now current, the vessels of the United States from all the Colonial British ports, excepting those immediately bordering upon our Territories. In answer to his expostulations upon a measure thus unexpected, he is informed that, according to the ancient maxims of policy of European nations having colonies, their trade is an exclusive possession of the mother country; that all participation in it by other nations is a boon or favor not forming a subject of negotiation, but to be regulated by the legislative acts of the power owning the colony; that the British Government, therefore, declines negotiating concerning it, and that as the United States did not forthwith accept, purely and simply, the terms offered by the act of Parliament of July, 1825, Great Britain would not admit the vessels of the United States even upon the terms on which she had opened them to the navigation of other nations.

We have been accustomed to consider the trade which we have enjoyed with the British Colonies rather as an interchange of mutual benefits than as a mere favor received; that under every circumstance we have given an ample equivalent. We have seen every other nation holding colonies negotiate with other nations, and grant them freely admission to the colonies by treaty; and, so far are the other colonizing nations of Europe now from refusing to negotiate for trade with their colonies, that we ourselves have secured access to the colonies of more than one of them by treaty. The refusal, however, of Great Britain to negotiate, leaves to the United States no other alternative than that of regulating, or interdicting altogether the trade on their part, according as either measure may affect the interests of our own country; and, with that exclusive object, I would recommend the whole subject to your calm and candid deliberations.

It is hoped that our unavailing exertions to accomplish a cordial good understanding on this interest will not have an unpropitious effect upon the other great topics of discussion between the two governments. Our north-eastern and north-western boundaries are still unadjusted. The commissioners under the 7th article of the Treaty of Ghent have nearly come to the close of their labors; nor can we renounce the expectation, enfeebled as it is, that they may agree upon their report to the satisfaction or acquiescence of both parties. The commission for liquidating the claims for indemnity for slaves carried away after the close of the war has been sitting, with doubtful prospects of success.

Propositions of compromise have, however, passed between the two governments, the result of which, we flatter ourselves, may yet prove satisfactory. Our own dispositions and purposes toward Great Britain are all friendly and conciliatory; nor can we abandon, but with strong reluctance, the belief that they will ultimately meet a return, not of favors, which we neither ask nor desire, but of equal reciprocity and good-will.

With the American governments of this hemisphere we continue to maintain an intercourse altogether friendly, and between their nations and ours that commercial interchange of which mutual benefit is the source, and mutual comfort and harmony the result, is in a continual state of improvement. The war between Spain and them, since the total expulsion of the Spanish military force from their continental territories, has been little more than nominal; and their internal tranquillity, though occasionally menaced by the agitations which civil wars never fail to leave behind them, has not been affected by any serious calamity.

The congress of ministers from several of those nations, which assembled at Panama, after a short session there, adjourned to meet again, at a more favorable season, in the neighborhood of Mexico. The decease of one of our ministers, on his way to the Isthmus, and the impediments of the season, which delayed the departure of the other, deprived us of the advantage of being represented at the first meeting of the congress. There is, however, no reason to believe that any of the transactions of the congress were of a nature to affect injuriously the interests of the United States, or to require the interposition of our ministers, had they been present. Their absence has, indeed, deprived us of the opportunity of possessing precise and authentic information of the treaties which were concluded at Panama; and the whole result has confirmed me in the conviction of the expediency to the United States of being represented at the congress. The surviving member of the mission, appointed during your last session, has accordingly proceeded to his destination, and a successor to his distinguished and lamented associate will be nominated to the Senate. A treaty of amity, navigation, and commerce, has, in the course of last summer, been concluded by our Minister Plenipotentiary at Mexico, with the United States and that confederacy, which will also be laid before the Senate for their advice with regard to its ratification.

In adverting to the present condition of our fiscal concerns, and to the prospects of our revenue, the first remark that calls our attention is, that they are less exuberantly prosperous than they were at the corresponding period of the last year. The severe shock so extensively sustained by the commercial and manufacturing interests in Great Britain has not been without a perceptible recoil upon ourselves. A reduced importation from abroad is necessarily succeeded by a reduced return to the treasury at home. The net revenue of the present year will not equal that of the last. And the receipts of that which is to come will fall short of those in the current year. The diminution, however, is in part attributable to the flourishing condition of some of our domestic manufactures, and so far is compensated by an equivalent more profitable to the Nation. It is also highly gratifying to perceive that the deficiency in the revenue, while it scarcely exceeds the anticipations of the last year's estimates from the treasury, has not interrupted the application of more than eleven millions during the present year, to the discharge of the principal and interest of the debt, nor the reduction of upward of seven millions of the capital debt itself. The balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January last, was five millions two hundred and one thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, forty-three cents. The receipts from that time to the 30th September last were nineteen millions five hundred and eighty-five thousand nine hundred and thirty-two dollars, fifty cents. The receipts of the current quarter, estimated at six millions of dollars, yield, with the sums already received, a revenue of about twenty-five millions and a half for the year. The expenditures for the first three quarters of the year have amounted to eighteen millions seven hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred and twenty-six dollars, sixty-six cents. The expenditures of the current quarter are expected, including the two millions of the principal debt to be paid, to balance the receipts. So that the expenses of the year, amounting to upward of a million less than its income, will leave a proportionally increased balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January, 1827, over that of the 1st of January last. Instead of five millions two hundred thousand dollars, there will be six millions four hundred thousand dollars.

The amount of duties secured on merchandise imported from the commencement of the year until the 30th of September, is estimated at twenty-one millions two hundred and fifty thousand

dollars, and the amount that will probably accrue during the present quarter, is estimated at four millions two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, making for the whole year twenty-five millions five hundred thousand dollars, from which the drawbacks being deducted, will leave a clear revenue from the customs, receivable in the year 1827, of about twenty millions four hundred thousand dollars, which, with the sums to be received from the proceeds of the public lands, the bank dividends, and other incidental receipts, will form an aggregate of about twenty-three millions of dollars, a sum falling short of the whole expenses of the present year little more than the portion of those expenditures applied to the discharge of the public debt, beyond the annual appropriation of ten millions of dollars by the act of the 3d March, 1817. At the passage of that act, the public debt amounted to one hundred and twenty three millions five hundred thousand dollars. On the 1st of January next it will be short of seventy-four millions of dollars. In the lapse of these ten years, fifty millions of dollars of public debt, with the annual charge of upward of three millions of dollars of interest upon them, have been extinguished. At the passage of that act, of the annual appropriation of the ten millions of dollars, seven were absorbed in the payment of interest, and not more than three millions of dollars went to reduce the capital of the debt. Of the same ten millions of dollars, at this time scarcely four are applicable to the interest, and upward of six are effective in melting down the capital. Yet our experience has proved that a revenue consisting so largely of imposts and tonnage ebbs and flows, to an extraordinary extent, with all the fluctuations incident to the general commerce of the world. It is within our recollection that even in the compass of the same last ten years, the receipts of the Treasury were not adequate to the expenditures of the year; and that in two successive years it was found necessary to resort to loans to meet the engagements of the Nation. The returning tides of the succeeding years replenished the public coffers, until they have again begun to feel the vicissi tudes of a decline. To produce these alternations of fullness and exhaustion, the relative operation of abundant or of unfruitful seasons, the regulations of foreign governments, political revolu tions, the prosperous or decaying condition of manufactures, commercial speculations, and many other causes, not always to be traced, variously combine. We have found the alternate

swells and diminutions embracing periods of from two to three years. The last period of depression to us was from 1819 to 1822. The corresponding revival was from 1823 to the commencement of the present year. Still we have no cause to apprehend a depression comparable to that of the former period, or even to anticipate a deficiency which will intrench upon the ability to apply the annual ten millions of dollars to the reduction of the debt. It is well for us, however, to be admonished of the necessity of abiding by the maxims of the most vigilant economy, and of resorting to all honorable and useful expedients, for the pursuing with steady and inflexible perseverance the total discharge of the debt.

Besides the seven millions or dollars of the loans of 1813, which will have been discharged in the course of the present year, there are nine millions of dollars which, by the terms of the contracts, would have been, and are now redeemable. Thirteen millions of dollars more of the loan of 1814 will become redeemable from and after the expiration of the present month, and nine other millions from and after the close of the ensuing year. They constitute a mass of thirty-one millions of dollars, all bearing an interest of six per cent, more than twenty millions of dollars of which will be immediately redeemable, and the rest within a little more than a year. Leaving of this amount fifteen millions of dollars to continue at the interest of six per cent, but to be, as far as shall be found practicable, paid off in the years 1827 and 1828, there is scarcely a doubt that the remaining sixteen millions might within a few months be discharged by a loan at not exceeding five per cent, redeemable in the years 1829 and 1830. By this operation, a sum of nearly five hundred thousand dollars may be saved to the Nation; and the discharge of the whole thirty-one millions of dollars within the four years, may be greatly facilitated, if not wholly accomplished.

By an act of Congress of 3d March, 1825, a loan for the purpose now referred to, or a subscription to stock, was authorized, at an interest not exceeding four and a half per cent. But, at that

time, so large a portion of the floating capital of the country was absorbed in commercial speculations, and so little was left for investment in the stocks, that the measure was but partially successful. At the last session of Congress, the condition of the funds was still unpropitious to the measure; but the change so soon afterward occurred that, had the authority existed to redeem the