8, 1829
  December 6, 1830
  December 6, 1831
  December 4, 1832
  December 3, 1833
  December 1, 1834
  December 7, 1835
  December 5, 1836



***

State of the Union Address
Andrew Jackson
December 8, 1829

Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

It affords me pleasure to tender my friendly greetings to you on the
occasion of your assembling at the seat of Government to enter upon the
important duties to which you have been called by the voice of our
country-men. The task devolves on me, under a provision of the
Constitution, to present to you, as the Federal Legislature of 24
sovereign States and 12,000,000 happy people, a view of our affairs,
and to propose such measures as in the discharge of my official
functions have suggested themselves as necessary to promote the objects
of our Union.

In communicating with you for the first time it is to me a source of
unfeigned satisfaction, calling for mutual gratulation and devout
thanks to a benign Providence, that we are at peace with all man-kind,
and that our country exhibits the most cheering evidence of general
welfare and progressive improvement. Turning our eyes to other nations,
our great desire is to see our brethren of the human race secured in
the blessings enjoyed by ourselves, and advancing in knowledge, in
freedom, and in social happiness.

Our foreign relations, although in their general character pacific and
friendly, present subjects of difference between us and other powers of
deep interest as well to the country at large as to many of our
citizens. To effect an adjustment of these shall continue to be the
object of my earnest endeavors, and not with standing the difficulties
of the task, I do not allow myself to apprehend unfavorable results.
Blessed as our country is with every thing which constitutes national
strength, she is fully adequate to the maintenance of all her
interests. In discharging the responsible trust confided to the
Executive in this respect it is my settled purpose to ask nothing that
is not clearly right and to submit to nothing that is wrong; and I
flatter myself that, supported by the other branches of the Government
and by the intelligence and patriotism of the people, we shall be able,
under the protection of Providence, to cause all our just rights to be
respected.

Of the unsettled matters between the United States and other powers,
the most prominent are those which have for years been the subject of
negotiation with England, France, and Spain. The late periods at which
our ministers to those Governments left the United States render it
impossible at this early day to inform you of what has been done on the
subjects with which they have been respectively charged. Relying upon
the justice of our views in relation to the points committed to
negotiation and the reciprocal good feeling which characterizes our
intercourse with those nations, we have the best reason to hope for a
satisfactory adjustment of existing differences.

With Great Britain, alike distinguished in peace and war, we may look
forward to years of peaceful, honorable, and elevated competition.
Every thing in the condition and history of the two nations is
calculated to inspire sentiments of mutual respect and to carry
conviction to the minds of both that it is their policy to preserve the
most cordial relations. Such are my own views, and it is not to be
doubted that such are also the prevailing sentiments of our
constituents. Although neither time nor opportunity has been afforded
for a full development of the policy which the present cabinet of Great
Britain designs to pursue toward this country, I indulge the hope that
it will be of a just and pacific character; and if this anticipation be
realized we may look with confidence to a speedy and acceptable
adjustment of our affairs.

Under the convention for regulating the reference to arbitration of the
disputed points of boundary under the 5th article of the treaty of
Ghent, the proceedings have hitherto been conducted in that spirit of
candor and liberality which ought ever to characterize the acts of
sovereign States seeking to adjust by the most unexceptionable means
important and delicate subjects of contention. The first sentiments of
the parties have been exchanged, and the final replication on our part
is in a course of preparation. This subject has received the attention
demanded by its great and peculiar importance to a patriotic member of
this Confederacy. The exposition of our rights already made is such as,
from the high reputation of the commissioners by whom it has been
prepared, we had a right to expect. Our interests at the Court of the
Sovereign who has evinced his friendly disposition by assuming the
delicate task of arbitration have been committed to a citizen of the
State of Maine, whose character, talents, and intimate acquaintance
with the subject eminently qualify him for so responsible a trust. With
full confidence in the justice of our cause and in the probity,
intelligence, and uncompromising independence of the illustrious
arbitrator, we can have nothing to apprehend from the result.

From France, our ancient ally, we have a right to expect that justice
which becomes the sovereign of a powerful, intelligent, and magnanimous
people. The beneficial effects produced by the commercial convention of
1822, limited as are its provisions, are too obvious not to make a
salutary impression upon the minds of those who are charged with the
administration of her Government. Should this result induce a
disposition to embrace to their full extent the wholesome principles
which constitute our commercial policy, our minister to that Court will
be found instructed to cherish such a disposition and to aid in
conducting it to useful practical conclusions. The claims of our
citizens for depredations upon their property, long since committed
under the authority, and in many instances by the express direction, of
the then existing Government of France, remain unsatisfied, and must
therefore continue to furnish a subject of unpleasant discussion and
possible collision between the two Governments. I cherish, however, a
lively hope, founded as well on the validity of those claims and the
established policy of all enlightened governments as on the known
integrity of the French Monarch, that the injurious delays of the past
will find redress in the equity of the future. Our minister has been
instructed to press these demands on the French Government with all the
earnestness which is called for by their importance and irrefutable
justice, and in a spirit that will evince the respect which is due to
the feelings of those from whom the satisfaction is required.

Our minister recently appointed to Spain has been authorized to assist
in removing evils alike injurious to both countries, either by
concluding a commercial convention upon liberal and reciprocal terms or
by urging the acceptance in their full extent of the mutually
beneficial provisions of our navigation acts. He has also been
instructed to make a further appeal to the justice of Spain, in behalf
of our citizens, for indemnity for spoliations upon our commerce
committed under her authority--an appeal which the pacific and liberal
course observed on our part and a due confidence in the honor of that
Government authorize us to expect will not be made in vain.

With other European powers our intercourse is on the most friendly
footing. In Russia, placed by her territorial limits, extensive
population, and great power high in the rank of nations, the United
States have always found a steadfast friend. Although her recent
invasion of Turkey awakened a lively sympathy for those who were
exposed to the desolation of war, we can not but anticipate that the
result will prove favorable to the cause of civilization and to the
progress of human happiness. The treaty of peace between these powers
having been ratified, we can not be insensible to the great benefit to
be derived by the commerce of the United States from unlocking the
navigation of the Black Sea, a free passage into which is secured to
all merchant vessels bound to ports of Russia under a flag at peace
with the Porte. This advantage, enjoyed upon conditions by most of the
powers of Europe, has hitherto been withheld from us. During the past
summer an antecedent but unsuccessful attempt to obtain it was renewed
under circumstances which promised the most favorable results. Although
these results have fortunately been thus in part attained, further
facilities to the enjoyment of this new field for the enterprise of our
citizens are, in my opinion, sufficiently desirable to insure to them
our most zealous attention.

Our trade with Austria, although of secondary importance, has been
gradually increasing, and is now so extended as to deserve the
fostering care of the Government. A negotiation, commenced and nearly
completed with that power by the late Administration, has been
consummated by a treaty of amity, navigation, and commerce, which will
be laid before the Senate.

During the recess of Congress our diplomatic relations with Portugal
have been resumed. The peculiar state of things in that country caused
a suspension of the recognition of the representative who presented
himself until an opportunity was had to obtain from our official organ
there information regarding the actual and, as far as practicable,
prospective condition of the authority by which the representative in
question was appointed. This information being received, the
application of the established rule of our Government in like cases was
no longer withheld.

Considerable advances have been made during the present year in the
adjustment of claims of our citizens upon Denmark for spoliations, but
all that we have a right to demand from that Government in their behalf
has not yet been conceded. From the liberal footing, however, upon
which this subject has, with the approbation of the claimants, been
placed by the Government, together with the uniformly just and friendly
disposition which has been evinced by His Danish Majesty, there is a
reasonable ground to hope that this single subject of difference will
speedily be removed.

Our relations with the Barbary Powers continue, as they have long been,
of the most favorable character. The policy of keeping an adequate
force in the Mediterranean, as security for the continuance of this
tranquillity, will be persevered in, as well as a similar one for the
protection of our commerce and fisheries in the Pacific.

The southern Republics of our own hemisphere have not yet realized all
the advantages for which they have been so long struggling. We trust,
however, that the day is not distant when the restoration of peace and
internal quiet, under permanent systems of government, securing the
liberty and promoting the happiness of the citizens, will crown with
complete success their long and arduous efforts in the cause of
self-government, and enable us to salute them as friendly rivals in all
that is truly great and glorious.

The recent invasion of Mexico, and the effect thereby produced upon her
domestic policy, must have a controlling influence upon the great
question of South American emancipation. We have seen the fell spirit
of civil dissension rebuked, and perhaps for ever stifled, in that
Republic by the love of independence. If it be true, as appearances
strongly indicate, the spirit of independence is the master spirit, and
if a corresponding sentiment prevails in the other States, this
devotion to liberty can not be without a proper effect upon the
counsels of the mother country. The adoption by Spain of a pacific
policy toward her former colonies--an event consoling to humanity, and
a blessing to the world, in which she herself can not fail largely to
participate--may be most reasonably expected.

The claims of our citizens upon the South American Governments
generally are in a train of settlement, while the principal part of
those upon Brazil have been adjusted, and a decree in council ordering
bonds to be issued by the minister of the treasury for their amount has
received the sanction of His Imperial Majesty. This event, together
with the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty negotiated and
concluded in 1828, happily terminates all serious causes of difference
with that power.

Measures have been taken to place our commercial relations with Peru
upon a better footing than that upon which they have hitherto rested,
and if met by a proper disposition on the part of that Government
important benefits may be secured to both countries.

Deeply interested as we are in the prosperity of our sister Republics,
and more particularly in that of our immediate neighbor, it would be
most gratifying to me were I permitted to say that the treatment which
we have received at her hands has been as universally friendly as the
early and constant solicitude manifested by the United States for her
success gave us a right to expect. But it becomes my duty to inform you
that prejudices long indulged by a portion of the inhabitants of Mexico
against the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the
United States have had an unfortunate influence upon the affairs of the
two countries, and have diminished that usefulness to his own which was
justly to be expected from his talents and zeal. To this cause, in a
great degree, is to be imputed the failure of several measures equally
interesting to both parties, but particularly that of the Mexican
Government to ratify a treaty negotiated and concluded in its own
capital and under its own eye. Under these circumstances it appeared
expedient to give to Mr. Poinsett the option either to return or not,
as in his judgment the interest of his country might require, and
instructions to that end were prepared; but before they could be
dispatched a communication was received from the Government of Mexico,
through its charge d'affaires here, requesting the recall of our
minister. This was promptly complied with, and a representative of a
rank corresponding with that of the Mexican diplomatic agent near this
Government was appointed. Our conduct toward that Republic has been
uniformly of the most friendly character, and having thus removed the
only alleged obstacle to harmonious intercourse, I can not but hope
that an advantageous change will occur in our affairs.

In justice to Mr. Poinsett it is proper to say that my immediate
compliance with the application for his recall and the appointment of a
successor are not to be ascribed to any evidence that the imputation of
an improper interference by him in the local politics of Mexico was
well founded, nor to a want of confidence in his talents or integrity,
and to add that the truth of the charges has never been affirmed by the
federal Government of Mexico in its communications with us.

I consider it one of the most urgent of my duties to bring to your
attention the propriety of amending that part of the Constitution which
relates to the election of President and Vice-President. Our system of
government was by its framers deemed an experiment, and they therefore
consistently provided a mode of remedying its defects.

To the people belongs the right of electing their Chief Magistrate; it
was never designed that their choice should in any case be defeated,
either by the intervention of electoral colleges or by the agency
confided, under certain contingencies, to the House of Representatives.
Experience proves that in proportion as agents to execute the will of
the people are multiplied there is danger of their wishes being
frustrated. Some may be unfaithful; all are liable to err. So far,
therefore, as the people can with convenience speak, it is safer for
them to express their own will.

The number of aspirants to the Presidency and the diversity of the
interests which may influence their claims leave little reason to
expect a choice in the first instance, and in that event the election
must devolve on the House of Representatives, where it is obvious the
will of the people may not be always ascertained, or, if ascertained,
may not be regarded. From the mode of voting by States the choice is to
be made by 24 votes, and it may often occur that one of these will be
controlled by an individual Representative. Honors and offices are at
the disposal of the successful candidate. Repeated ballotings may make
it apparent that a single individual holds the cast in his hand. May he
not be tempted to name his reward?

But even without corruption, supposing the probity of the
Representative to be proof against the powerful motives by which it may
be assailed, the will of the people is still constantly liable to be
misrepresented. One may err from ignorance of the wishes of his
constituents; another from a conviction that it is his duty to be
governed by his own judgment of the fitness of the candidates; finally,
although all were inflexibly honest, all accurately informed of the
wishes of their constituents, yet under the present mode of election a
minority may often elect a President, and when this happens it may
reasonably be expected that efforts will be made on the part of the
majority to rectify this injurious operation of their institutions. But
although no evil of this character should result from such a perversion
of the first principle of our system--that the majority is to
govern--it must be very certain that a President elected by a minority
can not enjoy the confidence necessary to the successful discharge of
his duties.

In this as in all other matters of public concern policy requires that
as few impediments as possible should exist to the free operation of
the public will. Let us, then, endeavor so to amend our system that the
office of Chief Magistrate may not be conferred upon any citizen but in
pursuance of a fair expression of the will of the majority.

I would therefore recommend such an amendment of the Constitution as
may remove all intermediate agency in the election of the President and
Vice-President. The mode may be so regulated as to preserve to each
State its present relative weight in the election, and a failure in the
first attempt may be provided for by confining the second to a choice
between the two highest candidates. In connection with such an
amendment it would seem advisable to limit the service of the Chief
Magistrate to a single term of either four or six years. If, however,
it should not be adopted, it is worthy of consideration whether a
provision disqualifying for office the Representatives in Congress on
whom such an election may have devolved would not be proper.

While members of Congress can be constitutionally appointed to offices
of trust and profit it will be the practice, even under the most
conscientious adherence to duty, to select them for such stations as
they are believed to be better qualified to fill than other citizens;
but the purity of our Government would doubtless be promoted by their
exclusion from all appointments in the gift of the President, in whose
election they may have been officially concerned. The nature of the
judicial office and the necessity of securing in the Cabinet and in
diplomatic stations of the highest rank the best talents and political
experience should, perhaps, except these from the exclusion.

There are, perhaps, few men who can for any great length of time enjoy
office and power without being more or less under the influence of
feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of their public duties.
Their integrity may be proof against improper considerations
immediately addressed to themselves, but they are apt to acquire a
habit of looking with indifference upon the public interests and of
tolerating conduct from which an unpracticed man would revolt. Office
is considered as a species of property, and government rather as a
means of promoting individual interests than as an instrument created
solely for the service of the people. Corruption in some and in others
a perversion of correct feelings and principles divert government from
its legitimate ends and make it an engine for the support of the few at
the expense of the many. The duties of all public officers are, or at
least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence
may readily qualify themselves for their performance; and I can not but
believe that more is lost by the long continuance of men in office than
is generally to be gained by their experience. I submit, therefore, to
your consideration whether the efficiency of the Government would not
be promoted and official industry and integrity better secured by a
general extension of the law which limits appointments to four years.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the
people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than
another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men
at the public expense. No individual wrong is, therefore, done by
removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a
matter of right. The incumbent became an officer with a view to public
benefits, and when these require his removal they are not to be
sacrificed to private interests. It is the people, and they alone, who
have a right to complain when a bad officer is substituted for a good
one. He who is removed has the same means of obtaining a living that
are enjoyed by the millions who never held office. The proposed
limitation would destroy the idea of property now so generally
connected with official station, and although individual distress may
be some times produced, it would, by promoting that rotation which
constitutes a leading principle in the republican creed, give healthful
action to the system.

No very considerable change has occurred during the recess of Congress
in the condition of either our agriculture, commerce, or manufactures.
The operation of the tariff has not proved so injurious to the two
former or as beneficial to the latter as was anticipated. Importations
of foreign goods have not been sensibly diminished, while domestic
competition, under an illusive excitement, has increased the production
much beyond the demand for home consumption. The consequences have been
low prices, temporary embarrassment, and partial loss. That such of our
manufacturing establishments as are based upon capital and are
prudently managed will survive the shock and be ultimately profitable
there is no good reason to doubt.

To regulate its conduct so as to promote equally the prosperity of
these three cardinal interests is one of the most difficult tasks of
Government; and it may be regretted that the complicated restrictions
which now embarrass the intercourse of nations could not by common
consent be abolished, and commerce allowed to flow in those channels to
which individual enterprise, always its surest guide, might direct it.
But we must ever expect selfish legislation in other nations, and are
therefore compelled to adapt our own to their regulations in the manner
best calculated to avoid serious injury and to harmonize the
conflicting interests of our agriculture, our commerce, and our
manufactures. Under these impressions I invite your attention to the
existing tariff, believing that some of its provisions require
modification.

The general rule to be applied in graduating the duties upon articles
of foreign growth or manufacture is that which will place our own in
fair competition with those of other countries; and the inducements to
advance even a step beyond this point are controlling in regard to
those articles which are of primary necessity in time of war. When we
reflect upon the difficulty and delicacy of this operation, it is
important that it should never be attempted but with the utmost
caution. Frequent legislation in regard to any branch of industry,
affecting its value, and by which its capital may be transferred to new
channels, must always be productive of hazardous speculation and loss.

In deliberating, therefore, on these interesting subjects local
feelings and prejudices should be merged in the patriotic determination
to promote the great interests of the whole. All attempts to connect
them with the party conflicts of the day are necessarily injurious, and
should be discountenanced. Our action upon them should be under the
control of higher and purer motives. Legislation subjected to such
influences can never be just, and will not long retain the sanction of
a people whose active patriotism is not bounded by sectional limits nor
insensible to that spirit of concession and forbearance which gave life
to our political compact and still sustains it. Discarding all
calculations of political ascendancy, the North, the South, the East,
and the West should unite in diminishing any burthen of which either
may justly complain.

The agricultural interest of our country is so essentially connected
with every other and so superior in importance to them all that it is
scarcely necessary to invite to it your particular attention. It is
principally as manufactures and commerce tend to increase the value of
agricultural productions and to extend their application to the wants
and comforts of society that they deserve the fostering care of
Government.

Looking forward to the period, not far distant, when a sinking fund
will no longer be required, the duties on those articles of importation
which can not come in competition with our own productions are the
first that should engage the attention of Congress in the modification
of the tariff. Of these, tea and coffee are the most important. They
enter largely into the consumption of the country, and have become
articles of necessity to all classes. A reduction, therefore, of the
existing duties will be felt as a common benefit, but like all other
legislation connected with commerce, to be efficacious and not
injurious it should be gradual and certain.

The public prosperity is evinced in the increased revenue arising from
the sales of the public lands and in the steady maintenance of that
produced by imposts and tonnage, not withstanding the additional duties
imposed by the act of May 19th, 1828, and the unusual importations in
the early part of that year.

The balance in the Treasury on January 1st, 1829 was $5,972,435.81. The
receipts of the current year are estimated at $24,602,230 and the
expenditures for the same time at $26,164,595, leaving a balance in the
Treasury on January 1st, 1830 of $4,410,070.81.

There will have been paid on account of the public debt during the
present year the sum of $12,405,005.80, reducing the whole debt of the
Government on January 1st, 1830 to $48,565,406.50, including $7 millions
of the 5% stock subscribed to the Bank of the United States. The payment
on account of public debt made on July 1st, 1829 was $8,715,462.87. It was
apprehended that the sudden withdrawal of so large a sum from the banks
in which it was deposited, at a time of unusual pressure in the money
market, might cause much injury to the interests dependent on bank
accommodations. But this evil was wholly averted by an early
anticipation of it at the Treasury, aided by the judicious arrangements
of the officers of the Bank of the United States.

This state of the finances exhibits the resources of the nation in an
aspect highly flattering to its industry and auspicious of the ability
of Government in a very short time to extinguish the public debt. When
this shall be done our population will be relieved from a considerable
portion of its present burthens, and will find not only new motives to
patriotic affection, but additional means for the display of individual
enterprise. The fiscal power of the States will also be increased, and
may be more extensively exerted in favor of education and other public
objects, while ample means will remain in the Federal Government to
promote the general weal in all the modes permitted to its authority.

After the extinction of the public debt it is not probable that any
adjustment of the tariff upon principles satisfactory to the people of
the Union will until a remote period, if ever, leave the Government
without a considerable surplus in the Treasury beyond what may be
required for its current service. As, then, the period approaches when
the application of the revenue to the payment of debt will cease, the
disposition of the surplus will present a subject for the serious
deliberation of Congress; and it may be fortunate for the country that
it is yet to be decided.

Considered in connection with the difficulties which have heretofore
attended appropriations for purposes of internal improvement, and with
those which this experience tells us will certainly arise when ever
power over such subjects may be exercised by the Central Government, it
is hoped that it may lead to the adoption of some plan which will
reconcile the diversified interests of the States and strengthen the
bonds which unite them. Every member of the Union, in peace and in war,
will be benefited by the improvement of inland navigation and the
construction of high ways in the several States. Let us, then, endeavor
to attain this benefit in a mode which will be satisfactory to all.
That hitherto adopted has by many of our fellow citizens been
deprecated as an infraction of the Constitution, while by others it has
been viewed as inexpedient. All feel that it has been employed at the
expense of harmony in the legislative councils.

To avoid these evils it appears to me that the most safe, just, and
federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue would be
its apportionment among the several States according to their ratio of
representation, and should this measure not be found warranted by the
Constitution that it would be expedient to propose to the States an
amendment authorizing it. I regard an appeal to the source of power in
cases of real doubt, and where its exercise is deemed indispensable to
the general welfare, as among the most sacred of all our obligations.

Upon this country more than any other has, in the providence of God,
been cast the special guardianship of the great principle of adherence
to written constitutions. If it fail here, all hope in regard to it
will be extinguished.

That this was intended to be a government of limited and specific, and
not general, powers must be admitted by all, and it is our duty to
preserve for it the character intended by its framers. If experience
points out the necessity for an enlargement of these powers, let us
apply for it to those for whose benefit it is to be exercised, and not
under-mine the whole system by a resort to over-strained constructions.
The scheme has worked well. It has exceeded the hopes of those who
devised it, and become an object of admiration to the world. We are
responsible to our country and to the glorious cause of self-government
for the preservation of so great a good.

The great mass of legislation relating to our internal affairs was
intended to be left where the Federal Convention found it--in the State
governments. Nothing is clearer, in my view, than that we are chiefly
indebted for the success of the Constitution under which we are now
acting to the watchful and auxiliary operation of the State
authorities. This is not the reflection of a day, but belongs to the
most deeply rooted convictions of my mind. I can not, therefore, too
strongly or too earnestly, for my own sense of its importance, warn you
against all encroachments upon the legitimate sphere of State
sovereignty. Sustained by its healthful and invigorating influence the
federal system can never fall.

In the collection of the revenue the long credits authorized on goods
imported from beyond the Cape of Good Hope are the chief cause of the
losses at present sustained. If these were shortened to 6, 9, and 12
months, and ware-houses provided by Government sufficient to receive
the goods offered in deposit for security and for debenture, and if the
right of the United States to a priority of payment out of the estates
of its insolvent debtors were more effectually secured, this evil would
in a great measure be obviated. An authority to construct such houses
is therefore, with the proposed alteration of the credits, recommended
to your attention.

It is worthy of notice that the laws for the collection and security of
the revenue arising from imposts were chiefly framed when the rates of
duties on imported goods presented much less temptation for illicit
trade than at present exists. There is reason to believe that these
laws are in some respects quite insufficient for the proper security of
the revenue and the protection of the interests of those who are
disposed to observe them. The injurious and demoralizing tendency of a
successful system of smuggling is so obvious as not to require comment,
and can not be too carefully guarded against. I therefore suggest to
Congress the propriety of adopting efficient measures to prevent this
evil, avoiding, however, as much as possible, every unnecessary
infringement of individual liberty and embarrassment of fair and lawful
business.

On an examination of the records of the Treasury I have been forcibly
struck with the large amount of public money which appears to be
outstanding. Of the sum thus due from individuals to the Government a
considerable portion is undoubtedly desperate, and in many instances
has probably been rendered so by remissness in the agents charged with
its collection. By proper exertions a great part, however, may yet be
recovered; and what ever may be the portions respectively belonging to
these two classes, it behooves the Government to ascertain the real
state of the fact. This can be done only by the prompt adoption of
judicious measures for the collection of such as may be made available.
It is believed that a very large amount has been lost through the
inadequacy of the means provided for the collection of debts due to the
public, and that this inadequacy lies chiefly in the want of legal
skill habitually and constantly employed in the direction of the agents
engaged in the service. It must, I think, be admitted that the
supervisory power over suits brought by the public, which is now vested
in an accounting officer of the Treasury, not selected with a view to
his legal knowledge, and encumbered as he is with numerous other
duties, operates unfavorably to the public interest.

It is important that this branch of the public service should be
subjected to the supervision of such professional skill as will give it
efficiency. The expense attendant upon such a modification of the
executive department would be justified by the soundest principles of
economy. I would recommend, therefore, that the duties now assigned to
the agent of the Treasury, so far as they relate to the superintendence
and management of legal proceedings on the part of the United States,
be transferred to the Attorney General, and that this officer be placed
on the same footing in all respects as the heads of the other
Departments, receiving like compensation and having such subordinate
officers provided for his Department as may be requisite for the
discharge of these additional duties. The professional skill of the
Attorney General, employed in directing the conduct of marshals and
district attorneys, would hasten the collection of debts now in suit
and hereafter save much to the Government. It might be further extended
to the superintendence of all criminal proceedings for offenses against
the United States. In making this transfer great care should be taken,
however, that the power necessary to the Treasury Department be not
impaired, one of its greatest securities consisting in control over all
accounts until they are audited or reported for suit.

In connection with the foregoing views I would suggest also an inquiry
whether the provisions of the act of Congress authorizing the discharge
of the persons of the debtors to the Government from imprisonment may
not, consistently with the public interest, be extended to the release
of the debt where the conduct of the debtor is wholly exempt from the
imputation of fraud. Some more liberal policy than that which now
prevails in reference to this unfortunate class of citizens is
certainly due to them, and would prove beneficial to the country. The
continuance of the liability after the means to discharge it have been
exhausted can only serve to dispirit the debtor; or, where his
resources are but partial, the want of power in the Government to
compromise and release the demand instigates to fraud as the only
resource for securing a support to his family. He thus sinks into a
state of apathy, and becomes a useless drone in society or a vicious
member of it, if not a feeling witness of the rigor and inhumanity of
his country. All experience proves that oppressive debt is the bane of
enterprise, and it should be the care of a republic not to exert a
grinding power over misfortune and poverty.

Since the last session of Congress numerous frauds on the Treasury have
been discovered, which I thought it my duty to bring under the
cognizance of the United States court for this district by a criminal
prosecution. It was my opinion and that of able counsel who were
consulted that the cases came within the penalties of the act of the
17th Congress approved March 3d, 1823, providing for punishment of
frauds committed on the Government of the United States. Either from
some defect in the law or in its administration every effort to bring
the accused to trial under its provisions proved ineffectual, and the
Government was driven to the necessity of resorting to the vague and
inadequate provisions of the common law. It is therefore my duty to
call your attention to the laws which have been passed for the
protection of the Treasury. If, indeed, there be no provision by which
those who may be unworthily intrusted with its guardianship can be
punished for the most flagrant violation of duty, extending even to the
most fraudulent appropriation of the public funds to their own use, it
is time to remedy so dangerous an omission; or if the law has been
perverted from its original purposes, and criminals deserving to be
punished under its provisions have been rescued by legal subtleties, it
ought to be made so plain by amendatory provisions as to baffle the
arts of perversion and accomplish the ends of its original enactment.

In one of the most flagrant causes the court decided that the
prosecution was barred by the statute which limits prosecutions for
fraud to two years. In this case all the evidences of the fraud, and,
indeed, all knowledge that a fraud had been committed, were in
possession of the party accused until after the two years had elapsed.
Surely the statute ought not to run in favor of any man while he
retains all the evidences of his crime in his own possession, and least
of all in favor of a public officer who continues to defraud the
Treasury and conceal the transaction for the brief term of two years. I
would therefore recommend such an alteration of the law as will give
the injured party and the Government two years after the disclosure of
the fraud or after the accused is out of office to commence their
prosecution.

In connection with this subject I invite the attention of Congress to a
general and minute inquiry into the condition of the Government, with a
view to ascertain what offices can be dispensed with, what expenses
retrenched, and what improvements may be made in the organization of
its various parts to secure the proper responsibility of public agents
and promote efficiency and justice in all its operations.

The report of the Secretary of War will make you acquainted with the
condition of our Army, fortifications, arsenals, and Indian affairs.
The proper discipline of the Army, the training and equipment of the
militia, the education bestowed at West Point, and the accumulation of
the means of defense applicable to the naval force will tend to prolong
the peace we now enjoy, and which every good citizen, more especially
those who have felt the miseries of even a successful warfare, must
ardently desire to perpetuate.

The returns from the subordinate branches of this service exhibit a
regularity and order highly creditable to its character. Both officers
and soldiers seem imbued with a proper sense of duty, and conform to
the restraints of exact discipline with that cheerfulness which becomes
the profession of arms. There is need, however, of further legislation
to obviate the inconveniences specified in the report under
consideration, to some of which it is proper that I should call your
particular attention.

The act of Congress of March 2d, 1821, to reduce and fix the military
establishment, remaining unexecuted as it regards the command of one of
the regiments of artillery, can not now be deemed a guide to the
Executive in making the proper appointment. An explanatory act,
designating the class of officers out of which the grade is to be
filled--whether from the military list as existing prior to the act of
1821 or from it as it has been fixed by that act--would remove this
difficulty. It is also important that the laws regulating the pay and
emoluments of officers generally should be more specific than they now
are. Those, for example, in relation to the Pay Master and Surgeon
General assign to them an annual salary of $2.500, but are silent as to
allowances which in certain exigencies of the service may be deemed
indispensable to the discharge of their duties. This circumstance has
been the authority for extending to them various allowances at
different times under former Administrations, but no uniform rule has
been observed on the subject. Similar inconveniences exist in other
cases, in which the construction put upon the laws by the public
accountants may operate unequally, produce confusion, and expose
officers to the odium of claiming what is not their due.

I recommend to your fostering care, as one of our safest means of
national defense, the Military Academy. This institution has already
exercised the happiest influence upon the moral and intellectual
character of our Army; and such of the graduates as from various causes
may not pursue the profession of arms will be scarcely less useful as
citizens. Their knowledge of the military art will be advantageously
employed in the militia service, and in a measure secure to that class
of troops the advantages which in this respect belong to standing
armies.

I would also suggest a review of the pension law, for the purpose of
extending its benefits to every Revolutionary soldier who aided in
establishing our liberties, and who is unable to maintain himself in
comfort. These relics of the War of Independence have strong claims
upon their country's gratitude and bounty. The law is defective in not
embracing within its provisions all those who were during the last war
disabled from supporting themselves by manual labor. Such an amendment
would add but little to the amount of pensions, and is called for by
the sympathies of the people as well as by considerations of sound
policy.

It will be perceived that a large addition to the list of pensioners
has been occasioned by an order of the late Administration, departing
materially from the rules which had previously prevailed. Considering
it an act of legislation, I suspended its operation as soon as I was
informed that it had commenced. Before this period, however,
applications under the new regulation had been preferred to the number
of 154, of which, on March 27, the date of its revocation, 87 were
admitted. For the amount there was neither estimate nor appropriation;
and besides this deficiency, the regular allowances, according to the
rules which have heretofore governed the Department, exceed the
estimate of its late Secretary by about $50,000, for which an
appropriation is asked.

Your particular attention is requested to that part of the report of
the Secretary of War which relates to the money held in trust for the
Seneca tribe of Indians. It will be perceived that without legislative
aid the Executive can not obviate the embarrassments occasioned by the
diminution of the dividends on that fund, which originally amounted to
$100,000, and has recently been invested in United States 3% stock.

The condition and ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes within the
limits of some of our States have become objects of much interest and
importance. It has long been the policy of Government to introduce
among them the arts of civilization, in the hope of gradually
reclaiming them from a wandering life. This policy has, however, been
coupled with another wholly incompatible with its success. Professing a
desire to civilize and settle them, we have at the same time lost no
opportunity to purchase their lands and thrust them farther into the
wilderness. By this means they have not only been kept in a wandering
state, but been led to look upon us as unjust and indifferent to their
fate. Thus, though lavish in its expenditures upon the subject,
Government has constantly defeated its own policy, and the Indians in
general, receding farther and farther to the west, have retained their
savage habits. A portion, however, of the Southern tribes, having
mingled much with the whites and made some progress in the arts of
civilized life, have lately attempted to erect an independent
government within the limits of Georgia and Alabama. These States,
claiming to be the only sovereigns within their territories, extended
their laws over the Indians, which induced the latter to call upon the
United States for protection.

Under these circumstances the question presented was whether the
General Government had a right to sustain those people in their
pretensions. The Constitution declares that "no new State shall be
formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State" without
the consent of its legislature. If the General Government is not
permitted to tolerate the erection of a confederate State within the
territory of one of the members of this Union against her consent, much
less could it allow a foreign and independent government to establish
itself there.

Georgia became a member of the Confederacy which eventuated in our
Federal Union as a sovereign State, always asserting her claim to
certain limits, which, having been originally defined in her colonial
charter and subsequently recognized in the treaty of peace, she has
ever since continued to enjoy, except as they have been circumscribed
by her own voluntary transfer of a portion of her territory to the
United States in the articles of cession of 1802. Alabama was admitted
into the Union on the same footing with the original States, with
boundaries which were prescribed by Congress.

There is no constitutional, conventional, or legal provision which
allows them less power over the Indians within their borders than is
possessed by Maine or New York. Would the people of Maine permit the
Penobscot tribe to erect an independent government within their State?
And unless they did would it not be the duty of the General Government
to support them in resisting such a measure? Would the people of New
York permit each remnant of the six Nations within her borders to
declare itself an independent people under the protection of the United
States? Could the Indians establish a separate republic on each of
their reservations in Ohio? And if they were so disposed would it be
the duty of this Government to protect them in the attempt? If the
principle involved in the obvious answer to these questions be
abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this Government are
reversed, and that it has become a part of its duty to aid in
destroying the States which it was established to protect.

Actuated by this view of the subject, I informed the Indians inhabiting
parts of Georgia and Alabama that their attempt to establish an
independent government would not be countenanced by the Executive of
the United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi
or submit to the laws of those States.

Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national
character. Their present condition, contrasted with what they once
were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies. Our ancestors
found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By
persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river
and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become
extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for a while their
once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of
civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him
to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and
the Delaware is fast over-taking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the
Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the
limits of the States does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national
honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a
calamity. It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United
States to include them and their territory within the bounds of new
States, whose limits they could control. That step can not be retraced.
A State can not be dismembered by Congress or restricted in the
exercise of her constitutional power. But the people of those States
and of every State, actuated by feelings of justice and a regard for
our national honor, submit to you the interesting question whether
something can not be done, consistently with the rights of the States,
to preserve this much-injured race.  As a means of effecting this end I
suggest for your consideration the propriety of setting apart an ample
district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any State
or Territory now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long
as they shall occupy it, each tribe having a distinct control over the
portion designated for its use. There they may be secured in the
enjoyment of governments of their own choice, subject to no other
control from the United States than such as may be necessary to
preserve peace on the frontier and between the several tribes. There
the benevolent may endeavor to teach them the arts of civilization,
and, by promoting union and harmony among them, to raise up an
interesting commonwealth, destined to perpetuate the race and to attest
the humanity and justice of this Government.

This emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust
to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and
seek a home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed
that if they remain within the limits of the States they must be
subject to their laws. In return for their obedience as individuals
they will without doubt be protected in the enjoyment of those
possessions which they have improved by their industry. But it seems to
me visionary to suppose that in this state of things claims can be
allowed on tracts of country on which they have neither dwelt nor made
improvements, merely because they have seen them from the mountain or
passed them in the chase. Submitting to the laws of the States, and
receiving, like other citizens, protection in their persons and
property, they will ere long become merged in the mass of our
population.

The accompanying report of the Secretary of the Navy will make you
acquainted with the condition and useful employment of that branch of
our service during the present year. Constituting as it does the best
standing security of this country against foreign aggression, it claims
the especial attention of Government. In this spirit the measures which
since the termination of the last war have been in operation for its
gradual enlargement were adopted, and it should continue to be
cherished as the off-spring of our national experience. It will be
seen, however, that not withstanding the great solicitude which has
been manifested for the perfect organization of this arm and the
liberality of the appropriations which that solicitude has suggested,
this object has in many important respects not been secured.

In time of peace we have need of no more ships of war than are
requisite to the protection of our commerce. Those not wanted for this
object must lay in the harbors, where without proper covering they
rapidly decay, and even under the best precautions for their
preservation must soon become useless. Such is already the case with
many of our finest vessels, which, though unfinished, will now require
immense sums of money to be restored to the condition in which they
were when committed to their proper element.

On this subject there can be but little doubt that our best policy
would be to discontinue the building of ships of the first and second
class, and look rather to the possession of ample materials, prepared
for the emergencies of war, than to the number of vessels which we can
float in a season of peace, as the index of our naval power. Judicious
deposits in navy yards of timber and other materials, fashioned under
the hands of skillful work-men and fitted for prompt application to
their various purposes, would enable us at all times to construct
vessels as fast as they can be manned, and save the heavy expense of
repairs, except to such vessels as must be employed in guarding our
commerce.

The proper points for the establishment of these yards are indicated
with so much force in the report of the Navy Board that in recommending
it to your attention I deem it unnecessary to do more than express my
hearty concurrence in their views. The yard in this District, being
already furnished with most of the machinery necessary for ship
building, will be competent to the supply of the two selected by the
Board as the best for the concentration of materials, and, from the
facility and certainty of communication between them, it will be
useless to incur at those depots the expense of similar machinery,
especially that used in preparing the usual metallic and wooden
furniture of vessels.

Another improvement would be effected by dispensing altogether with the
Navy Board as now constituted, and substituting in its stead bureaux
similar to those already existing in the War Department. Each member of
the Board, transferred to the head of a separate bureau charged with
specific duties, would feel in its highest degree that wholesome
responsibility which can not be divided without a far more than
proportionate diminution of its force. Their valuable services would
become still more so when separately appropriated to distinct portions
of the great interests of the Navy, to the prosperity of which each
would be impelled to devote himself by the strongest motives. Under
such an arrangement every branch of this important service would assume
a more simple and precise character, its efficiency would be increased,
and scrupulous economy in the expenditure of public money promoted.

I would also recommend that the Marine Corps be merged in the artillery
or infantry, as the best mode of curing the many defects in its
organization. But little exceeding in number any of the regiments of
infantry, that corps has, besides its lieutenant-colonel commandant,
five brevet lieutenant-colonels, who receive the full pay and
emoluments of their brevet rank, without rendering proportionate
service. Details for marine service could as well be made from the
artillery or infantry, there being no peculiar training requisite for
it.

With these improvements, and such others as zealous watchfulness and
mature consideration may suggest, there can be little doubt that under
an energetic administration of its affairs the Navy may soon be made
every thing that the nation wishes it to be. Its efficiency in the
suppression of piracy in the West India seas, and wherever its
squadrons have been employed in securing the interests of the country,
will appear from the report of the Secretary, to which I refer you for
other interesting details. Among these I would bespeak the attention of
Congress for the views presented in relation to the inequality between
the Army and Navy as to the pay of officers. No such inequality should
prevail between these brave defenders of their country, and where it
does exist it is submitted to Congress whether it ought not to be
rectified.

The report of the Post Master General is referred to as exhibiting a
highly satisfactory administration of that Department. Abuses have been
reformed, increased expedition in the transportation of the mail
secured, and its revenue much improved. In a political point of view
this Department is chiefly important as affording the means of
diffusing knowledge. It is to the body politic what the veins and
arteries are to the natural--conveying rapidly and regularly to the
remotest parts of the system correct information of the operations of
the Government, and bringing back to it the wishes and feelings of the
people. Through its agency we have secured to ourselves the full
enjoyment of the blessings of a free press.

In this general survey of our affairs a subject of high importance
presents itself in the present organization of the judiciary. An
uniform operation of the Federal Government in the different States is
certainly desirable, and existing as they do in the Union on the basis
of perfect equality, each State has a right to expect that the benefits
conferred on the citizens of others should be extended to hers. The
judicial system of the United States exists in all its efficiency in
only fifteen members of the Union; to three others the circuit courts,
which constitute an important part of that system, have been
imperfectly extended, and to the remaining six altogether denied. The
effect has been to withhold from the inhabitants of the latter the
advantages afforded (by the Supreme Court) to their fellow citizens in
other States in the whole extent of the criminal and much of the civil
authority of the Federal judiciary. That this state of things ought to
be remedied, if it can be done consistently with the public welfare, is
not to be doubted. Neither is it to be disguised that the organization
of our judicial system is at once a difficult and delicate task. To
extend the circuit courts equally throughout the different parts of the
Union, and at the same time to avoid such a multiplication of members
as would encumber the supreme appellate tribunal, is the object
desired. Perhaps it might be accomplished by dividing the circuit
judges into two classes, and providing that the Supreme Court should be
held by these classes alternately, the Chief Justice always presiding.

If an extension of the circuit court system to those States which do
not now enjoy its benefits should be determined upon, it would of
course be necessary to revise the present arrangement of the circuits;
and even if that system should not be enlarged, such a revision is
recommended.

A provision for taking the census of the people of the United States
will, to insure the completion of that work within a convenient time,
claim the early attention of Congress.

The great and constant increase of business in the Department of State
forced itself at an early period upon the attention of the Executive.
Thirteen years ago it was, in Mr. Madison's last message to Congress,
made the subject of an earnest recommendation, which has been repeated
by both of his successors; and my comparatively limited experience has
satisfied me of its justness. It has arisen from many causes, not the
least of which is the large addition that has been made to the family
of independent nations and the proportionate extension of our foreign
relations. The remedy proposed was the establishment of a home
department--a measure which does not appear to have met the views of
Congress on account of its supposed tendency to increase, gradually and
imperceptibly, the already too strong bias of the federal system toward
the exercise of authority not delegated to it. I am not, therefore,
disposed to revive the recommendation, but am not the less impressed
with the importance of so organizing that Department that its Secretary
may devote more of his time to our foreign relations. Clearly satisfied
that the public good would be promoted by some suitable provision on
the subject, I respectfully invite your attention to it.

The charter of the Bank of the United States expires in 1836, and its
stock holders will most probably apply for a renewal of their
privileges. In order to avoid the evils resulting from precipitancy in
a measure involving such important principles and such deep pecuniary
interests, I feel that I can not, in justice to the parties interested,
too soon present it to the deliberate consideration of the Legislature
and the people. Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the
law creating this bank are well questioned by a large portion of our
fellow citizens, and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in
the great end of establishing an uniform and sound currency.

Under these circumstances, if such an institution is deemed essential
to the fiscal operations of the Government, I submit to the wisdom of
the Legislature whether a national one, founded upon the credit of the
Government and its revenues, might not be devised which would avoid all
constitutional difficulties and at the same time secure all the
advantages to the Government and country that were expected to result
from the present bank.

I can not close this communication without bringing to your view the
just claim of the representatives of Commodore Decatur, his officers
and crew, arising from the recapture of the frigate Philadelphia under
the heavy batteries of Tripoli. Although sensible, as a general rule,
of the impropriety of Executive interference under a Government like
ours, where every individual enjoys the right of directly petitioning
Congress, yet, viewing this case as one of very peculiar character, I
deem it my duty to recommend it to your favorable consideration.
Besides the justice of this claim, as corresponding to those which have
been since recognized and satisfied, it is the fruit of a deed of
patriotic and chivalrous daring which infused life and confidence into
our infant Navy and contributed as much as any exploit in its history
to elevate our national character. Public gratitude, therefore, stamps
her seal upon it, and the meed should not be withheld which may here
after operate as a stimulus to our gallant tars.

I now commend you, fellow citizens, to the guidance of Almighty God,
with a full reliance on His merciful providence for the maintenance of
our free institutions, and with an earnest supplication that what ever
errors it may be my lot to commit in discharging the arduous duties
which have devolved on me will find a remedy in the harmony and wisdom
of your counsels.

***

State of the Union Address
Andrew Jackson
December 6, 1830

Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

The pleasure I have in congratulating you upon your return to your
constitutional duties is much heightened by the satisfaction which the
condition of our beloved country at this period justly inspires. The
beneficent Author of All Good has granted to us during the present year
health, peace, and plenty, and numerous causes for joy in the wonderful
success which attends the progress of our free institutions.

With a population unparalleled in its increase, and possessing a
character which combines the hardihood of enterprise with the
considerateness of wisdom, we see in every section of our happy country
a steady improvement in the means of social intercourse, and
correspondent effects upon the genius and laws of our extended
Republic.

The apparent exceptions to the harmony of the prospect are to be
referred rather to inevitable diversities in the various interests
which enter into the composition of so extensive a whole than any want
of attachment to the Union--interests whose collisions serve only in
the end to foster the spirit of conciliation and patriotism so
essential to the preservation of that Union which I most devoutly hope
is destined to prove imperishable.

In the midst of these blessings we have recently witnessed changes in
the conditions of other nations which may in their consequences call
for the utmost vigilance, wisdom, and unanimity in our councils, and
the exercise of all the moderation and patriotism of our people.

The important modifications of their Government, effected with so much
courage and wisdom by the people of France, afford a happy presage of
their future course, and have naturally elicited from the kindred
feelings of this nation that spontaneous and universal burst of
applause in which you have participated. In congratulating you, my
fellow citizens, upon an event so auspicious to the dearest interests
of man-kind I do no more than respond to the voice of my country,
without transcending in the slightest degree that salutary maxim of the
illustrious Washington which enjoins an abstinence from all
interference with the internal affairs of other nations. From a people
exercising in the most unlimited degree the right of self-government,
and enjoying, as derived from this proud characteristic, under the
favor of Heaven, much of the happiness with which they are blessed; a
people who can point in triumph to their free institutions and
challenge comparison with the fruits they bear, as well as with the
moderation, intelligence, and energy with which they are administered--
from such a people the deepest sympathy was to be expected in a
struggle for the sacred principles of liberty, conducted in a spirit
every way worthy of the cause, and crowned by a heroic moderation which
has disarmed revolution of its terrors. Not withstanding the strong
assurances which the man whom we so sincerely love and justly admire
has given to the world of the high character of the present King of the
French, and which if sustained to the end will secure to him the proud
appellation of Patriot King, it is not in his success, but in that of
the great principle which has borne him to the throne--the paramount
authority of the public will--that the American people rejoice.

I am happy to inform you that the anticipations which were indulged at
the date of my last communication on the subject of our foreign affairs
have been fully realized in several important particulars.

An arrangement has been effected with Great Britain in relation to the
trade between the United States and her West India and North American
colonies which has settled a question that has for years afforded
matter for contention and almost uninterrupted discussion, and has been
the subject of no less than six negotiations, in a manner which
promises results highly favorable to the parties.

The abstract right of Great Britain to monopolize the trade with her
colonies or to exclude us from a participation therein has never been
denied by the United States. But we have contended, and with reason,
that if at any time Great Britain may desire the productions of this
country as necessary to her colonies they must be received upon
principles of just reciprocity, and, further, that it is making an
invidious and unfriendly distinction to open her colonial ports to the
vessels of other nations and close them against those of the United
States.

Antecedently to 1794 a portion of our productions was admitted into the
colonial islands of Great Britain by particular concessions, limited to
the term of one year, but renewed from year to year. In the
transportation of these productions, however, our vessels were not
allowed to engage, this being a privilege reserved to British shipping,
by which alone our produce could be taken to the islands and theirs
brought to us in return. From Newfoundland and her continental
possessions all our productions, as well as our vessels, were excluded,
with occasional relaxations, by which, in seasons of distress, the
former were admitted in British bottoms.

By the treaty of 1794 she offered to concede to us for a limited time
the right of carrying to her West India possessions in our vessels not
exceeding 70 tons burthen, and upon the same terms as British vessels,
any productions of the United States which British vessels might import
therefrom. But this privilege was coupled with conditions which are
supposed to have led to its rejection by the Senate; that is, that
American vessels should land their return cargoes in the United States
only, and, moreover, that they should during the continuance of the
privilege be precluded from carrying molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or
cotton either from those islands or from the United States to any other
part of the world. Great Britain readily consented to expunge this
article from the treaty, and subsequent attempts to arrange the terms
of the trade either by treaty stipulations or concerted legislation
have failed, it has been successively suspended and allowed according
to the varying legislation of the parties.

The following are the prominent points which have in later years
separated the two Governments: Besides a restriction whereby all
importations into her colonies in American vessels are confined to our
own products carried hence, a restriction to which it does not appear
that we have ever objected, a leading object on the part of Great
Britain has been to prevent us from becoming the carriers of British
West India commodities to any other country than our own. On the part
of the United States it has been contended, first, that the subject
should be regulated by treaty stipulation in preference to separate
legislation; second, that our productions, when imported into the
colonies in question, should not be subject to higher duties than the
productions of the mother country or of her other colonial possessions,
and, 3rd, that our vessels should be allowed to participate in the
circuitous trade between the United States and different parts of the
British dominions.

The first point, after having been for a long time strenuously insisted
upon by Great Britain, was given up by the act of Parliament of July,
1825, all vessels suffered to trade with the colonies being permitted
to clear from thence with any articles which British vessels might
export and proceed to any part of the world, Great Britain and her
dependencies alone excepted. On our part each of the above points had
in succession been explicitly abandoned in negotiations preceding that
of which the result is now announced.

This arrangement secures to the United States every advantage asked by
them, and which the state of the negotiation allowed us to insist upon.
The trade will be placed upon a footing decidedly more favorable to
this country than any on which it ever stood, and our commerce and
navigation will enjoy in the colonial ports of Great Britain every
privilege allowed to other nations.

That the prosperity of the country so far as it depends on this trade
will be greatly promoted by the new arrangement there can be no doubt.
Independently of the more obvious advantages of an open and direct
intercourse, its establishment will be attended with other consequences
of a higher value. That which has been carried on since the mutual
interdict under all the expense and inconvenience unavoidably incident
to it would have been insupportably onerous had it not been in a great
degree lightened by concerted evasions in the mode of making the
transshipments at what are called the neutral ports. These indirections
are inconsistent with the dignity of nations that have so many motives
not only to cherish feelings of mutual friendship, but to maintain such
relations as will stimulate their respective citizens and subjects to
efforts of direct, open, and honorable competition only, and preserve
them from the influence of seductive and vitiating circumstances.

When your preliminary interposition was asked at the close of the last
session, a copy of the instructions under which Mr. McLane has acted,
together with the communications which had at that time passed between
him and the British Government, was laid before you. Although there has
not been any thing in the acts of the two Governments which requires
secrecy, it was thought most proper in the then state of the
negotiation to make that communication a confidential one. So soon,
however, as the evidence of execution on the part of Great Britain is
received the whole matter shall be laid before you, when it will be
seen that the apprehension which appears to have suggested one of the
provisions of the act passed at your last session, that the restoration
of the trade in question might be connected with other subjects and was
sought to be obtained at the sacrifice of the public interest in other
particulars, was wholly unfounded, and that the change which has taken
place in the views of the British Government has been induced by
considerations as honorable to both parties as I trust the result will
prove beneficial.

This desirable result was, it will be seen, greatly promoted by the
liberal and confiding provisions of the act of Congress of the last
session, by which our ports were upon the reception and annunciation by
the President of the required assurance on the part of Great Britain
forthwith opened to her vessels before the arrangement could be carried
into effect on her part, pursuing in this act of prospective
legislation a similar course to that adopted by Great Britain in
abolishing, by her act of Parliament in 1825, a restriction then
existing and permitting our vessels to clear from the colonies on their
return voyages for any foreign country whatever before British vessels
had been relieved from the restriction imposed by our law of returning
directly from the United States to the colonies, a restriction which
she required and expected that we should abolish. Upon each occasion a
limited and temporary advantage has been given to the opposite party,
but an advantage of no importance in comparison with the restoration of
mutual confidence and good feeling, and the ultimate establishment of
the trade upon fair principles.

It gives me unfeigned pleasure to assure you that this negotiation has
been throughout characterized by the most frank and friendly spirit on
the part of Great Britain, and concluded in a manner strongly
indicative of a sincere desire to cultivate the best relations with the
United States. To reciprocate this disposition to the fullest extent of
my ability is a duty which I shall deem it a privilege to discharge.

Although the result is itself the best commentary on the services
rendered to his country by our minister at the Court of St. James, it
would be doing violence to my feelings were I to dismiss the subject
without expressing the very high sense I entertain of the talent and
exertion which have been displayed by him on the occasion.

The injury to the commerce of the United States resulting from the
exclusion of our vessels from the Black Sea and the previous footing of
mere sufferance upon which even the limited trade enjoyed by us with
Turkey has hitherto been placed have for a long time been a source of
much solicitude to this Government, and several endeavors have been
made to obtain a better state of things. Sensible of the importance of
the object, I felt it my duty to leave no proper means unemployed to
acquire for our flag the same privileges that are enjoyed by the
principal powers of Europe. Commissioners were consequently appointed
to open a negotiation with the Sublime Porte. Not long after the member
of the commission who went directly from the United States had sailed,
the account of the treaty of Adrianople, by which one of the objects in
view was supposed to be secured, reached this country. The Black Sea
was understood to be opened to us. Under the supposition that this was
the case, the additional facilities to be derived from the
establishment of commercial regulations with the Porte were deemed of
sufficient importance to require a prosecution of the negotiation as
originally contemplated. It was therefore persevered in, and resulted
in a treaty, which will be forthwith laid before the Senate.

By its provisions a free passage is secured, without limitations of
time, to the vessels of the United States to and from the Black Sea,
including the navigation thereof, and our trade with Turkey is placed
on the footing of the most favored nation. The latter is an arrangement
wholly independent of the treaty of Adrianople, and the former derives
much value, not only from the increased security which under any
circumstances it would give to the right in question, but from the
fact, ascertained in the course of the negotiation, that by the
construction put upon that treaty by Turkey the article relating to the
passage of the Bosphorus is confined to nations having treaties with
the Porte. The most friendly feelings appear to be entertained by the
Sultan, and an enlightened disposition is evinced by him to foster the
intercourse between the two countries by the most liberal arrangements.
This disposition it will be our duty and interest to cherish.

Our relations with Russia are of the most stable character. Respect for
that Empire and confidence in its friendship toward the United States
have been so long entertained on our part and so carefully cherished by
the present Emperor and his illustrious predecessor as to have become
incorporated with the public sentiment of the United States. No means
will be left unemployed on my part to promote these salutary feelings
and those improvements of which the commercial intercourse between the
two countries is susceptible, and which have derived increased
importance from our treaty with the Sublime Porte.

I sincerely regret to inform you that our minister lately commissioned
to that Court, on whose distinguished talents and great experience in
public affairs I place great reliance, has been compelled by extreme
indisposition to exercise a privilege which, in consideration of the
extent to which his constitution had been impaired in the public
service, was committed to his discretion--of leaving temporarily his
post for the advantage of a more genial climate.

If, as it is to be hoped, the improvement of his health should be such
as to justify him in doing so, he will repair to St. Petersburg and
resume the discharge of his official duties. I have received the most
satisfactory assurances that in the mean time the public interest in
that quarter will be preserved from prejudice by the intercourse which
he will continue through the secretary of legation with the Russian
cabinet.

You are apprised, although the fact has not yet been officially
announced to the House of Representatives, that a treaty was in the
month of March last concluded between the United States, and Denmark,
by which $650 thousand are secured to our citizens as an indemnity for
spoliations upon their commerce in the years 1808, 1809, 1810, and
1811. This treaty was sanctioned by the Senate at the close of its last
session, and it now becomes the duty of Congress to pass the necessary
laws for the organization of the board of commissioners to distribute
the indemnity among the claimants. It is an agreeable circumstance in
this adjustment that the terms are in conformity with the previously
ascertained views of the claimants themselves, thus removing all
pretense for a future agitation of the subject in any form.

The negotiations in regard to such points in our foreign relations as
remain to be adjusted have been actively prosecuted during the recess.
Material advances have been made, which are of a character to promise
favorable results. Our country, by the blessing of God, is not in a
situation to invite aggression, and it will be our fault if she ever
becomes so. Sincerely desirous to cultivate the most liberal and
friendly relations with all; ever ready to fulfill our engagements with
scrupulous fidelity; limiting our demands upon others to mere justice;
holding ourselves ever ready to do unto them as we would wish to be
done by, and avoiding even the appearance of undue partiality to any
nation, it appears to me impossible that a simple and sincere
application of our principles to our foreign relations can fail to
place them ultimately upon the footing on which it is our wish they
should rest.

Of the points referred to, the most prominent are our claims upon
France for spoliations upon our commerce; similar claims upon Spain,
together with embarrassments in the commercial intercourse between the
two countries which ought to be removed; the conclusion of the treaty
of commerce and navigation with Mexico, which has been so long in
suspense, as well as the final settlement of limits between ourselves
and that Republic, and, finally, the arbitrament of the question
between the United States and Great Britain in regard to the
north-eastern boundary.

The negotiation with France has been conducted by our minister with
zeal and ability, and in all respects to my entire satisfaction.
Although the prospect of a favorable termination was occasionally
dimmed by counter pretensions to which the United States could not
assent, he yet had strong hopes of being able to arrive at a
satisfactory settlement with the late Government. The negotiation has
been renewed with the present authorities, and, sensible of the general
and lively confidence of our citizens in the justice and magnanimity of
regenerated France, I regret the more not to have it in my power yet to
announce the result so confidently anticipated. No ground, however,
inconsistent with this expectation has yet been taken, and I do not
allow myself to doubt that justice will soon be done us. The amount of
the claims, the length of time they have remained unsatisfied, and
their incontrovertible justice make an earnest prosecution of them by
this Government an urgent duty. The illegality of the seizures and
confiscations out of which they have arisen is not disputed, and what
ever distinctions may have heretofore been set up in regard to the
liability of the existing Government it is quite clear that such
considerations can not now be interposed.

The commercial intercourse between the two countries is susceptible of
highly advantageous improvements, but the sense of this injury has had,
and must continue to have, a very unfavorable influence upon them. From
its satisfactory adjustment not only a firm and cordial friendship, but
a progressive development of all their relations, may be expected. It
is, therefore, my earnest hope that this old and vexatious subject of
difference may be speedily removed.

I feel that my confidence in our appeal to the motives which should
govern a just and magnanimous nation is alike warranted by the
character of the French people and by the high voucher we possess for
the enlarged views and pure integrity of the Monarch who now presides
over their councils, and nothing shall be wanting on my part to meet
any manifestation of the spirit we anticipate in one of corresponding
frankness and liberality.

The subjects of difference with Spain have been brought to the view of
that Government by our minister there with much force and propriety,
and the strongest assurances have been received of their early and
favorable consideration.

The steps which remained to place the matter in controversy between
Great Britain and the United States fairly before the arbitrator have
all been taken in the same liberal and friendly spirit which
characterized those before announced. Recent events have doubtless
served to delay the decision, but our minister at the Court of the
distinguished arbitrator has been assured that it will be made within
the time contemplated by the treaty.

I am particularly gratified in being able to state that a decidedly
favorable, and, as I hope, lasting, change has been effected in our
relations with the neighboring Republic of Mexico. The unfortunate and
unfounded suspicions in regard to our disposition which it became my
painful duty to advert to on a former occasion have been, I believe,
entirely removed, and the Government of Mexico has been made to
understand the real character of the wishes and views of this in regard
to that country. The consequences is the establishment of friendship
and mutual confidence. Such are the assurances I have received, and I
see no cause to doubt their sincerity.

I had reason to expect the conclusion of a commercial treaty with
Mexico in season for communication on the present occasion.
Circumstances which are not explained, but which I am persuaded are not
the result of an indisposition on her part to enter into it, have
produced the delay.

There was reason to fear in the course of the last summer that the
harmony of our relations might be disturbed by the acts of certain
claimants, under Mexican grants, of territory which had hitherto been
under our jurisdiction. The cooperation of the representative of Mexico
near this Government was asked on the occasion and was readily
afforded. Instructions and advice have been given to the governor of
Arkansas and the officers in command in the adjoining Mexican State by
which it is hoped the quiet of that frontier will be preserved until a
final settlement of the dividing line shall have removed all ground of
controversy.

The exchange of ratifications of the treaty concluded last year with
Austria has not yet taken place. The delay has been occasioned by the
non-arrival of the ratification of that Government within the time
prescribed by the treaty. Renewed authority has been asked for by the
representative of Austria, and in the mean time the rapidly increasing
trade and navigation between the two countries have been placed upon
the most liberal footing of our navigation acts.

Several alleged depredations have been recently committed on our
commerce by the national vessels of Portugal. They have been made the
subject of immediate remonstrance and reclamation. I am not yet
possessed of sufficient information to express a definitive opinion of
their character, but expect soon to receive it. No proper means shall
be omitted to obtain for our citizens all the redress to which they may
appear to be entitled.

Almost at the moment of the adjournment of your last session two
bills--the one entitled "An act for making appropriations for building
light houses, light boats, beacons, and monuments, placing buoys, and
for improving harbors and directing surveys", and the other "An act to
authorize a subscription for stock in the Louisville and Portland Canal
Company"--were submitted for my approval. It was not possible within
the time allowed for me before the close of the session to give to
these bills the consideration which was due to their character and
importance, and I was compelled to retain them for that purpose. I now
avail myself of this early opportunity to return them to the Houses in
which they respectively originated with the reasons which, after mature
deliberation, compel me to withhold my approval.

The practice of defraying out of the Treasury of the United States the
expenses incurred by the establishment and support of light houses,
beacons, buoys, and public piers within the bays, inlets, harbors, and
ports of the United States, to render the navigation thereof safe and
easy, is coeval with the adoption of the Constitution, and has been
continued without interruption or dispute.

As our foreign commerce increased and was extended into the interior of
the country by the establishment of ports of entry and delivery upon
our navigable rivers the sphere of those expenditures received a
corresponding enlargement. Light houses, beacons, buoys, public piers,
and the removal of sand bars, sawyers, and other partial or temporary
impediments in the navigable rivers and harbors which were embraced in
the revenue districts from time to time established by law were
authorized upon the same principle and the expense defrayed in the same
manner. That these expenses have at times been extravagant and
disproportionate is very probable. The circumstances under which they
are incurred are well calculated to lead to such a result unless their
application is subjected to the closest scrutiny. The local advantages
arising from the disbursement of public money too frequently, it is to
be feared, invite appropriations for objects of this character that are
neither necessary nor useful.

The number of light house keepers is already very large, and the bill
before me proposes to add to it 51 more of various descriptions. From
representations upon the subject which are understood to be entitled to
respect I am induced to believe that there has not only been great
improvidence in the past expenditures of the Government upon these
objects, but that the security of navigation has in some instances been
diminished by the multiplication of light houses and consequent change
of lights upon the coast. It is in this as in other respects our duty
to avoid all unnecessary expense, as well as every increase of
patronage not called for by the public service.

But in the discharge of that duty in this particular it must not be
forgotten that in relation to our foreign commerce the burden and
benefit of protecting and accommodating it necessarily go together, and
must do so as long as the public revenue is drawn from the people
through the custom house. It is indisputable that whatever gives
facility and security to navigation cheapens imports and all who
consume them are alike interested in what ever produces this effect. If
they consume, they ought, as they now do, to pay; otherwise they do not
pay. The consumer in the most inland State derives the same advantage
from every necessary and prudent expenditure for the facility and
security of our foreign commerce and navigation that he does who
resides in a maritime State. Local expenditures have not of themselves
a corresponding operation.

From a bill making direct appropriations for such objects I should
not have withheld my assent. The one now returned does so in several
particulars, but it also contains appropriations for surveys of local
character, which I can not approve. It gives me satisfaction to find
that no serious inconvenience has arisen from withholding my approval
from this bill; nor will it, I trust, be cause of regret that an
opportunity will be thereby afforded for Congress to review its
provisions under circumstances better calculated for full investigation
than those under which it was passed.

In speaking of direct appropriations I mean not to include a practice
which has obtained to some extent, and to which I have in one instance,
in a different capacity, given my assent--that of subscribing to the
stock of private associations. Positive experience and a more thorough
consideration of the subject have convinced me of the impropriety as
well as inexpediency of such investments. All improvements effected by
the funds of the nation for general use should be open to the enjoyment
of all our fellow citizens, exempt from the payment of tolls or any
imposition of that character. The practice of thus mingling the
concerns of the Government with those of the States or of individuals
is inconsistent with the object of its institution and highly impolite.
The successful operation of the federal system can only be preserved by
confining it to the few and simple, but yet important, objects for
which it was designed.

A different practice, if allowed to progress, would ultimately change
the character of this Government by consolidating into one the General
and State Governments, which were intended to be kept for ever
distinct. I can not perceive how bills authorizing such subscriptions
can be otherwise regarded than as bills for revenue, and consequently
subject to the rule in that respect prescribed by the Constitution. If
the interest of the Government in private companies is subordinate to
that of individuals, the management and control of a portion of the
public funds is delegated to an authority unknown to the Constitution
and beyond the supervision of our constituents; if superior, its
officers and agents will be constantly exposed to imputations of
favoritism and oppression. Direct prejudice the public interest or an
alienation of the affections and respect of portions of the people may,
therefore, in addition to the general discredit resulting to the
Government from embarking with its constituents in pecuniary
stipulations, be looked for as the probable fruit of such associations.
It is no answer to this objection to say that the extent of
consequences like these can not be great from a limited and small
number of investments, because experience in other matters teaches
us--and we are not at liberty to disregard its admonitions--that unless
an entire stop be put to them it will soon be impossible to prevent
their accumulation until they are spread over the whole country and
made to embrace many of the private and appropriate concerns of
individuals.

The power which the General Government would acquire within the several
States by becoming the principal stock-holder in corporations,
controlling every canal and each 60 or 100 miles of every important
road, and giving a proportionate vote in all their elections, is almost
inconceivable, and in my view dangerous to the liberties of the people.

This mode of aiding such works is also in its nature deceptive, and in
many cases conducive to improvidence in the administration of the
national funds. Appropriations will be obtained with much greater
facility and granted with less security to the public interest when the
measure is thus disguised than when definite and direct expenditures of
money are asked for. The interests of the nation would doubtless be
better served by avoiding all such indirect modes of aiding particular
objects. In a government like ours more especially should all public
acts be, as far as practicable, simple, undisguised, and intelligible,
that they may become fit subjects for the approbation to animadversion
of the people.

The bill authorizing a subscription to the Louisville and Portland
Canal affords a striking illustration of the difficulty of withholding
additional appropriations for the same object when the first erroneous
step has been taken by instituting a partnership between the Government
and private companies. It proposes a third subscription on the part of
the United States, when each preceding one was at the time regarded as
the extent of the aid which Government was to render to that work; and
the accompanying bill for light houses, etc., contains an appropriation
for a survey of the bed of the river, with a view to its improvement by
removing the obstruction which the canal is designed to avoid. This
improvement, if successful, would afford a free passage of the river
and render the canal entirely useless. To such improvidence is the
course of legislation subject in relation to internal improvements on
local matters, even with the best intentions on the part of Congress.

Although the motives which have influenced me in this matter may be
already sufficiently stated, I am, never the less, induced by its
importance to add a few observations of a general character.

In my objections to the bills authorizing subscriptions to the
Maysville and Rockville road companies I expressed my views fully in
regard to the power of Congress to construct roads and canals within a
State of to appropriate money for improvements of a local character. I
at the same time intimated me belief that the right to make
appropriations for such as were of a national character had been so
generally acted upon and so long acquiesced in by the Federal and State
Governments and the constituents of each as to justify its exercise on
the ground of continued and uninterrupted usage, but that it was, never
the less, highly expedient that appropriations even of that character
should, with the exception made at the time, be deferred until the
national debt is paid, and that in the mean while some general rule for
the action of the Government in that respect ought to be established.

These suggestions were not necessary to the decision of the question
then before me, and were, I readily admit, intended to awake the
attention and draw forth the opinion and observations of our
constituents upon a subject of the highest importance to their
interests, and one destined to exert a powerful influence upon the
future operations of our political system. I know of no tribunal to
which a public man in this country, in a case of doubt and difficulty,
can appeal with greater advantage or more propriety than the judgment
of the people; and although I must necessarily in the discharge of my
official duties be governed by the dictates of my own judgment, I have
no desire to conceal my anxious wish to conform as far as I can to the
views of those for whom I act.

All irregular expressions of public opinion are of necessity attended
with some doubt as to their accuracy, but making full allowances on
that account I can not, I think, deceive myself in believing that the
acts referred to, as well as the suggestions which I allowed myself to
make in relation to their bearing upon the future operations of the
Government, have been approved by the great body of the people. That
those whose immediate pecuniary interests are to be affected by
proposed expenditures should shrink from the application of a rule
which prefers their more general and remote interests to those which
are personal and immediate is to be expected. But even such objections
must from the nature of our population be but temporary in their
duration, and if it were otherwise our course should be the same, for
the time is yet, I hope, far distant when those intrusted with power to
be exercised for the good of the whole will consider it either honest
or wise to purchase local favors at the sacrifice of principle and
general good.

So understanding public sentiment, and thoroughly satisfied that the
best interests of our common country imperiously require that the
course which I have recommended in this regard should be adopted, I
have, upon the most mature consideration, determined to pursue it.

It is due to candor, as well as to my own feelings, that I should
express the reluctance and anxiety which I must at all times experience
in exercising the undoubted right of the Executive to withhold his
assent from bills on other grounds than their constitutionality. That
this right should not be exercised on slight occasions all will admit.
It is only in matters of deep interest, when the principle involved may
be justly regarded as next in importance to infractions of the
Constitution itself, that such a step can be expected to meet with the
approbation of the people. Such an occasion do I conscientiously
believe the present to be.

In the discharge of this delicate and highly responsible duty I am
sustained by the reflection that the exercise of this power has been
deemed consistent with the obligation of official duty by several of my
predecessors, and by the persuasion, too, that what ever liberal
institutions may have to fear from the encroachments of Executive
power, which has been every where the cause of so much strife and
bloody contention, but little danger is to be apprehended from a
precedent by which that authority denies to itself the exercise of
powers that bring in their train influence and patronage of great
extent, and thus excludes the operation of personal interests, every
where the bane of official trust.

I derive, too, no small degree of satisfaction from the reflection that
if I have mistaken the interests and wishes of the people the
Constitution affords the means of soon redressing the error by
selecting for the place their favor has bestowed upon me a citizen
whose opinions may accord with their own. I trust, in the mean time,
the interests of the nation will be saved from prejudice by a rigid
application of that portion of the public funds which might otherwise
be applied to different objects to that highest of all our obligations,
the payment of the public debt, and an opportunity be afforded for the
adoption of some better rule for the operations of the Government in
this matter than any which has hitherto been acted upon.

Profoundly impressed with the importance of the subject, not merely as
relates to the general prosperity of the country, but to the safety of
the federal system, I can not avoid repeating my earnest hope that all
good citizens who take a proper interest in the success and harmony of
our admirable political institutions, and who are incapable of desiring
to convert an opposite state of things into means for the gratification
of personal ambition, will, laying aside minor considerations and
discarding local prejudices, unite their honest exertions to establish
some fixed general principle which shall be calculated to effect the
greatest extent of public good in regard to the subject of internal
improvement, and afford the least ground for sectional discontent.

The general grounds of my objection to local appropriations have been
heretofore expressed, and I shall endeavor to avoid a repetition of
what has been already urged--the importance of sustaining the State
sovereignties as far as is consistent with the rightful action of the
Federal Government, and of preserving the greatest attainable harmony
between them. I will now only add an expression of my conviction--a
conviction which every day's experience serves to confirm--that the
political creed which inculcates the pursuit of those great objects as
a paramount duty is the true faith, and one to which we are mainly
indebted for the present success of the entire system, and to which we
must alone look for its future stability.

That there are diversities in the interests of the different States
which compose this extensive Confederacy must be admitted. Those
diversities arising from situation, climate, population, and pursuits
are doubtless, as it is natural they should be, greatly exaggerated by
jealousies and that spirit of rivalry so inseparable from neighboring
communities. These circumstances make it the duty of those who are
intrusted with the management of its affairs to neutralize their
effects as far as practicable by making the beneficial operation of the
Federal Government as equal and equitable among the several States as
can be done consistently with the great ends of its institution.

It is only necessary to refer to undoubted facts to see how far the
past acts of the Government upon the subject under consideration have
fallen short of this object. The expenditures heretofore made for
internal improvements amount to upward of $5 millions, and have been
distributed in very unequal proportions amongst the States. The
estimated expense of works of which surveys have been made, together
with that of others projected and partially surveyed, amounts to more
than $96 millions.

That such improvements, on account of particular circumstances, may be
more advantageously and beneficially made in some States than in others
is doubtless true, but that they are of a character which should
prevent an equitable distribution of the funds amongst the several
States is not to be conceded. The want of this equitable distribution
can not fail to prove a prolific source of irritation among the States.

We have it constantly before our eyes that professions of superior zeal
in the cause of internal improvement and a disposition to lavish the
public funds upon objects of this character are daily and earnestly put
forth by aspirants to power as constituting the highest claims to the
confidence of the people. Would it be strange, under such
circumstances, and in times of great excitement, that grants of this
description should find their motives in objects which may not accord
with the public good? Those who have not had occasion to see and regret
the indication of a sinister influence in these matters in past times
have been more fortunate than myself in their observation of the course
of public affairs. If to these evils be added the combinations and
angry contentions to which such a course of things gives rise, with
their baleful influences upon the legislation of Congress touching the
leading and appropriate duties of the Federal Government, it was but
doing justice to the character of our people to expect the severe
condemnation of the past which the recent exhibitions of public
sentiment has evinced.

Nothing short of a radical change in the action of the Government upon
the subject can, in my opinion, remedy the evil. If, as it would be
natural to expect, the States which have been least favored in past
appropriations should insist on being redressed in those here after to
be made, at the expense of the States which have so largely and
disproportionately participated, we have, as matters now stand, but
little security that the attempt would do more than change the
inequality from one quarter to another.

Thus viewing the subject, I have heretofore felt it my duty to
recommend the adoption of some plan for the distribution of the surplus
funds, which may at any time remain in the Treasury after the national
debt shall have been paid, among the States, in proportion to the
number of their Representatives, to be applied by them to objects of
internal improvement.

Although this plan has met with favor in some portions of the Union, it
has also elicited objections which merit deliberate consideration. A
brief notice of these objections here will not, therefore, I trust, be
regarded as out of place.

They rest, as far as they have come to my knowledge, on the following
grounds: first, an objection to the ration of distribution; second, an
apprehension that the existence of such a regulation would produce
improvident and oppressive taxation to raise the funds for
distribution; 3rd, that the mode proposed would lead to the
construction of works of a local nature, to the exclusion of such as
are general and as would consequently be of a more useful character;
and, last, that it would create a discreditable and injurious
dependence on the part of the State governments upon the Federal power.

Of those who object to the ration of representatives as the basis of
distribution, some insist that the importations of the respective
States would constitute one that would be more equitable; and others
again, that the extent of their respective territories would furnish a
standard which would be more expedient and sufficiently equitable. The
ration of representation presented itself to my mind, and it still
does, as one of obvious equity, because of its being the ratio of
contribution, whether the funds to be distributed be derived from the
customs or from direct taxation. It does not follow, however, that its
adoption is indispensable to the establishment of the system proposed.
There may be considerations appertaining to the subject which would
render a departure, to some extent, from the rule of contribution
proper. Nor is it absolutely necessary that the basis of distribution
be confined to one ground. It may, if in the judgment of those whose
right it is to fix it it be deemed politic and just to give it that
character, have regard to several.

In my first message I stated it to be my opinion that "it is not
probably that any adjustment of the tariff upon principles satisfactory
to the people of the Union will until a remote period, if ever, leave
the Government without a considerable surplus in the Treasury beyond
what may be required for its current surplus". I have had no cause to
change that opinion, but much to confirm it. Should these expectations
be realized, a suitable fund would thus be produced for the plan under
consideration to operate upon, and if there be no such fund its
adoption will, in my opinion, work no injury to any interest; for I can
not assent to the justness of the apprehension that the establishment
of the proposed system would tend to the encouragement of improvident
legislation of the character supposed. What ever the proper authority
in the exercise of constitutional power shall at any time here after
decide to be for the general good will in that as in other respects
deserve and receive the acquiescence and support of the whole country,
and we have ample security that every abuse of power in that regard by
agents of the people will receive a speedy and effectual corrective at
their hands. The views which I take of the future, founded on the
obvious and increasing improvement of all classes of our fellow
citizens in intelligence and in public and private virtue, leave me
without much apprehension on that head.

I do not doubt that those who come after us will be as much alive as we
are to the obligation upon all the trustees of political power to
exempt those for whom they act from all unnecessary burthens, and as
sensible of the great truth that the resources of the nation beyond
those required for immediate and necessary purposes of Government can
no where be so well deposited as in the pockets of the people.

It may some times happen that the interests of particular States would
not be deemed to coincide with the general interest in relation to
improvements within such States. But if the danger to be apprehended
from this source is sufficient to require it, a discretion might be
reserved to Congress to direct to such improvements of a general
character as the States concerned might not be disposed to unite in,
the application of the quotas of those States, under the restriction of
confining to each State the expenditure of its appropriate quota. It
may, however, be assumed as a safe general rule that such improvements
as serve to increase the prosperity of the respective States in which
they are made, by giving new facilities to trade, and thereby
augmenting the wealth and comfort of their inhabitants, constitute the
surest mode of conferring permanent and substantial advantages upon the
whole. The strength as well as the true glory of the Confederacy is
founded on the prosperity and power of the several independent
sovereignties of which it is composed and the certainty with which they
can be brought into successful active cooperation through the agency of
the Federal Government.

It is, more over, within the knowledge of such as are at all conversant
with public affairs that schemes of internal improvement have from time
to time been proposed which, from their extent and seeming
magnificence, were readily regarded as of national concernment, but
which upon fuller consideration and further experience would now be
rejected with great unanimity.

That the plan under consideration would derive important advantages
from its certainty, and that the moneys set apart for these purposes
would be more judiciously applied and economically expended under the
direction of the State legislatures, in which every part of each State
is immediately represented, can not, I think, be doubted. In the new
States particularly, where a comparatively small population is
scattered over an extensive surface, and the representation in Congress
consequently very limited, it is natural to expect that the
appropriations made by the Federal Government would be more likely to
be expended in the vicinity of those numbers through whose immediate
agency they were obtained than if the funds were placed under the
control of the legislature, in which every county of the State has its
own representative. This supposition does not necessarily impugn the
motives of such Congressional representatives, nor is it so intended.
We are all sensible of the bias to which the strongest minds and purest
hearts are, under such circumstances, liable. In respect to the last
objection--its probable effect upon the dignity and independence of
State governments--it appears to me only necessary to state the case as
it is, and as it would be if the measure proposed were adopted, to show
that the operation is most likely to be the very reverse of that which
the objection supposes.

In the one case the State would receive its quota of the national
revenue for domestic use upon a fixed principle as a matter of right,
and from a fund to the creation of which it had itself contributed its
fair proportion. Surely there could be nothing derogatory in that. As
matters now stand the States themselves, in their sovereign character,
are not unfrequently petitioners at the bar of the Federal Legislature
for such allowances out of the National Treasury as it may comport with
their pleasure or sense of duty to bestow upon them. It can not require
argument to prove which of the two courses is most compatible with the
efficiency or respectability of the State governments.

But all these are matters for discussion and dispassionate
consideration. That the desired adjustment would be attended with
difficulty affords no reason why it should not be attempted. The
effective operation of such motives would have prevented the adoption
of the Constitution under which we have so long lived and under the
benign influence of which our beloved country has so signally
prospered. The framers of that sacred instrument had greater
difficulties to overcome, and they did overcome them. The patriotism of
the people, directed by a deep conviction of the importance of the
Union, produced mutual concession and reciprocal forbearance. Strict
right was merged in a spirit of compromise, and the result has
consecrated their disinterested devotion to the general weal. Unless
the American people have degenerated, the same result can be again
effected when ever experience points out the necessity of a resort to
the same means to uphold the fabric which their fathers have reared.

It is beyond the power of man to make a system of government like ours
or any other operate with precise equality upon States situated like
those which compose this Confederacy; nor is inequality always
injustice. Every State can not expect to shape the measures of the
General Government to suit its own particular interests. The causes
which prevent it are seated in the nature of things, and can not be
entirely counteracted by human means. Mutual forbearance becomes,
therefore, a duty obligatory upon all, and we may, I am confident,
count upon a cheerful compliance with this high injunction on the part
of our constituents. It is not to be supposed that they will object to
make such comparatively inconsiderable sacrifices for the preservation
of rights and privileges which other less favored portions of the world
have in vain waded through seas of blood to acquire.

Our course is a safe one if it be but faithfully adhered to.
Acquiescence in the constitutionally expressed will of the majority,
and the exercise of that will in a spirit of moderation, justice, and
brotherly kindness, will constitute a cement which would for ever
preserve our Union. Those who cherish and inculcate sentiments like
these render a most essential service to their country, while those who
seek to weaken their influence are, how ever conscientious and praise
worthy their intentions, in effect its worst enemies.

If the intelligence and influence of the country, instead of laboring
to foment sectional prejudices, to be made subservient to party
warfare, were in good faith applied to the eradication of causes of
local discontent, by the improvement of our institutions and by
facilitating their adaptation to the condition of the times, this task
would prove one of less difficulty. May we not hope that the obvious
interests of our common country and the dictates of an enlightened
patriotism will in the end lead the public mind in that direction?

After all, the nature of the subject does not admit of a plan wholly
free from objection. That which has for some time been in operation is,
perhaps, the worst that could exist, and every advance that can be made
in its improvement is a matter eminently worthy of your most deliberate
attention.

It is very possible that one better calculated to effect the objects in
view may yet be devised. If so, it is to be hoped that those who
disapprove the past and dissent from what is proposed for the future
will feel it their duty to direct their attention to it, as they must
be sensible that unless some fixed rule for the action of the Federal
Government in this respect is established the course now attempted to
be arrested will be again resorted to. Any mode which is calculated to
give the greatest degree of effect and harmony to our legislation upon
the subject, which shall best serve to keep the movements of the
Federal Government within the sphere intended by those who modeled and
those who adopted it, which shall lead to the extinguishment of the
national debt in the shortest period and impose the lightest burthens
upon our constituents, shall receive from me a cordial and firm
support.

Among the objects of great national concern I can not omit to press
again upon your attention that part of the Constitution which regulates
the election of President and Vice-President. The necessity for its
amendment is made so clear to my mind by observation of its evils and
by the many able discussions which they have elicited on the floor of
Congress and elsewhere that I should be wanting to my duty were I to
withhold another expression of my deep solicitude on the subject. Our
system fortunately contemplates a recurrence to first principles,
differing in this respect from all that have preceded it, and securing
it, I trust, equally against the decay and the commotions which have
marked the progress of other governments.

Our fellow citizens, too, who in proportion to their love of liberty
keep a steady eye upon the means of sustaining it, do not require to be
reminded of the duty they owe to themselves to remedy all essential
defects in so vital a part of their system. While they are sensible
that every evil attendant upon its operation is not necessarily
indicative of a bad organization, but may proceed from temporary
causes, yet the habitual presence, or even a single instance, of evils
which can be clearly traced to an organic defect will not, I trust, be
over-looked through a too scrupulous veneration for the work of their
ancestors.

The Constitution was an experiment committed to the virtue and
intelligence of the great mass of our country-men, in whose ranks the
framers of it themselves were to perform the part of patriotic
observation and scrutiny, and if they have passed from the stage of
existence with an increased confidence in its general adaptation to our
condition we should learn from authority so high the duty of fortifying
the points in it which time proves to be exposed rather than be
deterred from approaching them by the suggestions of fear or the
dictates of misplaced reverence.

A provision which does not secure to the people a direct choice of
their Chief Magistrate, but has a tendency to defeat their will,
presented to my mind such an inconsistence with the general spirit of
our institutions that I was indeed to suggest for your consideration
the substitute which appeared to me at the same time the most likely to
correct the evil and to meet the views of our constituents. The most
mature reflection since has added strength to the belief that the best
interests of our country require the speedy adoption of some plan
calculated to effect this end. A contingency which some times places it
in the power of a single member of the House of Representatives to
decide an election of so high and solemn a character is unjust to the
people, and becomes when it occurs a source of embarrassment to the
individuals thus brought into power and a cause of distrust of the
representative body.

Liable as the Confederacy is, from its great extent, to parties founded
upon sectional interests, and to a corresponding multiplication of
candidates for the Presidency, the tendency of the constitutional
reference to the House of Representatives is to devolve the election
upon that body in almost every instance, and, what ever choice may then
be made among the candidates thus presented to them, to swell the
influence of particular interests to a degree inconsistent with the
general good. The consequences of this feature of the Constitution
appear far more threatening to the peace and integrity of the Union
than any which I can conceive as likely to result from the simple
legislative action of the Federal Government.

It was a leading object with the framers of the Constitution to keep as
separate as possible the action of the legislative and executive
branches of the Government. To secure this object nothing is more
essential than to preserve the former from all temptations of private
interest, and therefore so to direct the patronage of the latter as not
to permit such temptations to be offered. Experience abundantly
demonstrates that every precaution in this respect is a valuable
safe-guard of liberty, and one which my reflections upon the tendencies
of our system incline me to think should be made still stronger.

It was for this reason that, in connection with an amendment of the
Constitution removing all intermediate agency in the choice of the
President, I recommended some restrictions upon the re-eligibility of
that officer and upon the tenure of offices generally. The reason still
exists, and I renew the recommendation with an increased confidence
that its adoption will strengthen those checks by which the
Constitution designed to secure the independence of each department of
the Government and promote the healthful and equitable administration
of all the trusts which it has created.

The agent most likely to contravene this design of the Constitution is
the Chief Magistrate. In order, particularly, that his appointment may
as far as possible be placed beyond the reach of any improper
influences; in order that he may approach the solemn responsibilities
of the highest office in the gift of a free people uncommitted to any
other course than the strict line of constitutional duty, and that the
securities for this independence may be rendered as strong as the
nature of power and the weakness of its possessor will admit, I can not
too earnestly invite your attention to the propriety of promoting such
an amendment of the Constitution as will render him ineligible after
one term of service.

It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy
of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly 30 years, in relation to
the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching
to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the
provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and
it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also
to seek the same obvious advantages.

The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United
States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The
pecuniary advantages which it promises to the Government are the least
of its recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of
collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments
on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized
population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage
hunters. By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north
and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will
incalculably strengthen the south west frontier and render the adjacent
States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It
will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of
Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly
in population, wealth, and power. It will separate the Indians from
immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power
of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and
under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay,
which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually,
under the protection of the Government and through the influence of
good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an
interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These consequences,
some of them so certain and the rest so probable, make the complete
execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress at their last session an
object of much solicitude.

Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly
feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them
from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. I
have endeavored to impress upon them my own solemn convictions of the
duties and powers of the General Government in relation to the State
authorities. For the justice of the laws passed by the States within
the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this
Government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of
their acts, but as a Government we have as little right to control them
as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.

With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw
tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail themselves of the
liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to
remove beyond the Mississippi River. Treaties have been made with them,
which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating
these treaties they were made to understand their true condition, and
they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western
forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now
reside. These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made
with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the
Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of
their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their
new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate
existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the
inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been
subject in Alabama and Mississippi.

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this
country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising
means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been
arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the
earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the
graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true
philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to
the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the
monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, spread over the
extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once
powerful race, which was exterminated of has disappeared to make room
for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there any thing in this which,
upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race,
is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent
restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers.
What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by
a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities,
towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements
which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than
12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty,
civilization, and religion?

The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same
progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the
countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have
melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and
civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire
the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair
exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to a
land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual.

Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but
what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now
doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers
left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands
yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant
regions. Does Humanity weep at these painful separations from every
thing, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become
entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country
affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in
body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their
highest perfection.

These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles at their own
expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and support themselves at
their new homes from the moment of their arrival. Can it be cruel in
this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is
made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give
him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal,
and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own
people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on
such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to
them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.

And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment
to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more
afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our
brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the General
Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is
unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their
population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter
annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and
proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.

In the consummation of a policy originating at an early period, and
steadily pursued by every Administration within the present century--so
just to the States and so generous to the Indians--the Executive feels
it has a right to expect the cooperation of Congress and of all good
and disinterested men. The States, moreover, have a right to demand it.
It was substantially a part of the compact which made them members of
our Confederacy. With Georgia there is an express contract; with the
new States an implied one of equal obligation. Why, in authorizing
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama to form
constitutions and become separate States, did Congress include within
their limits extensive tracts of Indian lands, and, in some instances,
powerful Indian tribes? Was it not understood by both parties that the
power of the States was to be coextensive with their limits, and that
with all convenient dispatch the General Government should extinguish
the Indian title and remove every obstruction to the complete
jurisdiction of the State governments over the soil? Probably not one
of those States would have accepted a separate existence--certainly it
would never have been granted by Congress--had it been understood that
they were to be confined for ever to those small portions of their
nominal territory the Indian title to which had at the time been
extinguished.

It is, therefore, a duty which this Government owes to the new States
to extinguish as soon as possible the Indian title to all lands which
Congress themselves have included within their limits. When this is
done the duties of the General Government in relation to the States and
the Indians within their limits are at an end. The Indians may leave
the State or not, as they choose. The purchase of their lands does not
alter in the least their personal relations with the State government.
No act of the General Government has ever been deemed necessary to give
the States jurisdiction over the persons of the Indians. That they
possess by virtue of their sovereign power within their own limits in
as full a manner before as after the purchase of the Indian lands; nor
can this Government add to or diminish it.

May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more
zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by subjection to
the laws of the States, will unite in attempting to open the eyes of
those children of the forest to their true condition, and by a speedy
removal to relieve them from all the evils, real or imaginary, present
or prospective, with which they may be supposed to be threatened.

Among the numerous causes of congratulation the condition of our impost
revenue deserves special mention, in as much as it promises the means
of extinguishing the public debt sooner than was anticipated, and
furnishes a strong illustration of the practical effects of the present
tariff upon our commercial interests.

The object of the tariff is objected to by some as unconstitutional,
and it is considered by almost all as defective in many of its parts.

The power to impose duties on imports originally belonged to the
several States. The right to adjust those duties with a view to the
encouragement of domestic branches of industry is so completely
incidental to that power that it is difficult to suppose the existence
of the one without the other. The States have delegated their whole
authority over imports to the General Government without limitation or
restriction, saving the very inconsiderable reservation relating to
their inspection laws. This authority having thus entirely passed from
the States, the right to exercise it for the purpose of protection does
not exist in them, and consequently if it be not possessed by the
General Government it must be extinct. Our political system would thus
present the anomaly of a people stripped of the right to foster their
own industry and to counteract the most selfish and destructive policy
which might be adopted by foreign nations. This sure can not be the
case. This indispensable power thus surrendered by the States must be
within the scope of the authority on the subject expressly delegated to
Congress.

In this conclusion I am confirmed as well by the opinions of Presidents
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, who have each repeatedly
recommended the exercise of this right under the Constitution, as by
the uniform practice of Congress, the continued acquiescence of the
States, and the general understanding of the people.

The difficulties of a more expedient adjustment of the present tariff,
although great, are far from being insurmountable. Some are unwilling
to improve any of its parts because they would destroy the whole;
others fear to touch the objectionable parts lest those they approve
should be jeoparded. I am persuaded that the advocates of these
conflicting views do injustice to the American people and to their
representatives. The general interest is the interest of each, and my
confidence is entire that to insure the adoption of such modifications
of the tariff as the general interest requires it is only necessary
that that interest should be understood.

It is an infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices
with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the
objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and
effects they can not produce. The effects of the present tariff are
doubtless over-rated, both in its evils and in its advantages. By one
class of reasoners the reduced price of cotton and other agricultural
products is ascribed wholly to its influence, and by another the
reduced price of manufactured articles.

The probability is that neither opinion approaches the truth, and that
both are induced by that influence of interests and prejudices to which
I have referred. The decrease of prices extends throughout the
commercial world, embracing not only the raw material and the
manufactured article, but provisions and lands. The cause must
therefore be deeper and more pervading than the tariff of the United
States. It may in a measure be attributable to the increased value of
the precious metals, produced by a diminution of the supply and an
increase in the demand, while commerce has rapidly extended itself and
population has augmented. The supply of gold and silver, the general
medium of exchange, has been greatly interrupted by civil convulsions
in the countries from which they are principally drawn. A part of the
effect, too, is doubtless owing to an increase of operatives and
improvements in machinery. But on the whole it is questionable whether
the reduction in the price of lands, produce, and manufactures has been
greater than the appreciation of the standard of value.

While the chief object of duties should be revenue, they may be so
adjusted as to encourage manufactures. In this adjustment, however, it
is the duty of the Government to be guided by the general good. Objects
of national importance alone ought to be protected. Of these the
productions of our soil, our mines, and our work shops, essential to
national defense, occupy the first rank. What ever other species of
domestic industry, having the importance to which I have referred, may
be expected, after temporary protection, to compete with foreign labor
on equal terms merit the same attention in a subordinate degree.

The present tariff taxes some of the comforts of life unnecessarily
high; it undertakes to protect interests too local and minute to
justify a general exaction, and it also attempts to force some kinds of
manufactures for which the country is not ripe. Much relief will be
derived in some of these respects from the measures of your last
session.

The best as well as fairest mode of determining whether from any just
considerations a particular interest ought to receive protection would
be to submit the question singly for deliberation. If after
due examination of its merits, unconnected with extraneous
considerations--such as a desire to sustain a general system or to
purchase support for a different interest--it should enlist in its
favor a majority of the representatives of the people, there can be
little danger of wrong or injury in adjusting the tariff with reference
to its protective effect. If this obviously just principle were
honestly adhered to, the branches of industry which deserve protection
would be saved from the prejudice excited against them when that
protection forms part of a system by which portions of the country feel
or conceive themselves to be oppressed. What is incalculably more
important, the vital principle of our system--that principle which
requires acquiescence in the will of the majority--would be secure from
the discredit and danger to which it is exposed by the acts of
majorities founded not on identity of conviction, but on combinations
of small minorities entered into for the purpose of mutual assistance
in measures which, resting solely on their own merits, could never be
carried.

I am well aware that this is a subject of so much delicacy, on account
of the extended interests in involves, as to require that it should be
touched with the utmost caution, and that while an abandonment of the
policy in which it originated--a policy coeval with our Government, and
pursued through successive Administrations--is neither to be expected
or desired, the people have a right to demand, and have demanded, that
it be so modified as to correct abuses and obviate injustice.

That our deliberations on this interesting subject should be
uninfluenced by those partisan conflicts that are incident to free
institutions is the fervent wish of my heart. To make this great
question, which unhappily so much divides and excites the public mind,
subservient to the short-sighted views of faction, must destroy all
hope of settling it satisfactorily to the great body of the people and
for the general interest. I can not, therefore, in taking leave of the
subject, too earnestly for my own feelings or the common good warn you
against the blighting consequences of such a course.

According to the estimates at the Treasury Department, the receipts in
the Treasury during the present year will amount to $24,161,018, which
will exceed by about $300,000 the estimate presented in the last annual
report of the Secretary of the Treasury. The total expenditure during
the year, exclusive of public debt, is estimated at $13,742,311, and
the payment on account of public debt for the same period will have
been $11,354,630, leaving a balance in the Treasury on January 1st,
1831 of $4,819,781.

In connection with the condition of our finances, it affords me
pleasure to remark that judicious and efficient arrangements have been
made by the Treasury Department for securing the pecuniary
responsibility of the public officers and the more punctual payment of
the public dues. The Revenue Cutter Service has been organized and
placed on a good footing, and aided by an increase of inspectors at
exposed points, and regulations adopted under the act of May, 1830, for
the inspection and appraisement of merchandise, has produced much
improvement in the execution of the laws and more security against the
commission of frauds upon the revenue. Abuses in the allowances for
fishing bounties have also been corrected, and a material saving in
that branch of the service thereby effected. In addition to these
improvements the system of expenditure for sick sea men belonging to
the merchant service has been revised, and being rendered uniform and
economical the benefits of the fund applicable to this object have been
usefully extended.

The prosperity of our country is also further evinced by the increased
revenue arising from the sale of public lands, as will appear from the
report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the documents
accompanying it, which are herewith transmitted. I beg leave to draw
your attention to this report, and to the propriety of making early
appropriations for the objects which it specifies.

Your attention is again invited to the subjects connected with that
portion of the public interests intrusted to the War Department. Some
of them were referred to in my former message, and they are presented
in detail in the report of the Secretary of War herewith submitted. I
refer you also to the report of that officer for a knowledge of the
state of the Army, fortifications, arsenals, and Indian affairs, all of
which it will be perceived have been guarded with zealous attention and
care. It is worthy of your consideration whether the armaments
necessary for the fortifications on our maritime frontier which are now
or shortly will be completed should not be in readiness sooner than the
customary appropriations will enable the Department to provide them.
This precaution seems to be due to the general system of fortification
which has been sanctioned by Congress, and is recommended by that maxim
of wisdom which tells us in peace to prepare for war.

I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Navy for a highly
satisfactory account of the manner in which the concerns of that
Department have been conducted during the present year. Our position in
relation to the most powerful nations of the earth, and the present
condition of Europe, admonish us to cherish this arm of our national
defense with peculiar care. Separated by wide seas from all those
Governments whose power we might have reason to dread, we have nothing
to apprehend from attempts at conquest. It is chiefly attacks upon our
commerce and harrassing in-roads upon our coast against which we have
to guard. A naval force adequate to the protection of our commerce,
always afloat, with an accumulation of the means to give it a rapid
extension in case of need, furnishes the power by which all such
aggressions may be prevented or repelled. The attention of the
Government has therefore been recently directed more to preserving the
public vessels already built and providing materials to be placed in
depot for future use than to increasing their number. With the aid of
Congress, in a few years the Government will be prepared in case of
emergency to put afloat a powerful navy of new ships almost as soon as
old ones could be repaired.

The modifications in this part of the service suggested in my last
annual message, which are noticed more in detail in the report of the
Secretary of the Navy, are again recommended to your serious attention.

The report of the Post Master General in like manner exhibits a
satisfactory view of the important branch of the Government under his
charge. In addition to the benefits already secured by the operations
of the Post Office Department, considerable improvements within the
present year have been made by an increase in the accommodation
afforded by stage coaches, and in the frequency and celerity of the
mail between some of the most important points of the Union.

Under the late contracts improvements have been provided for the
southern section of the country, and at the same time an annual saving
made of upward of $72,000. Not with standing the excess of expenditure
beyond the current receipts for a few years past, necessarily incurred
in the fulfillment of existing contracts and in the additional expenses
between the periods of contracting to meet the demands created by the
rapid growth and extension of our flourishing country, yet the
satisfactory assurance is given that the future revenue of the
Department will be sufficient to meets its extensive engagements. The
system recently introduced that subjects its receipts and disbursements
to strict regulation has entirely fulfilled its designs. It gives full
assurance of the punctual transmission, as well as the security of the
funds of the Department. The efficiency and industry of its officers
and the ability and energy of contractors justify an increased
confidence in its continued prosperity.

The attention of Congress was called on a former occasion to the
necessity of such a modification in the office of Attorney General of
the United States as would render it more adequate to the wants of the
public service. This resulted in the establishment of the office of
Solicitor of the Treasury, and the earliest measures were taken to give
effect to the provisions of the law which authorized the appointment of
that officer and defined his duties. But it is not believed that this
provision, however useful in itself, is calculated to supersede the
necessity of extending the duties and powers of the Attorney General's
Office. On the contrary, I am convinced that the public interest would
be greatly promoted by giving to that officer the general
superintendence of the various law agents of the Government, and of all
law proceedings, whether civil or criminal, in which the United States
may be interested, allowing him at the same time such compensation as
would enable him to devote his undivided attention to the public
business. I think such a provision is alike due to the public and to
the officer.

Occasions of reference from the different Executive Departments to the
Attorney General are of frequent occurrence, and the prompt decision of
the questions so referred tends much to facilitate the dispatch of
business in those Departments. The report of the Secretary of the
Treasury hereto appended shows also a branch of the public service not
specifically intrusted to any officer which might be advantageously
committed to the Attorney General. But independently of those
considerations this office is now one of daily duty. It was originally
organized and its compensation fixed with a view to occasional service,
leaving to the incumbent time for the exercise of his profession in
private practice. The state of things which warranted such an
organization no longer exists. The frequent claims upon the services of
this officer would render his absence from the seat of Government in
professional attendance upon the courts injurious to the public
service, and the interests of the Government could not fail to be
promoted by charging him with the general superintendence of all its
legal concerns.

Under a strong conviction of the justness of these suggestions, I
recommend it to Congress to make the necessary provisions for giving
effect to them, and to place the Attorney General in regard to
compensation on the same footing with the heads of the several
Executive Departments. To this officer might also be intrusted a
cognizance of the cases of insolvency in public debtors, especially if
the views which I submitted on this subject last year should meet the
approbation of Congress--to which I again solicit your attention.

Your attention is respectfully invited to the situation of the District
of Columbia. Placed by the Constitution under the exclusive
jurisdiction and control of Congress, this District is certainly
entitled to a much greater share of its consideration than it has yet
received. There is a want of uniformity in its laws, particularly in
those of a penal character, which increases the expense of their
administration and subjects the people to all the inconveniences which
result from the operation of different codes in so small a territory.
On different sides of the Potomac the same offense is punishable in
unequal degrees, and the peculiarities of many of the early laws of
Maryland and Virginia remain in force, not with standing their
repugnance in some cases to the improvements which have superseded them
in those States.

Besides a remedy for these evils, which is loudly called for, it is
respectfully submitted whether a provision authorizing the election of
a delegate to represent the wants of the citizens of this District on
the floor of Congress is not due to them and to the character of our
Government. No principles of freedom, and there is none more important
than that which cultivates a proper relation between the governors and
the governed. Imperfect as this must be in this case, yet it is
believed that it would be greatly improved by a representation in
Congress with the same privileges that are allowed to the other
Territories of the United States.

The penitentiary is ready for the reception of convicts, and only
awaits the necessary legislation to put it into operation, as one
object of which I beg leave to recall your attention to the propriety
of providing suitable compensation for the officers charged with its
inspection.

The importance of the principles involved in the inquiry whether it
will be proper to recharter the Bank of the United States requires that
I should again call the attention of Congress to the subject. Nothing
has occurred to lessen in any degree the dangers which many of our
citizens apprehend from that institution as at present organized. In
the spirit of improvement and compromise which distinguishes our
country and its institutions it becomes us to inquire whether it be not
possible to secure the advantages afforded by the present bank through
the agency of a Bank of the United States so modified in its principles
and structures as to obviate constitutional and other objections.

It is thought practicable to organize such a bank with the necessary
officers as a branch of the Treasury Department, based on the public
and individual deposits, without power to make loans or purchase
property, which shall remit the funds of the Government, and the
expense of which may be paid, if thought advisable, by allowing its
officers to sell bills of exchange to private individuals at a moderate
premium. Not being a corporate body, having no stock holders, debtors,
or property, and but few officers, it would not be obnoxious to the
constitutional objections which are urged against the present bank; and
having no means to operate on the hopes, fears, or interests of large
masses of the community, it would be shorn of the influence which makes
that bank formidable. The States would be strengthened by having in
their hands the means of furnishing the local paper currency through
their own banks, while the Bank of the United States, though issuing no
paper, would check the issues of the State banks by taking their notes
in deposit and for exchange only so long as they continue to be
redeemed with specie. In times of public emergency the capacities of
such an institution might be enlarged by legislative provisions.

These suggestions are made not so much as a recommendation as with a
view of calling the attention of Congress to the possible modifications
of a system which can not continue to exist in its present form without
occasional collisions with the local authorities and perpetual
apprehensions and discontent on the part of the States and the people.

In conclusion, fellow citizens, allow me to invoke in behalf of your
deliberations that spirit of conciliation and disinterestedness which
is the gift of patriotism. Under an over-ruling and merciful Providence
the agency of this spirit has thus far been signalized in the
prosperity and glory of our beloved country. May its influence be
eternal.

***

State of the Union Address
Andrew Jackson
December 6, 1831

Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

The representation of the people has been renewed for the 22nd time
since the Constitution they formed has been in force. For near half a
century the Chief Magistrates who have been successively chosen have
made their annual communications of the state of the nation to its
representatives. Generally these communications have been of the most
gratifying nature, testifying an advance in all the improvements of
social and all the securities of political life. But frequently and
justly as you have been called on to be grateful for the bounties of
Providence, at few periods have they been more abundantly or
extensively bestowed than at the present; rarely, if ever, have we had
greater reason to congratulate each other on the continued and
increasing prosperity of our beloved country.

Agriculture, the first and most important occupation of man, has
compensated the labors of the husband-man with plentiful crops of all
the varied products of our extensive country. Manufactures have been
established in which the funds of the capitalist find a profitable
investment, and which give employment and subsistence to a numerous and
increasing body of industrious and dexterous mechanics. The laborer is
rewarded by high wages in the construction of works of internal
improvement, which are extending with unprecedented rapidity. Science
is steadily penetrating the recesses of nature and disclosing her
secrets, while the ingenuity of free minds is subjecting the elements
to the power of man and making each new conquest auxiliary to his
comfort. By our mails, whose speed is regularly increased and whose
routes are every year extended, the communication of public
intelligence and private business is rendered frequent and safe; the
intercourse between distant cities, which it formerly required weeks to
accomplish, is now effected in a few days; and in the construction of
rail roads and the application of steam power we have a reasonable
prospect that the extreme parts of our country will be so much
approximated and those most isolated by the obstacles of nature
rendered so accessible as to remove an apprehension some times
entertained that the great extent of the Union would endanger its
permanent existence.

If from the satisfactory view of our agriculture, manufactures, and
internal improvements we turn to the state of our navigation and trade
with foreign nations and between the States, we shall scarcely find
less cause for gratulation. A beneficent Providence has provided for
their exercise and encouragement an extensive coast, indented by
capacious bays, noble rivers, inland seas; with a country productive of
every material for ship building and every commodity for gainful
commerce, and filled with a population active, intelligent,
well-informed, and fearless of danger. These advantages are not
neglected, and an impulse has lately been given to commercial
enterprise, which fills our ship yards with new constructions,
encourages all the arts and branches of industry connected with them,
crowds the wharves of our cities with vessels, and covers the most
distant seas with our canvas.

Let us be grateful for these blessings to the beneficent Being who has
conferred them, and who suffers us to indulge a reasonable hope of
their continuance and extension, while we neglect not the means by
which they may be preserved. If we may dare to judge of His future
designs by the manner in which His past favors have been bestowed, He
has made our national prosperity to depend on the preservation of our
liberties, our national force on our Federal Union, and our individual
happiness on the maintenance of our State rights and wise institutions.
If we are prosperous at home and respected abroad, it is because we are
free, united, industrious, and obedient to the laws. While we continue
so we shall by the blessing of Heaven go on in the happy career we have
begun, and which has brought us in the short period of our political
existence from a population of 3,000,000 to 13,000,000; from 13
separate colonies to 24 united States; from weakness to strength; from
a rank scarcely marked in the scale of nations to a high place in their
respect.

This last advantage is one that has resulted in a great degree from the
principles which have guided our intercourse with foreign powers since
we have assumed an equal station among them, and hence the annual
account which the Executive renders to the country of the manner in
which that branch of his duties has been fulfilled proves instructive
and salutary.

The pacific and wise policy of our Government kept us in a state of
neutrality during the wars that have at different periods since our
political existence been carried on by other powers; but this policy,
while it gave activity and extent to our commerce, exposed it in the
same proportion to injuries from the belligerent nations. Hence have
arisen claims of indemnity for those injuries. England, France, Spain,
Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Naples, and lately Portugal had all in a
greater or less degree infringed our neutral rights. Demands for
reparation were made upon all. They have had in all, and continue to
have in some, cases a leading influence on the nature of our relations
with the powers on whom they were made.

Of the claims upon England it is unnecessary to speak further than to
say that the state of things to which their prosecution and denial gave
rise has been succeeded by arrangements productive of mutual good
feeling and amicable relations between the two countries, which it is
hoped will not be interrupted. One of these arrangements is that
relating to the colonial trade which was communicated to Congress at
the last session; and although the short period during which it has
been in force will not enable me to form an accurate judgment of its
operation, there is every reason to believe that it will prove highly
beneficial. The trade thereby authorized has employed to September
30th, 1831 upward of 30 thousand tons of American and 15 thousand tons
of foreign shipping in the outward voyages, and in the inward nearly an
equal amount of American and 20 thousand only of foreign tonnage.
Advantages, too, have resulted to our agricultural interests from the
state of the trade between Canada and our Territories and States
bordering or the St. Lawrence and the Lakes which may prove more than
equivalent to the loss sustained by the discrimination made to favor
the trade of the northern colonies with the West Indies.

After our transition from the state of colonies to that of an
independent nation many points were found necessary to be settled
between us and Great Britain. Among them was the demarcation of
boundaries not described with sufficient precision in the treaty of
peace. Some of the lines that divide the States and Territories of the
United States from the British Provinces have been definitively fixed.

That, however, which separates us from the Provinces of Canada and New
Brunswick to the North and the East was still in dispute when I came
into office, but I found arrangements made for its settlement over
which I had no control. The commissioners who had been appointed under
the provisions of the treaty of Ghent having been unable to agree, a
convention was made with Great Britain by my immediate predecessor in
office, with the advice and consent of the Senate, by which it was
agreed "that the points of difference which have arisen in the
settlement of the boundary line between the American and British
dominions, as described in the 5th article of the treaty of Ghent,
shall be referred, as therein provided, to some friendly sovereign or
State, who shall be invited to investigate and make a decision upon
such points of difference"; and the King of the Netherlands having by
the late President and His Britannic Majesty been designated as such
friendly sovereign, it became my duty to carry with good faith the
agreement so made into full effect. To this end I caused all the
measures to be taken which were necessary to a full exposition of our
case to the sovereign arbiter, and nominated as minister
plenipotentiary to his Court a distinguished citizen of the State most
interested in the question, and who had been one of the agents
previously employed for settling the controversy.

On January 10th, 1831 His Majesty the King of the Netherlands delivered
to the plenipotentiaries of the United States and of Great Britain his
written opinion on the case referred to him. The papers in relation to
the subject will be communicated by a special message to the proper
branch of the Government with the perfect confidence that its wisdom
will adopt such measures as will secure an amicable settlement of the
controversy without infringing any constitutional right of the States
immediately interested.

It affords me satisfaction to inform you that suggestions made by my
direction to the charge d'affaires of His Britannic Majesty to this
Government have had their desired effect in producing the release of
certain American citizens who were imprisoned for setting up the
authority of the State of Maine at a place in the disputed territory
under the actual jurisdiction of His Britannic Majesty. From this and
the assurances I have received of the desire of the local authorities
to avoid any cause of collision I have the best hopes that a good
understanding will be kept up until it is confirmed by the final
disposition of the subject.

The amicable relations which now subsist between the United States and
Great Britain, the increasing intercourse between their citizens, and
the rapid obliteration of unfriendly prejudices to which former events
naturally gave rise concurred to present this as a fit period for
renewing our endeavors to provide against the recurrence of causes of
irritation which in the event of war between Great Britain and any
other power would inevitably endanger our peace. Animated by the
sincerest desire to avoid such a state of things, and peacefully to
secure under all possible circumstances the rights and honor of the
country, I have given such instructions to the minister lately sent to
the Court of London as will evince that desire, and if met by a
correspondent disposition, which we can not doubt, will put an end to
causes of collision which, without advantage to either, tend to
estrange from each other two nations who have every motive to preserve
not only peace, but an intercourse of the most amicable nature.

In my message at the opening of the last session of Congress I
expressed a confident hope that the justice of our claims upon France,
urged as they were with perseverance and signal ability by our minister
there, would finally be acknowledged. This hope has been realized. A
treaty has been signed which will immediately be laid before the Senate
for its approbation, and which, containing stipulations that require
legislative acts, must have the concurrence of both houses before it
can be carried into effect.

By it the French Government engage to pay a sum which, if not quite
equal to that which may be found due to our citizens, will yet, it is
believed, under all circumstances, be deemed satisfactory by those
interested. The offer of a gross sum instead of the satisfaction of
each individual claim was accepted because the only alternatives were a
rigorous exaction of the whole amount stated to be due on each claim,
which might in some instances be exaggerated by design, in other
over-rated through error, and which, therefore, it would have been both
ungracious and unjust to have insisted on; or a settlement by a mixed
commission, to which the French negotiators were very averse, and which
experience in other cases had shewn to be dilatory and often wholly
inadequate to the end.

A comparatively small sum is stipulated on our part to go to the
extinction of all claims by French citizens on our Government, and a
reduction of duties on our cotton and their wines has been agreed on as
a consideration for the renunciation of an important claim for
commercial privileges under the construction they gave to the treaty
for the cession of Louisiana.

Should this treaty receive the proper sanction, a source of irritation
will be stopped that has for so many years in some degree alienated
from each other two nations who, from interest as well as the
remembrance of early associations, ought to cherish the most friendly
relations; an encouragement will be given for perseverance in the
demands of justice by this new proof that if steadily pursued they will
be listened to, and admonition will be offered to those powers, if any,
which may be inclined to evade them that they will never be abandoned;
above all, a just confidence will be inspired in our fellow citizens
that their Government will exert all the powers with which they have
invested it in support of their just claims upon foreign nations; at
the same time that the frank acknowledgment and provision for the
payment of those which were addressed to our equity, although
unsupported by legal proof, affords a practical illustration of our
submission to the divine rule of doing to others what we desire they
should do unto us.

Sweden and Denmark having made compensation for the irregularities
committed by their vessels or in their ports to the perfect
satisfaction of the parties concerned, and having renewed the treaties
of commerce entered into with them, our political and commercial
relations with those powers continue to be on the most friendly
footing.

With Spain our differences up to February 22d, 1819 were settled by the
treaty of Washington of that date, but at a subsequent period our
commerce with the States formerly colonies of Spain on the continent of
America was annoyed and frequently interrupted by her public and
private armed ships. They captured many of our vessels prosecuting a
lawful commerce and sold them and their cargoes, and at one time to our
demands for restoration and indemnity opposed the allegation that they
were taken in the violation of a blockade of all the ports of those
States. This blockade was declaratory only, and the inadequacy of the
force to maintain it was so manifest that this allegation was varied to
a charge of trade in contraband of war. This, in its turn, was also
found untenable, and the minister whom I sent with instructions to
press for the reparation that was due to our injured fellow citizens
has transmitted an answer to his demand by which the captures are
declared to have been legal, and are justified because the independence
of the States of America never having been acknowledged by Spain she
had a right to prohibit trade with them under her old colonial laws.
This ground of defense was contradictory, not only to those which had
been formerly alleged, but to the uniform practice and established laws
of nations, and had been abandoned by Spain herself in the convention
which granted indemnity to British subjects for captures made at the
same time, under the same circumstances, and for the same allegations
with those of which we complain.

I, however, indulge the hope that further reflection will lead to other
views, and feel confident that when His Catholic Majesty shall be
convinced of the justice of the claims his desire to preserve friendly
relations between the two countries, which it is my earnest endeavor to
maintain, will induce him to accede to our demand. I have therefore
dispatched a special messenger with instructions to our minister to
bring the case once more to his consideration, to the end that if
(which I can not bring myself to believe) the same decision (that can
not but be deemed an unfriendly denial of justice) should be persisted
in the matter may before your adjournment be laid before you, the
constitutional judges of what is proper to be done when negotiation for
redress of injury fails.

The conclusion of a treaty for indemnity with France seemed to present
a favorable opportunity to renew our claims of a similar nature on
other powers, and particularly in the case of those upon Naples, more
especially as in the course of former negotiations with that power our
failure to induce France to render us justice was used as an argument
against us. The desires of the merchants, who were the principal
sufferers, have therefore been acceded to, and a mission has been
instituted for the special purpose of obtaining for them a reparation
already too long delayed. This measure having been resolved on, it was
put in execution without waiting for the meeting of Congress, because
the state of Europe created an apprehension of events that might have
rendered our application ineffectual.

Our demands upon the Government of the two Sicilies are of a peculiar
nature. The injuries on which they are founded are not denied, nor are
the atrocity and perfidy under which those injuries were perpetrated
attempted to be extenuated. The sole ground on which indemnity has been
refused is the alleged illegality of the tenure by which the monarch
who made the seizures held his crown. This defense, always unfounded in
any principle of the law of nations, now universally abandoned, even by
those powers upon whom the responsibility for the acts of past rulers
bore the most heavily, will unquestionably be given up by His Sicilian
Majesty, whose counsels will receive an impulse from that high sense of
honor and regard to justice which are said to characterize him; and I
feel the fullest confidence that the talents of the citizen
commissioned for that purpose will place before him the just claims of
our injured citizens in such as light as will enable me before your
adjournment to announce that they have been adjusted and secured.
Precise instructions to the effect of bringing the negotiation to a
speedy issue have been given, and will be obeyed.

In the late blockade of Terceira some of the Portuguese fleet captured
several of our vessels and committed other excesses, for which
reparation was demanded, and I was on the point of dispatching an armed
force to prevent any recurrence of a similar violence and protect our
citizens in the prosecution of their lawful commerce when official
assurances, on which I relied, made the sailing of the ships
unnecessary. Since that period frequent promises have been made that
full indemnity shall be given for the injuries inflicted and the losses
sustained. In the performance there has been some, perhaps unavoidable,
delay; but I have the fullest confidence that my earnest desire that
this business may at once be closed, which our minister has been
instructed strongly to express, will very soon be gratified. I have the
better ground for this hope from the evidence of a friendly disposition
which that Government has shown an actual reduction in the duty on rice
the produce of our Southern States, authorizing the anticipation that
this important article of our export will soon be admitted on the same
footing with that produced by the most favored nation.

With the other powers of Europe we have fortunately had no cause of
discussions for the redress of injuries. With the Empire of the Russias
our political connection is of the most friendly and our commercial of
the most liberal kind. We enjoy the advantages of navigation and trade
given to the most favored nation, but it has not yet suited their
policy, or perhaps has not been found convenient from other
considerations, to give stability and reciprocity to those privileges
by a commercial treaty. The ill health of the minister last year
charged with making a proposition for that arrangement did not permit
him to remain at St. Petersburg, and the attention of that Government
during the whole of the period since his departure having been occupied
by the war in which it was engaged, we have been assured that nothing
could have been effected by his presence. A minister will soon be
nominated, as well to effect this important object as to keep up the
relations of amity and good understanding of which we have received so
many assurances and proofs from His Imperial Majesty and the Emperor
his predecessor.

The treaty with Austria is opening to us an important trade with the
hereditary dominions of the Emperor, the value of which has been
hitherto little known, and of course not sufficiently appreciated.
While our commerce finds an entrance into the south of Germany by means
of this treaty, those we have formed with the Hanseatic towns and
Prussia and others now in negotiation will open that vast country to
the enterprising spirit of our merchants on the north--a country
abounding in all the materials for a mutually beneficial commerce,
filled with enlightened and industrious inhabitants, holding an
important place in the politics of Europe, and to which we owe so many
valuable citizens. The ratification of the treaty with the Porte was
sent to be exchanged by the gentleman appointed our charge d'affaires
to that Court. Some difficulties occurred on his arrival, but at the
date of his last official dispatch he supposed they had been obviated
and that there was every prospect of the exchange being speedily
effected.

This finishes the connected view I have thought it proper to give of
our political and commercial relations in Europe. Every effort in my
power will be continued to strengthen and extend them by treaties
founded on principles of the most perfect reciprocity of interest,
neither asking nor conceding any exclusive advantage, but liberating as
far as it lies in my power the activity and industry of our fellow
citizens from the shackles which foreign restrictions may impose.

To China and the East Indies our commerce continues in its usual
extent, and with increased facilities which the credit and capital of
our merchants afford by substituting bills for payments in specie. A
daring outrage having been committed in those seas by the plunder of
one of our merchant-men engaged in the pepper trade at a port in
Sumatra, and the piratical perpetrators belonging to tribes in such a
state of society that the usual course of proceedings between civilized
nations could not be pursued, I forthwith dispatched a frigate with
orders to require immediate satisfaction for the injury and indemnity
to the sufferers.

Few changes have taken place in our connections with the independent
States of America since my last communication to Congress. The
ratification of a commercial treaty with the United Republics of Mexico
has been for some time under deliberation in their Congress, but was
still undecided at the date of our last dispatches. The unhappy civil
commotions that have prevailed there were undoubtedly the cause of the
delay, but as the Government is now said to be tranquillized we may
hope soon to receive the ratification of the treaty and an arrangement
for the demarcation of the boundaries between us. In the mean time, an
important trade has been opened with mutual benefit from St. Louis, in
the State of Missouri, by caravans to the interior Provinces of Mexico.
This commerce is protected in its progress through the Indian countries
by the troops of the United States, which have been permitted to escort
the caravans beyond our boundaries to the settled part of the Mexican
territory.

From Central America I have received assurances of the most friendly
kind and a gratifying application for our good offices to remove a
supposed indisposition toward that Government in a neighboring State.
This application was immediately and successfully complied with. They
gave us also the pleasing intelligence that differences which had
prevailed in their internal affairs had been peaceably adjusted. Our
treaty with this Republic continues to be faithfully observed, and
promises a great and beneficial commerce between the two countries--a
commerce of the greatest importance if the magnificent project of a
ship canal through the dominions of that State from the Atlantic to the
Pacific Ocean, now in serious contemplation, shall be executed.

I have great satisfaction in communicating the success which has
attended the exertions of our minister in Colombia to procure a very
considerable reduction in the duties on our flour in that Republic.
Indemnity also has been stipulated for injuries received by our
merchants from illegal seizures, and renewed assurances are given that
the treaty between the two countries shall be faithfully observed.

Chili and Peru seem to be still threatened with civil commotions, and
until they shall be settled disorders may naturally be apprehended,
requiring the constant presence of a naval force in the Pacific Ocean
to protect our fisheries and guard our commerce.

The disturbances that took place in the Empire of Brazil previously to
and immediately consequent upon the abdication of the late Emperor
necessarily suspended any effectual application for the redress of some
past injuries suffered by our citizens from that Government, while they
have been the cause of others, in which all foreigners seem to have
participated. Instructions have been given to our minister there to
press for indemnity due for losses occasioned by these irregularities,
and to take care of our fellow citizens shall enjoy all the privileges
stipulated in their favor by the treaty lately made between the two
powers, all which the good intelligence that prevails between our
minister at Rio Janeiro and the Regency gives us the best reason to
expect.

I should have placed Buenos Ayres in the list of South American powers
in respect to which nothing of importance affecting us was to be
communicated but for occurrences which have lately taken place at the
Falkland Islands, in which the name of that Republic has been used to
cover with a show of authority acts injurious to our commerce and to
the property and liberty of our fellow citizens. In the course of the
present year one of our vessels, engaged in the pursuit of a trade
which we have always enjoyed without molestation, has been captured by
a band acting, as they pretend, under the authority of the Government
of Buenos Ayres. I have therefore given orders for the dispatch of an
armed vessel to join our squadron in those seas and aid in affording
all lawful protection to our trade which shall be necessary, and shall
without delay send a minister to inquire into the nature of the
circumstances and also of the claim, if any, that is set up by that
Government to those islands. In the mean time, I submit the case to the
consideration of Congress, to the end that they may clothe the
Executive with such authority and means as they may deem necessary for
providing a force adequate to the complete protection of our fellow
citizens fishing and trading in those seas.

This rapid sketch of our foreign relations, it is hoped, fellow
citizens, may be of some use in so much of your legislation as may bear
on that important subject, while it affords to the country at large a
source of high gratification in the contemplation of our political and
commercial connection with the rest of the world. At peace with all;
having subjects of future difference with few, and those susceptible of
easy adjustment; extending our commerce gradually on all sides and on
none by any but the most liberal and mutually beneficial means, we may,
by the blessing of Providence, hope for all that national prosperity
which can be derived from an intercourse with foreign nations, guided
by those eternal principles of justice and reciprocal good will which
are binding as well upon States as the individuals of whom they are
composed.

I have great satisfaction in making this statement of our affairs,
because the course of our national policy enables me to do it without
any indiscreet exposure of what in other governments is usually
concealed from the people. Having none but a straight-forward, open
course to pursue, guided by a single principle that will bear the
strongest light, we have happily no political combinations to form, no
alliances to entangle us, no complicated interests to consult, and in
subjecting all we have done to the consideration of our citizens and to
the inspection of the world we give no advantage to other nations and
lay ourselves open to no injury.

It may not be improper to add that to preserve this state of things and
give confidence to the world in the integrity of our designs all our
consular and diplomatic agents are strictly enjoined to examine well
every cause of complaint preferred by our citizens, and while they urge
with proper earnestness those that are well founded, to countenance
none that are unreasonable or unjust, and to enjoin on our merchants
and navigators the strictest obedience to the laws of the countries to
which they resort, and a course of conduct in their dealings that may
support the character of our nation and render us respected abroad.

Connected with this subject, I must recommend a revisal of our consular
laws. Defects and omissions have been discovered in their operation
that ought to be remedied and supplied. For your further information on
this subject I have directed a report to be made by the Secretary of
State, which I shall hereafter submit to your consideration.

The internal peace and security of our confederated States is the next
principal object of the General Government. Time and experience have
proved that the abode of the native Indian within their limits is
dangerous to their peace and injurious to himself. In accordance with
my recommendation at a former session of Congress, an appropriation of
$500 thousand was made to aid the voluntary removal of the various
tribes beyond the limits of the States. At the last session I had the
happiness to announce that the Chickasaws and Choctaws had accepted the
generous offer of the Government and agreed to remove beyond the
Mississippi River, by which the whole of the State of Mississippi and
the western part of Alabama will be freed from Indian occupancy and
opened to a civilized population. The treaties with these tribes are in
a course of execution, and their removal, it is hoped, will be
completed in the course of 1832.

At the request of the authorities of Georgia the registration of
Cherokee Indians for emigration has been resumed, and it is confidently
expected that half, if not two-third, of that tribe will follow the
wise example of their more westerly brethren. Those who prefer
remaining at their present homes will hereafter be governed by the laws
of Georgia, as all her citizens are, and cease to be the objects of
peculiar care on the part of the General Government.

During the present year the attention of the Government has been
particularly directed to those tribes in the powerful and growing State
of Ohio, where considerable tracts of the finest lands were still
occupied by the aboriginal proprietors. Treaties, either absolute or
conditional, have been made extinguishing the whole Indian title to the
reservations in that State, and the time is not distant, it is hoped,
when Ohio will be no longer embarrassed with the Indian population. The
same measures will be extended to Indiana as soon as there is reason to
anticipate success. It is confidently believed that perseverance for a
few years in the present policy of the Government will extinguish the
Indian title to all lands lying within the States composing our Federal
Union, and remove beyond their limits every Indian who is not willing
to submit to their laws.

Thus will all conflicting claims to jurisdiction between the States and
the Indian tribes be put to rest. It is pleasing to reflect that
results so beneficial, not only to the States immediately concerned,
but to the harmony of the Union, will have been accomplished by
measures equally advantageous to the Indians. What the native savages
become when surrounded by a dense population and by mixing with the
whites may be seen in the miserable remnants of a few Eastern tribes,
deprived of political and civil rights, forbidden to make contracts,
and subjected to guardians, dragging out a wretched existence, without
excitement, without hope, and almost without thought.

But the removal of the Indians beyond the limits and jurisdiction of
the States does not place them beyond the reach of philanthropic aid
and Christian instruction. On the contrary, those whom philanthropy or
religion may induce to live among them in their new abode will be more
free in the exercise of their benevolent functions than if they had
remained within the limits of the States, embarrassed by their internal
regulations. Now subject to no control but the superintending agency of
the General Government, exercised with the sole view of preserving
peace, they may proceed unmolested in the interesting experiment of
gradually advancing a community of American Indians from barbarism to
the habits and enjoyments of civilized life.

Among the happiest effects of the improved relations of our Republic
has been an increase of trade, producing a corresponding increase of
revenue beyond the most sanguine anticipations of the Treasury
Department.

The state of the public finances will be fully shown by the Secretary
of the Treasury in the report which he will presently lay before you. I
will here, however, congratulate you upon their prosperous condition.
The revenue received in the present year will not fall short of
$27,700,000, and the expenditures for all objects other than the public
debt will not exceed $14,700,000. The payment on account of the
principal and interest of the debt during the year will exceed
$16,500,000, a greater sum than has been applied to that object out of
the revenue in any year since the enlargement of the sinking fund
except the two years following immediately there after. The amount
which will have been applied to the public debt from March 4th, 1829 to
January 1st, 1832, which is less than three years since the
Administration has been placed in my hands, will exceed $40,000,000.

From the large importations of the present year it may be safely
estimated that the revenue which will be received into the Treasury
from that source during the next year, with the aid of that received
from the public lands, will considerably exceed the amount of the
receipts of the present year; and it is believed that with the means
which the Government will have at its disposal from various sources,
which will be fully stated by the proper Department, the whole of the
public debt may be extinguished, either by redemption or purchase,
within the four years of my Administration. We shall then exhibit the
rare example of a great nation, abounding in all the means of happiness
and security, altogether free from debt.

The confidence with which the extinguishment of the public debt may be
anticipated presents an opportunity for carrying into effect more fully
the policy in relation to import duties which has been recommended in
my former messages. A modification of the tariff which shall produce a
reduction of our revenue to the wants of the Government and an
adjustment of the duties on imports with a view to equal justice in
relation to all our national interests and to the counteraction of
foreign policy so far as it may be injurious to those interests, is
deemed to be one of the principal objects which demand the
consideration of the present Congress. Justice to the interests of the
merchant as well as the manufacturer requires that material reductions
in the import duties be prospective; and unless the present Congress
shall dispose of the subject the proposed reductions can not properly
be made to take effect at the period when the necessity for the revenue
arising from present rates shall cease. It is therefore desirable that
arrangements be adopted at your present session to relieve the people
from unnecessary taxation after the extinguishment of the public debt.
In the exercise of that spirit of concession and conciliation which has
distinguished the friends of our Union in all great emergencies, it is
believed that this object may be effected without injury to any
national interest.

In my annual message of December, 1829, I had the honor to recommend
the adoption of a more liberal policy than that which then prevailed
toward unfortunate debtors to the Government, and I deem it my duty
again to invite your attention to this subject.

Actuated by similar views, Congress at their last session passed an act
for the relief of certain insolvent debtors of the United States, but
the provisions of that law have not been deemed such as were adequate
to that relief to this unfortunate class of our fellow citizens which
may be safely extended to them. The points in which the law appears to
be defective will be particularly communicated by the Secretary of the
Treasury, and I take pleasure in recommending such an extension of its
provisions as will unfetter the enterprise of a valuable portion of our
citizens and restore to them the means of usefulness to themselves and
the community. While deliberating on this subject I would also
recommend to your consideration the propriety of so modifying the laws
for enforcing the payment of debts due either to the public or to
individuals suing in the courts of the United States as to restrict the
imprisonment of the person to cases of fraudulent concealment of
property. The personal liberty of the citizen seems too sacred to be
held, as in many cases it now is, at the will of a creditor to whom he
is willing to surrender all the means he has of discharging his debt.

The reports from the Secretaries of the War and Navy Departments and
from the Post Master General, which accompany this message, present
satisfactory views of the operations of the Departments respectively
under their charge, and suggest improvements which are worthy of and to
which I invite the serious attention of Congress. Certain defects and
omissions having been discovered in the operation of the laws
respecting patents, they are pointed out in the accompanying report
from the Secretary of State.

I have heretofore recommended amendments of the Federal Constitution
giving the election of President and Vice-President to the people and
limiting the service of the former to a single term. So important do I
consider these changes in our fundamental law that I can not, in
accordance with my sense of duty, omit to press them upon the
consideration of a new Congress. For my views more at large, as well in
relation to these points as to the disqualification of members of
Congress to receive an office from a President in whose election they
have had an official agency, which I proposed as a substitute, I refer
you to my former messages.

Our system of public accounts is extremely complicated, and it is
believed may be much improved. Much of the present machinery and a
considerable portion of the expenditure of public money may be
dispensed with, while greater facilities can be afforded to the
liquidation of claims upon the Government and an examination into their
justice and legality quite as efficient as the present secured. With a
view to a general reform in the system, I recommend the subject to the
attention of Congress.

I deem it my duty again to call your attention to the condition of the
District of Columbia. It was doubtless wise in the framers of our
Constitution to place the people of this District under the
jurisdiction of the General Government, but to accomplish the objects
they had in view it is not necessary that this people should be
deprived of all the privileges of self-government. Independently of the
difficulty of inducing the representatives of distant States to turn
their attention to projects of laws which are not of the highest
interest to their constituents, they are not individually, nor in
Congress collectively, well qualified to legislate over the local
concerns of this District. Consequently its interests are much
neglected, and the people are almost afraid to present their
grievances, lest a body in which they are not represented and which
feels little sympathy in their local relations should in its attempt to
make laws for them do more harm than good.

Governed by the laws of the States whence they were severed, the two
shores of the Potomac within the ten miles square have different penal
codes--not the present codes of Virginia and Maryland, but such as
existed in those States at the time of the cession to the United
States. As Congress will not form a new code, and as the people of the
District can not make one for themselves, they are virtually under two
governments. Is it not just to allow them at least a Delegate in
Congress, if not a local legislature, to make laws for the District,
subject to the approval or rejection of Congress? I earnestly recommend
the extension to them of every political right which their interests
require and which may be compatible with the Constitution.

The extension of the judiciary system of the United States is deemed to
be one of the duties of the Government. One-fourth of the States in the
Union do not participate in the benefits of a circuit court. To the
States of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana, admitted into the Union since the present judicial system
was organized, only a district court has been allowed. If this be
sufficient, then the circuit courts already existing in 18 States ought
to be abolished; if it be not sufficient, the defect ought to be
remedied, and these States placed on the same footing with the other
members of the Union. It was on this condition and on this footing that
they entered the Union, and they may demand circuit courts as a matter
not of concession, but of right. I trust that Congress will not adjourn
leaving this anomaly in our system.

Entertaining the opinions heretofore expressed in relation to the Bank
of the United States as at present organized, I felt it my duty in my
former messages frankly to disclose them, in order that the attention
of the Legislature and the people should be seasonably directed to that
important subject, and that it might be considered and finally disposed
of in a manner best calculated to promote the ends of the Constitution
and subserve the public interests. Having thus conscientiously
discharged a constitutional duty, I deem it proper on this occasion,
without a more particular reference to the views of the subject then
expressed to leave it for the present to the investigation of an
enlightened people and their representatives.

In conclusion permit me to invoke that Power which superintends all
governments to infuse into your deliberations at this important crisis
of our history a spirit of mutual forbearance and conciliation. In that
spirit was our Union formed, and in that spirit must it be preserved.

***

State of the Union Address
Andrew Jackson
December 4, 1832

Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

It gives me pleasure to congratulate you upon your return to the seat
of Government for the purpose of discharging your duties to the people
of the United States. Although the pestilence which had traversed the
Old World has entered our limits and extended its ravages over much of
our land, it has pleased Almighty God to mitigate its severity and
lessen the number of its victims compared with those who have fallen in
most other countries over which it has spread its terrors. Not with
standing this visitation, our country presents on every side marks of
prosperity and happiness unequaled, perhaps, in any other portion of
the world. If we fully appreciate our comparative condition, existing
causes of discontent will appear unworthy of attention, and, with
hearts of thankfulness to that divine Being who has filled our cup of
prosperity, we shall feel our resolution strengthened to preserve and
hand down to our posterity that liberty and that union which we have
received from our fathers, and which constitute the sources and the
shield of all our blessings.

The relations of our country continue to present the same picture of
amicable intercourse that I had the satisfaction to hold up to your
view at the opening of your last session. The same friendly
professions, the same desire to participate in our flourishing
commerce, the same dispositions, evinced by all nations with whom we
have any intercourse. This desirable state of things may be mainly
ascribed to our undeviating practice of the rule which has long guided
our national policy, to require no exclusive privileges in commerce and
to grant none. It is daily producing its beneficial effect in the
respect shown to our flag, the protection of our citizens and their
property abroad, and in the increase of our navigation and the
extension of our mercantile operations. The returns which have been
made out since we last met will show an increase during the last
preceding year of more than 80 thousand tons in our shipping and of
near $40,000,000 in the aggregate of our imports and exports.

Nor have 

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