of the militia; and for such a preparation of the great body as will proportion its usefulness to its intrinsic capacities. Nor can the occasion fail to remind you of the importance of those military seminaries which in every event will form a valuable and frugal part of our military establish

ment.

The manufacture of cannon and small arms has proceeded with due success, and the stock and resources of all the necessary munitions are adequate to emergencies. It will not be inexpedient, however, for Congress to authorize an enlargement of them.

Your attention will of course be drawn to such provisions on the subject of our naval force as may be required for the services to which it may be best adapted. I submit to Congress the seasonableness, also, of an authority to augment the stock of such materials as are imperishable in their nature, or may not at once be attainable.

In contemplating the scenes which distinguish this momentous epoch, and estimating their claims to our attention, it is impossible to overlook those developing themselves among the great communities which occupy the southern portion of our own hemisphere and extend into our neighborhood. An enlarged philanthropy and an enlighted forecast concur in imposing on the national councils an obligation to take a deep interest in their destinies; to cherish reciprocal sentiments of good will; to regard the progress of events, and not to be unprepared for whatever order of things may be ultimately established.

Under another aspect of our situation, the early attention of Congress will be due to the expediency of further guards against evasions and infractions of our commercial laws. The practice of smuggling, which is odious everywhere, and particularly criminal in free governments, where, the laws being made by all for the good of all, a fraud is committed on every individual as well as on the state, attains its utmost guilt when it blends with a pursuit of ignominious gain a treacherous subserviency, in the transgressors, to a foreign policy adverse to that of their own country. It is then that the virtuous indignation of the public should be enabled to manifest itself through the regular animadversions of the most competent laws. To secure greater respect to our mercantile flag, and to the honest interest which it covers, it is expedient also that it be made punishable in our citizens to accept licenses from foreign governments for a trade unlawfully interdicted by them to other American citizens, or to trade under false colors or papers of any sort.

A prohibition is equally called for against the acceptance by our citizens of special licenses to be used in a trade with the United States; and against the admission into particular ports of the United States of vessels from foreign countries authorized to trade with particular ports only.

Although other subjects will press more immediately on your deliberations, a portion of them can not but be well bestowed on the just and sound policy of securing to our manufactures the success they have attained, and are still attaining, in some degree, under the impulse of causes not permanent; and to our navigation the fair extent of which is at present abridged by the unequal regulations of foreign governments.

Besides the reasonableness of saving our manufactures from sacrifices which a change of circumstances might bring on them, the national interest requires that, with respect to such articles at least as belong to our defence and our primary wants, we should not be left in unnecessary dependence on external supplies. And while foreign governments adhere

to the existing discrimination in their ports against our navigation, and an equality or lesser discrimination is enjoyed by their navigation in our ports, the effect can not be mistaken, because it has been seriously felt by our shipping interests; and in proportion as this takes place, the advantages of an independent conveyance of our products to foreign markets, and of a growing body of mariners trained by their occupations for the service of their country in times of danger, must be diminished.

The receipts into the treasury during the year ending on the 30th of September last have exceeded thirteen millions and a half of dollars, and have enabled us to defray the current expenses, including the interest on the public debt, and to reimburse more than five millions of dollars of the principal, without recurring to the loan authorized by the act of the last session. The temporary loan obtained in the latter end of the year one thousand eight hundred and ten has also been reimbursed, and is not inIcluded in that amount.

The decrease of revenue arising from the situation of our commerce and the extraordinary expenses which have and may become necessary, must be taken into view, in making commensurate provisions for the ensuing year. And I recommend to your consideration the propriety of insuring a sufficiency of annual revenue, at least to defray the ordinary expenses of government, and to pay the interest on the public debt, including that on new loans which may be authorized.

I can not close this communication without expressing my deep sense of the crisis in which you are assembled, my confidence in a wise and honorable result to your deliberations, and assurances of the faithful zeal with which my co-operating duties will be discharged; invoking at the same time the blessing of Heaven on our beloved country, and on all the means that may be employed in vindicating its rights and advancing its welfare.

SPECIAL MESSAGE.

DECEMBER 12, 1811.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States :

I LAY before Congress two letters received from Governor Harrison, of the Indian territory, reporting the particulars and the issue of the expedition under his command, of which notice was taken in my communication of November 5th.

While it is deeply lamented that so many valuable lives have been lost in the action which took place on the seventh ultimo, Congress will see with satisfaction the dauntless spirit and fortitude victoriously displayed by every description of the troops engaged, as well as the collected firmness which distinguished their commander, on an occasion requiring the utmost exertions of valor and discipline.

It may reasonably be expected that the good effects of this critical defeat and dispersion of a combination of savages, which appears to have been spreading to a greater extent, will be experienced, not only in the cessation of murders and depredations committed on our frontier, but in the prevention of any hostile incursions otherwise to have been appre hended.

The families of those brave and patriotic citizens, who have fallen in this severe conflict, will doubtless engage the favorable attention of Congress.

SPECIAL MESSAGE.

DECEMBER 23, 1811.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States :—

I COMMUNICATE to Congress copies of an act of the legislature of New York relating to a canal from the great lakes to Hudson river. In making the communication, I consult the respect due to that state, in whose behalf the commissioners appointed by the act have placed it in my hands for the purpose.

The utility of canal navigation is universally admitted. It is no less certain that scarcely any country offers more extensive opportunities for that branch of improvements than the United States, and none, perhaps, inducements equally persuasive to make the most of them. The particular undertaking contemplated by the state of New York, which marks an honorable spirit of enterprise and comprises objects of national as well as more limited importance, will recall the attention of Congress to the signal advantages to be derived to the United States from a general system of internal communication and conveyance, and suggest to their consideration whatever steps may be proper on their part toward its introduction and accomplishment. As some of those advantages have an intimate connexion with the arrangements and exertions for the general security, it is at a period calling for these that the merits of such a system will be seen in the strongest lights.

SPECIAL MESSAGE.

MARCH 9, 1812.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States :I LAY before Congress copies of certain documents which remain in the department of state. They prove that at a recent period, while the United States, notwithstanding the wrongs sustained by them, ceased not to observe the laws of peace and neutrality toward Great Britain, and in the midst of amicable professions and negotiations on the part of the British government, through its public minister here, a secret agent of that government was employed in certain states, more especially at the seat of government in Massachusetts, in fomenting disaffection to the constituted authorities of the nation, and in intrigues with the disaffected, for the purpose of bringing about resistance to the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British force, of destroying the Union and forming the eastern part thereof into a political connexion with Great Britain.

In addition to the effect which the discovery of such a procedure ought to have on the public councils, it will not fail to render more dear to the

hearts of all good citizens that happy union of these states, which, under Divine Providence, is the guarantee of their liberties, their safety, then tranquillity, and their prosperity.

CONFIDENTIAL MESSAGE.

APRIL 1, 1812.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:CONSIDERING it as expedient, under existing circumstances and prospects, that a general embargo be laid on all vessels now in port, or hereafter arriving, for the period of sixty days, I recommend an immediate passage of a law to that effect.

SPECIAL MESSAGE.

APRIL 3, 1812.

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

HAVING examined and considered the bill, entitled, " An act providing for the trial of causes pending in the respective district courts of the United States, in cases of the absence or disability of the judges thereof," which bill was presented to me on the twenty-fifth of March past, I now return the same to the house of representatives, in which it originated, with the following objections :

Because the additional services imposed by the bill on the justices of the supreme court of the United States, are to be performed by them rather in the quality of other judges of other courts, namely, judges of the district courts, than in the quality of justices of the supreme court. They are to hold the district courts, and to do and perform all acts relating to the said courts, which are, by law, required of the district judges. The bill, therefore, virtually appoints, for the time, the justices of the supreme court to other distinct offices, to which, if compatible with their original offices, they ought to be appointed by another than the legislative authority, in pursuance of legislative provisions authorizing the appointments.

Because the appeal allowed by law, for the decision of the district courts to the circuit courts, while it corroborates the construction which regards a judge of one court as clothed with a new office, by being constituted a judge of the other, submits for correction erroneous judgments, not to superior or other judges, but to the erring individual himself, acting as sole judge of the appellate court.

Because the additional services to be required, may, by distances of place, and by the casualties contemplated by the bill, become disproportionate to the strength and health of the justices that are to perform them. The additional services being, moreover, entitled to no additional compensation, nor the additional expenses incurred to reimbursment. In this view, the bill appears to be contrary to equity, as well as a precedent to modifications and extensions on judicial services encroaching on the constitu tional tenure of judicial offices.

Because, by referring to the president of the United States questions of disability in the district judges, and of the unreasonableness of delaying the suits or cases pending in the district courts, and leaving it with him in such cases to require the justices of the supreme court to perform additional services, the bill introduces an unsuitable relation of members of the judiciary department to a discretionary authority of the executive department.

SPECIAL MESSAGE.

APRIL 20, 1812.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States :— AMONG the incidents of the unexampled increase and expanding interests of the American nation, under the fostering influence of free institutions and just laws, has been a corresponding accumulation of duties of the several departments of the government; and this has been necessarily the greater in consequence of the peculiar state of our foreign relations, and the connexion of these with our internal administration.

The extensive and multiplied preparations, into which the United States are at length driven for maintaining their violated rights, have caused this augmentation of business to press on the department of war, particularly, with a weight disproportionate to the powers of any single officer, with no other aids than are authorized by existing laws. With a view to

a more adequate arrangement for the essential objects of that department, I recommend to an early consideration of Congress a provision for two subordinate appointments therein; with such compensations annexed as may be reasonably expected by citizens duly qualified for the important functions which may be properly assigned to them.

CONFIDENTIAL MESSAGE.

JUNE 1, 1812.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States :

I COMMUNICATE to Congress certain documents, being a continuation of those heretofore laid before them on the subject of our affairs with Great Britain.

Without going back beyond the renewal, in 1803, of the war in which Great Britain is engaged, and omitting unrepaired wrongs of inferior magnitude, the conduct of her government presents a series of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation.

British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great highway of nations, and seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it; not in the exercise of a belligerent right founded on the law of nations against an enemy, but of a municipal prerogative over British subjects. British jurisdiction is thus extended to neutral vessels in a situation where no laws can operate but the law of na