fluence of his high authority, in aid of the undoubting convictions of my own experience.

The laws relating to the administration of the patent office are deserving much consideration, and perhaps susceptible of some improvement. The grant of power to regulate the action of Congress on this subject, has specified both the end to be attained and the means by which it is to be effected, "to promote the progress of science and of useful arts, by securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." If an honest pride might be indulged in the reflection, that on the records of the office are already found inventions, the usefulness of which has scarcely been transcended in the annals of human ingenuity, would not its exultation be allayed by the inquiry, whether the laws have effectually insured to the inventors the reward destined to them by the constitution-even a limited term of exclusive right to their discoveries?

On the 24th of December, 1799, it was resolved by Congress, that a marble monument should be erected by the United States, in the capitol, at the city of Washington; that the family of General Washington should be requested to permit his body to be deposited under it; and that the monument be so designed as to commemorate the great events of his military and political life. In reminding Congress of this resolution, and that the monument contemplated by it remains yet without execution, I shall indulge only the remarks, that the works in the capitol are approaching to completion; that the consent of the family, desired by the resolution, was requested and obtained; that a monument has been recently erected in this city, at the expense of the nation, over the remains of another distinguished patriot of the revolution; and that a spot has been reserved within the walls where you are deliberating for the benefit of this and future ages, in which the mortal remains may be deposited of him whose spirit hovers over you, and listens with delight to every act of the representatives of his nation which can tend to exalt and adorn his and their country.

The constitution under which you are assembled is a charter of limited powers. After full and solemn deliberations upon all or any of the objects which, urged by an irresistible sense of my own duty, I have recommended to your attention, should you come to the conclusion that, however desirable in themselves, the enactment of laws for effecting them would transcend the powers committed to you by that venerable instrument which we are all bound to support, let no consideration induce you to assume the exercise of powers not granted to you by the people. But if the power to exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over the District of Columbia; if the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; if the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; to fix the standard of weights and measures; to establish postoffices and postroads; to declare war; to raise and support armies; to provide and maintain a navy; to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying these powers into execution-if these powers, and others enumerated in the constitution, may be effectually brought into action by laws promoting the improvement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and VOL. I.-38

the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound; to refrain from exercising them for the benefit of the people themselves, would be to hide in the earth the talent committed to our charge-would be treachery to the most sacred of trusts.

The spirit of improvement is abroad upon the earth. It stimulates the hearts and sharpens the faculties, not of our fellow-citizens alone, but of the nations of Europe, and of their rulers. While dwelling with pleasing satisfaction upon the superior excellence of our political institutions, let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must, in proportion to its numbers, be the most powerful nation upon earth; and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow-men. While foreign nations, less blessed with that freedom which is power than ourselves, are advancing with gigantic strides in the career of public improvement, were we to slumber in indolence, or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence, and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority? In the course of the year now drawing to its close, we have beheld, under the auspices and at the expense of one state of this Union, a new university unfolding its portals to the sons of science, and holding up the torch of human improvement to eyes that seek the light. We have seen, under the persevering and enlightened enterprise of another state, the waters of our western lakes mingle with those of the ocean. If undertakings like these have been accomplished in the compass of a few years, by the authority of single members of our confederation, can we, the representative authorities of the whole Union, fall behind our fellow-servants in the exercise of the trust committed to us for the benefit of our common sovereign, by the accomplishment of works important to the whole, and to which neither the authority nor the resources of any one state can be adequate?

Finally, fellow-citizens, I shall await with cheering hope, and faithful co-operation, the result of your deliberations; assured that, without encroaching upon the powers reserved to the authorities of the respective states, or to the people, you will, with a due sense of your obligations to your country, and of the high responsibilities weighing upon yourselves, give efficacy to the means committed to you for the common good. And may He who searches the hearts of the children of men, prosper your exertions to secure the blessings of peace, and promote the highest welfare of our country.

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

DECEMBER 9, 1826.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States :THE assemblage of the representatives of our Union in both houses of Congress at this time, occurs under circumstances calling for the renewed homage of our grateful acknowledgments to the Giver of all good. With the exceptions incidental to the most felicitous condition of human existence,

we continue to be highly favored in all the elements which contribute to individual comfort and to national prosperity. In the survey of our extensive country, we are generally to observe abodes of health and regions of plenty. In our civil and political relations, we have peace without, and tranquillity within our borders. We are, as a people, increasing with unabated rapidity in population, wealth, and national resources; and, whatever differences of opinion exist among us with regard to the mode and the means by which we shall turn the beneficence of Heaven to the improvement of our own condition, there is yet a spirit animating us all, which will not suffer the bounties of Providence to be showered upon us in vain, but will receive them with grateful hearts, and apply them with unwearied hands to the advancement of the general good.

Of the subjects recommended to the consideration of Congress at their last session, some were then definitely acted upon. Others left unfinished, but partly matured, will recur to your attention, without needing a renewal of notice from me. The purpose of this communication will be to present to your view the general aspect of our public affairs at this moment, and the measures which have been taken to carry into effect the intentions of the legislature as signified by the laws then and heretofore enacted.

In our intercourse with the other nations of the earth, we have still the happiness of enjoying peace and a general good understanding; qualified, however, in several important instances, by collisions of interest, and by unsatisfied claims of justice, to the settlement of which the constitutional interposition of the legislative authority may become ultimately indispensable.

By the decease of the emperor Alexander of Russia, which occurred cotemporaneously with the commencement of the last session of Congress, the United States have been deprived of a long-tried, steady, and faithful friend. Born to the inheritance of absolute power, and trained in the school of adversity, from which no power on earth, however absolute, is exempt, that monarch, from his youth had been taught to feel the force and value of public opinion, and to be sensible that the interests of his own government would be best promoted by a frank and friendly intercourse with this republic, as those of his people would be advanced by a liberal commercial intercourse with our country. A candid and confidential interchange of sentiments between him and the government of the United States, upon the affairs of South America, took place at a period not long preceding his demise, and contributed to fix that course of policy which left to the other governments of Europe no alternative but that of sooner or later recognising the independence of our southern neighbors, of which the example had by the United States already been set. The ordinary diplomatic communications between his successor, the emperor Nicholas, and the United States, have suffered some interruption by the illness, departure, and subsequent decease of his minister residing here, who enjoyed, as he merited, the entire confidence of his new sovereign, as he had eminently responded to that of his predecessor. But we have had the most satisfactory assurances that the sentiments of the reigning emperor toward the United States are altogether conformable to those which had so long and constantly animated his imperial brother; and we have reason to hope that they will serve to cement that harmony and good understanding between the two nations which, founded in congenial interests, can not but result in the advancement of the welfare and prosperity of both.

Our relations of commerce and navigation with France are, by the oper

ation of the convention of 24th June, 1822, with that nation, in a state of gradual and progressive improvement. Convinced by all our experience, no less than by the principles of fair and liberal reciprocity which the United States have constantly tendered to all the nations of the earth, as the rule of commercial intercourse which they would universally prefer, that fair and equal competition is most conducive to the interests of both parties, the United States, in the negotiation of that convention, earnestly contended for a mutual renunciation of discriminating duties and charges in the ports of the two countries. Unable to obtain the immediate recognition of this principle in its full extent, after reducing the duties of discrimination so far as was found attainable, it was agreed that, at the expiration of two years from the first of October, 1822, when the convention was to go into effect, unless a notice of six months on either side should be given to the other, that the convention itself must terminate, those duties should be reduced by one fourth, and that this reduction should be yearly repeated until all discrimination should cease while the convention itself should continue in force. By the effect of this stipulation, three fourths of the discriminating duties which had been levied by each party, upon the vessels of the other in its ports, have already been removed; and on the first of next October, should the convention be still in force, the remaining fourth will be discontinued. French vessels, laden with French produce, will be received in our ports on the same terms as our own; and ours, in return, will enjoy the same advantages in the ports of France.

By these approximations to an equality of duties and of charges, not only has the commerce between the two countries prospered, but friendly dispositions have been on both sides encouraged and promoted. They will continue to be cherished and cultivated on the part of the United States. It would have been gratifying to have had it in my power to add, that the claims upon the justice of the French government, involving the property and the comfortable subsistence of many of our fellow-citizens, and which have been so long and so earnestly urged, were in a more promising train of adjustment than at your last meeting; but their condition remains unaltered.

With the government of the Netherlands, the mutual abandonment of discriminating duties had been regulated by the legislative acts on both sides. The act of Congress of the 20th of April, 1818, abolished all discriminating duties of impost and tonnage, upon the vessels and produce of the Netherlands in the ports of the United States, upon the assurance given by the government of the Netherlands, that all such duties operating against the shipping and commerce of the United States in that kingdom had been abolished. These reciprocal regulations had continued in force several years, when the discriminating principle was resumed by the Netherlands in a new and indirect form, by a bounty of ten per cent., in the shape of a return of duties to their national vessels, and in which those of the United States are not permitted to participate. By the act of Congress of the 7th of January, 1824, all discriminating duties in the United States were again suspended, so far as related to the vessels and produce of the Netherlands, so long as the reciprocal exemption should be extended to the vessels and produce of the United States in the Netherlands. But the same act provides that, in the event of a restoration of discriminating duties to operate against the shipping and commerce of the United States in any of the foreign countries referred to therein, the suspension of discriminating duties in favor of the navigation-of such foreign country should

cease, and all the provisions of the acts imposing discriminating foreign tonnage and import duties in the United States should revive and be in full force with regard to that nation.

In the correspondence with the government of the Netherlands upon this subject, they have contended that the favor shown to their own shipping by this bounty upon their tonnage is not to be considered as a discriminatory duty. But it can not be denied that it produces all the same effects. Had the mutual abolition been stipulated by treaty, such a bounty upon the national vessels could scarcely have been granted consistently with good faith. Yet, as the act of Congress of 7th January, 1824, has not expressly authorized the executive authority to determine what shall be considered as a revival of discriminating duties by a foreign government to the disadvantage of the United States, and as the retaliatory measure on our part, however just and necessary, may tend rather to that conflict of legislation which we deprecate, than to that concert to which we invite all commercial nations as most conducive to their interest and our own, I have thought it more consistent with the spirit of our institutions to refer the subject again to the paramount authority of the legislature to decide what measure the emergency may require, than abruptly by proclamation to carry into effect the minatory provision of the act of 1824.

During the last session of Congress, treaties of amity, navigation, and commerce, were negotiated and signed at this place with the government of Denmark in Europe, and with the federation of Central America in this hemisphere. These treaties then received the constitutional sanction of the senate, by the advice and consent to their ratification. They were accordingly ratified on the part of the United States, and during the recess of Con- . gress, have been also ratified by the other respective contracting parties. The ratifications have been exchanged, and they have been published by proclamations, copies of which are here with communicated to Congress. These treaties have established between the contracting parties the principles of equality and reciprocity in their broadest and most liberal extent. Each party admitting the vessels of the other into its ports, laden with cargoes the produce or manufacture of any quarter of the globe, upon the payment of the same duties of tonnage and impost that are chargeable upon their own. They have further stipulated, that the parties shall hereafter grant no favor of navigation or commerce to any other nation, which shall not, upon the same terms be granted to each other; and that neither party will impose upon articles of merchandise, the produce or manufacture of the other, any other or higher duties than upon the like articles, being the produce or manufacture of any other country. To these principles there is, in the convention with Denmark, an exception with regard to the colonies of that kingdom in the Arctic seas, but none with regard to her colonies in the West Indies.

In the course of the last summer, the term to which our last commercial treaty with Sweden was limited has expired. A continuation of it is in the contemplation of the Swedish government, and is believed to be desirable on the part of the United States. It has been proposed by the king of Sweden that, pending the negotiation of renewal, the expired treaty should be mutually considered as still in force; a measure which will require the sanction of Congress to be carried into effect on our part, and which I therefore recommend to your consideration.

With Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and in general all the European powers, between whom and the United States relations of friendly intercourse have