trust, appear out of place for me to bear this public testimony. The cardinal objects which should ever be held in view by those intrusted with the administration of public affairs, are rigidly, and without favor or affection, so to interpret the national will, expressed in the laws, as that injustice should be done to none-justice to all. This has been the rule upon which they have acted; and thus it is believed that few cases (if any) exist, wherein our fellow-citizens, who from time to time have been drawn to the seat of government for the settlement of their transactions with the government, have gone away dissatisfied. Where the testimony has been perfected, and was esteemed satisfactory, their claims have been promptly audited; and this in the absence of all favoritism or partiality. The government which is not just to its own people, can neither claim their affection nor the respect of the world. At the same time, the closest attention has been paid to those matters which relate more immediately to the great concerns of the country. Order and efficiency in each branch of the public service have prevailed, accompanied by a system of the most rigid responsibility on the part of the receiving and disbursing agents. The fact, in illustration of the truth of this remark, deserves to be noticed, that the revenues of the government, amounting in the last four years to upward of one hundred and twenty millions of dollars, have been collected and disbursed, through the numerous governmental agents, without the loss, by default, of any amount worthy of serious commentary. The appropriations made by Congress for the improvement of the rivers of the west, and of the harbors on the lakes, are in a course of judicious expenditure under suitable agents; and are destined, it is to be hoped, to realize all the benefits designed to be accomplished by Congress. I can not, however, sufficiently impress upon Congress the great importance of withholding appropriations from improvements which are not ascertained, by previous examination and survey, to be necessary for the shelter and protection of trade from the dangers of storms and tempests. Without this precaution, the expenditures are but too apt to enure to the benefit of individuals, without reference to the only consideration which can render them constitutional--the public interests and the general good. I can not too earnestly urge upon you the interests of this district, over which, by the constitution. Congress has exclusive jurisdiction. It would be deeply to be regretted should there be, at any time, ground to complain of neglect on the part of a community which, detached as it is from the parental care of the states of Virginia and Maryland, can only expect aid from Congress, as its local legislature. Among the subjects which claim your attention, is the prompt organization of an asylum for the insane who may be found, from time to time, sojourning within the district. Such course is also demanded by considerations which apply to branches of the public service. For the necessities in this behalf, I invite your particular attention to the report of the secretary of the navy. I have thus, gentlemen of the two houses of Congress, presented you a true and faithful picture of the condition of public affairs, both foreign and domestic. The wants of the public service are made known to you; and matters of no ordinary importance are urged upon your consideration. Shall I not be permitted to congratulate you on the happy auspices under which you have assembled, and at the important change in the condition of things which has occurred in the last three years? During that period, questions with foreign powers, of vital importance to the peace of our country, have been settled and adjusted. A desolating and wasting war with savage tribes has been brought to a close. The internal tranquillity of the country, threatened by agitating questions, has been preserved. The credit of the government, which had experienced a temporary embarrassment, has been thoroughly restored. Its coffers, which, for a season, were empty, have been replenished. A currency, nearly uniform in its value, has taken the place of one depreciated and almost worthless. Commerce and manufactures, which had suffered in common with every other interest, have once more revived; and the whole country exhibits an aspect of prosperity and happiness. Trade and barter, no longer governed by a wild and speculative mania, rest upon a solid and substantial footing; and the rapid growth of our cities, in every direction, bespeaks most strongly the favorable circumstances by which we are surrounded. My happiness, in the retirement which shortly awaits me, is the ardent hope which I experience, that this state of prosperity is neither deceptive nor destined to be short-lived; and that measures which have not yet received its sanction, but which I can not but regard as closely connected with the honor, the glory, and still more enlarged prosperity of the country, are destined, at an early day, to receive the approval of Congress. Under these circumstances, and with these anticipations, I shall most gladly leave to others, more able than myself, the noble and pleasing task of sustaining the public prosperity. I shall carry with me into retirement the gratifying reflection, that, as my sole object throughout has been to advance. the public good, I may not entirely have failed in accomplishing it; and this gratification is heightened in no small degree by the fact, that when, under a deep and abiding sense of duty, I have found myself constrained to resort to the qualified veto, it has neither been followed by disapproval on the part of the people, nor weakened in any degree their attachment to that great conservative feature of our government. SPECIAL MESSAGE. DECEMBER 10, 1844. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States :I COMMUNICATE to you an extract of a despatch from Mr. Hall to the secretary of state, which has been received by me since my message of the 3d instant, containing the pleasing information that the indemnity assumed to be paid by the republic of Venezuela, in the case of the brig Morris, has been satisfactorily arranged. SPECIAL MESSAGE. DECEMBER 18, 1844. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:- erate consideration. The extraordinary and highly offensive language which the Mexican government has thought proper to employ in reply to the remonstrance of the executive, through Mr. Shannon, against the renewal of the war with Texas while the question of annexation was pending before Congress and the people, and also the proposed manner of conducting that war, will not fail to arrest your attention. Such remonstrance, urged in no unfriendly spirit to Mexico, was called for by considerations of an imperative character, having relation as well to the peace of this country and the honor of this government, as to the cause of humanity and civilization. Texas had entered into the treaty of annexation upon the invitation of the executive; and when for that act she was threatened with a renewal of the war on the part of Mexico, she naturally looked to this government to interpose its efforts to ward off the threatened blow. But one course was left the executive, acting within the limits of its constitutional competency-and that was, to protest in respectful, but, at the same time, strong and decided terms, against it. The war thus threatened to be renewed, was promulgated by edicts and decrees, which ordered on the part of the Mexican military the desolation of whole tracts of country, and the destruction, without discrimination, of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence. Over the manner of conducting war, Mexico possesses no exclusive control. She has no right to violate, at pleasure, the principles which an enlightened civilization has laid down for the conduct of nations at war, and thereby retrograde to a period of barbarism, which, happily for the world, has long since passed away. All nations are interested in enforcing an observance of those principles; and the United States, the oldest of the American republics, and the nearest of the civilized powers to the theatre on which these enormities were proposed to be enacted, could not quietly content themselves to witness such a state of things. They had, through the executive, on another occasion, and, as was believed, with the approbation of the whole country, remonstrated against outrages similar, but even less inhuman than those which, by her new edicts and decrees, she has threatened to perpetrate, and of which the late inhuman massacre at Tabasco was but the precursor. The bloody and inhuman murder of Fannin and his companions, equalled only in savage barbarity by the usages of the untutored Indian tribes, proved how little confidence could be placed on the most solemn stipulations of her generals; while the fate of others who became her captives in war-many of whom, no longer able to sustain the fatigues and privations of long journeys, were shot down by the wayside, while their companions who survived were subjected to sufferings even more painful than death-had left an indelible stain on the page of civilization. The executive, with the evidence of an intention on the part of Mexico to renew scenes so revolting to humanity, could do no less than renew remonstrances formerly urged. For fulfilling duties so imperative, Mexico has thought proper, through her accredited organs, because she has had represented to her the inhumanity of such proceedings, to indulge in language unknown to the courtesy of diplomatic intercourse, and offensive in the highest degree to this government and people. Nor has she offended in this only. She has not only violated existing conventions between the two countries, by arbitrary and unjust decrees against our trade and intercourse, but withholds instalments of debt due to our citizens, which she solemnly pledged herself to pay, under circumstances which are fully explained by the accompanying letter from Mr. Green, our secretary of VOL. II.-42 legation. And when our minister has invited the attention of her government to wrongs committed by her local authorities, not only on the property, but on the persons of our fellow-citizens engaged in prosecuting fair and honest pursuits, she has added insult to injury, by not even deigning, for months together, to return an answer to his representations. Still further to manifest her unfriendly feelings toward the United States, she has issued decrees expelling from some of her provinces American citizens engaged in the peaceful pursuits of life; and now denies to those of our citizens prosecuting the whale-fishery on the northwest coast of the Pacific, the privilege which has through all time heretofore been accorded to them of exchanging goods of a small amount in value, at her ports in California, for supplies indispensable to their health and comfort. Nor will it escape the observation of Congress, that, in conducting a cor-. respondence with a minister of the United States (who can not and does not know any distinction between the geographical sections of the Union), charges wholly unfounded are made against particular states, and an appeal to others for aid and protection against supposed wrongs. In this same connexion, sectional prejudices are attempted to be excited, and the hazardous and unpardonable effort is made to foment divisions among the states of the Union, and thereby embitter their peace. Mexico has still to learn that, however freely we may indulge in discussion among ourselves, the American people will tolerate no interference in their domestic affairs by any foreign government; and in all that concerns the constitutional guarantees and the national honor, the people of the United States have but one mind and one heart. The subject of annexation addresses itself most fortunately to every portion of the Union. The executive would have been unmindful of its highest obligations, if it could have adopted a course of policy dictated by sectional interests and local feelings. On the contrary, it was because the question was neither local nor sectional, but made its appeal to the interests of the whole Union, and of every state in the Union, that the negotiation, and finally the treaty of annexation, was entered into; and it has afforded me no ordinary pleasure to perceive, that, so far as demonstrations have been made upon it by the people, they have proceeded from all portions of the Union. Mexico may seek to excite divisions among us, by uttering unjust denunciations against particular states; but when she comes to know that the invitations addressed to our fellow-citizens by Spain, and afterward by herself, to settle Texas, were accepted by emigrants from all the states--and when, in addition to this, she refreshes her recollection with the fact, that the first effort which was made to acquire Texas, was during the administration of a distinguished citizen from an eastern state, which was afterward renewed under the auspices of a president from the southwest she will awake to a knowledge of the futility of her present purpose of sowing dissensions among us, or producing distraction in our councils, by attacks either on particular states, or on persons who are now in the retirement of private life. Considering the appeal which she now makes to eminent citizens by name, can she hope to escape censure for having ascribed to them, as well as to others, a design, as she pretends now for the first time revealed, of having originated negotiations to despoil her, by duplicity and falsehood, of a portion of her territory? The opinion then, as now, prevailed with the executive, that the annexation of Texas to the Union was a matter of vast importance. In order to acquire that territory before it had assumed a position among the independent powers of the earth, propositions were made to Mexico for a cession of it to the United States. Mexico saw in these proceedings, at the time, no cause of complaint. She is now, when simply reminded of them, awakened to the knowledge of the fact, which she, through her secretary of state, promulgates to the whole world as true that those negotiations were founded in deception and falsehood, and superinduced by unjust and iniquitous motives. While Texas was a dependency of Mexico, the United States opened negotiations with the latter power for the cession of her then acknowledged territory; and now that Texas is independent of Mexico, and has maintained a separate existence for nine years-during which time she has been received into the family of nations, and is represented by accredited ambassadors at many of the principal courts of Europe-and when it has become obvious to the whole world that she is for ever lost to Mexico, the United States is charged with deception and falsehood in all relating to the past; and condemnatory accusations are made against states which have had no special agency in the matter, because the executive of the whole Union has negotiated with free and independent Texas, upon a matter vitally important to the interests of both countries. And after nine years of unavailing war, Mexico now announces her intention, through her secretary of foreign affairs, never to consent to the independence of Texas, or to abandon the effort to reconquer that republic. She thus announces a perpetual claim, which at the end of a century will furnish her as plausible a ground for discontent against any nation which at the end of that time may enter into a treaty with Texas, as she possesses at this moment against the United States. The lapse of time can add nothing to her title to independence. A course of conduct such as has been described on the part of Mexico, in violation of all friendly feeling, and of the courtesy which should characterize the intercourse between the nations of the earth, might well justify the United States in a resort to any measures to vindicate their national honor; but actuated by a sincere desire to preserve the general peace, and in view of the present condition of Mexico, the executive, resting upon its integrity, and not fearing but that the judgment of the world will duly appreciate its motives, abstains from recommending to Congress a resort to measures of redress, and contents itself with reurging upon that body prompt and immediate action on the subject of annexation. By adopting that measure, the United States will be in the exercise of an undoubted right; and if Mexico, not regarding their forbearance, shall aggravate the injustice of her conduct by a declaration of war against them, upon her head will rest all the responsibility. SPECIAL MESSAGE. JANUARY 22, 1845. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:I COMMUNICATE, herewith, an abstract of the treaty between the United States of America, and the Chinese empire, concluded at Wang Hiya on the 3d of July last, and ratified by the senate on the 16th instant; and which, having also been ratified by the emperor of China, now awaits |