The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-15 00:00:00

TIEE4 Cr N.

the purpose of receiving and considering a proposition
which she intends to submit, for the capitalisation of the
Sound Dues, and the distribution of the sum to he paid as
commutation among the Governments, according to the
respective proportions of their maritime commerce to and
from the Baltic. I have declined, in behalf of the United
States, to accept this invitation, for the most cogent rea-
sons. One is, that enniark does not offer to submit to
the Convention, the question of her right to levy the
Sound Dues. A second is, that, if the Convention were
allowed to take cognisance of that particular question,
still it would tot be competent to deal with the great
international principle involved, which affects the right
in other cases of navigation and commercial freedom, as
well as that of access to the Baltic. Above all, by the ex-
press terms of the proposition it is contemplated that the
consideration of the Sound Dues shall be commingled with,
and made subordinate to, a matter wholly extraneous—the
balance of power among the Governments of Europe.
While, however, rejecting this proposition, and insisting
ou the right of free transit into and from the Baltic, I
have expressed to Denmark a willingness, on the part of
the United :4. totes, to share liberally with other Powers in
compensating her for any advantages which commerce shall
hereafter derive from expenditures made by her for the
improvement and safety of the navigation of the Sound or
Belts.

I lay before you, herewith, sundry documents on the
subject, in which my views are more fully disclosed.
Should no satisfactory arrangement be soon concluded, I
shall again call your attention to the subject, with recom-
mendation of such measures as may appear to be required
in order to assert and secure the rights of the United States
so far as they are affected by the pretensions of Dentrark.

POST-OFFICE.
It will be perceived by the report of the Postmaster-
General, that the gross expenditure of the department for
the last fiscal year was $9,968,341, and the gross receipts
$7,3452 2,l36—making an excess of expenditure over receipts
of ,626,206; and that the cost of mail transportation
during that year was $674,952 greater than the previous
year. Much of the heavy expenditures to which the
Treasury is thus subjected is to be ascribed to the large
quantity of printed matter conveyed by the mails, either
franked or liable to no postage by law, or to very low rates
of postage compared with th rt charged on letters, and to
the great cost of mail service on railroads and by ocean
steamers. The suggestions of the Postmaster-General on
the subject deserve the consideration of Congress.
INTERIOR.
The report of the Secretary of the Interior will engage
your attention, as well for useful suggestions it contains,
as for the interest and importance of the subjecel to which
they refer.
The aggregate amount of public land sold during the last
fiscal year, located with military scrip or land warrants,
taken up under grant, for roads, and selected as swamp
land by States, is 24,557,409 acres, of which the portion
sold was 15,729,524 acres, yielding in receipts the sum of
$11,485,380. In the Same period of time, 8,723,851 acres
have been surveyed; but, in consideration of the quantity
already subject to entry, no additional tracts have been
brought into market.
The peculiar relation of the general Government to the
district of Columbia renders it proper to commend to your
care not only its material but also its moral interests, in-
cluding education, more especially in those parts of the
district outside of the cities of W shington and Georgetown.
The commissioners appointed to revise and codify the
laws of the district have made such progress in the per-
formance of their task as to insure its completion in the
time prescribed by the act of Congress.
Information has recently been received that the peace of
the settlements in the territory of Oregon and Washington
is disturbed by hostilities on the part of the Indians, with
indications of extensive combinations of a hostile character
among the tribes in that quarter, the more serious in their
possible effect by reason of the undetermined foreign inte-
rests existing in thoets territories, to which your attention
has already been especially invited. Efficient measures
have been taken, which, it is believed, will restore quiet,
and afford protection to our citizens.
In the territory of Kansas there have been acts prejudi-
cial to good order, bug as yet none has occurred under cir-
cumstances to justify the interposition of the Federal
Executive. That could only be in case of obstruction to
federal law, or of organised resistance to territorial law,
assuming the character of insurrection, which, if it should
occur, it would be my duty promptly to overcome and sup-
press. I cherish the hope, however, that the occurrence of
any such untoward event will he prevented by the sound
sense of the people of the territory, who, f y its organic law,
possessing the right to determine their own domestic insti-
tutions, are entitled, while deporting themselves peace-
fully, to the free exercise of that right, and must be pro-
tected in the enjoyment of ii, without interference on the
part of the citizeua of any of the States.
The southern boundary line of this territory has never
been surveyed and established. The rapidly-extending
settlements in that region, and the fact that the main route
between Independence, in the State of Missouri, and New
Mexico, is contiguous in this line, suggest the probability
that embarrassing questions of jurisdiction may conse-
quently arise. For these and other considerations I com-
mend the subject to your early attention.
CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY 017 THE GOVERN-
MENT.
I have thus passed in review the general state of the
Union, incleding such particular concerns as the Federal
Government, whether of domestic or foreign relations, as
it appeared to me desirable and useful to bring to the spe-
cial notice of Congress. Unlike the great states of Eu-
rope and Asia, and many of those of America, these
United States are wasting their strength neither in foreign
war nor domestic strife. Whatever of discontent or pub-
lic dissatisfaction exists, is attributable to the imperfections
of human nature, or is incident to all Governments, how-
ever perfect, which human wi'dom can devise. Such sub-
jects of political agitation as occupy' the publio mind, con-
sist, to a great extent, of exaggeration of inevitable evils,
or over zeal in social improvement, or more imagination
of grievance, having but remote connection with any of
the constitutional functions or duties of the Federal Go-
vernment. To whatever extent these questions exhibit a
tendency menacing to the stability of the Constitution, or
inteerity of the Union, and no further, they demand
the consideration of the Executive, and require to be pre-
sented by it to Congress.
Before the Thirteen Colonies became a Coniederation of
independent States, they were associated only bycommunity
of trans-Atlantic origin, by geographical position, and by
tne mutual tie of common dependence on Greet Britain.
When that tie was sundered, they severally assumed the
powers and rights of abaolare self-government. The muni-
cipal and social institutions of each, its laws of property,
and of personal relation, even its political organisation,
were such only as each one chose to establish, wholly with-
out interference from any other. In the language of
the Declaration of Independence, each State had " full
power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, esta-
blish commerce, and to do an other acts and things which
independentetates may of right do." The several colonies
differed in climate, in soil, in natural productions, is re-
ligion, in systems of education, in legislation, and in the
forms of political administration ; and they continued to
differ in those respects when they voluntarily allied them-
selves as States to carry on the war of the Revolution.
The object of that war was to disenthral the United
Colonies from foreign rule, which had proved tole() oppres-
sive, and to separate them permanently from the mother
country ; the political result was the foundation of a fede-
ral republic of the free white men of the colonies, consti-
tuted, as they were, in distinct and reciprocally inde-
pendent State Governments. As for the subject races,
whether Indian or African, the wise and brave statesmen
of teat day, being engaged in no extravagant scheme of
social change, left them as they were, and thus preserved
themselves and their posterity from the anarchy and ever
recurring civil wars which have prevailed in other revolu-
tionisedEuropean Colonies of America.
When the confederated States found it convenient to
modify the conditions of their association, by giving to the
General Government direct access, in some respect 4, to the
people of the States, instead of confining it to action on the
States as such, they proceeded to frame the existing C m-
stitntion, adhering steadily to one guiding thought, which
was to delegate only such power as was necessary and pro-
per to the execution of specific purposes, or, in other
words, to retain as much as possible, consistently with
those purposes, of the independent powers of the indivi-
dual States For object of common defence and security,
they intrusted to the General Government certain care-
fully-defined functions, leaving all others as the undele-
gated rights of the separate independent sovereignties.
Such is the constitutional theory of our Government, the
practical observance of which has carried us, and us alone,
among modern republics, through nearly three generations
of time without the cost of one drop of blood shed in civil
war. With freedom and concert of action, it lute enabled
us to contend successfully on the battle-field against
foreign foes, has elevated the feeble colonies into powerful
States, and has raised our industrial productions, and our
commerce whicte transports them, to the level of the richest
and the greatest nations of Europe. And the admirable
adaptation of our political institutions to their objects,
combining local self-government with aggregate strength,
has established the practicability of a Government ike
ours to cover a continent with confederate States.
The Congress of the United States is, in effect, that con-
gress of sovereignties, which good men in the old world
have sought for, but could never attain, and which im-
parts to America an exemption from the mutable leagues
for common action, from the wars, the mutual invasions,
and vague aspirations after the balance of power, which
convulse from time to time the Governments of Europe,
Onr co-operative action rests in the conditions of perms.
nent confederation prescribed by the constitution. Our
balance of power is in the separate reserved rights of t„
States, and their equal representation in the Senate. That
independent sovereignty in every one of the States, wit h
its reserved ,rights of local self-government assigned t,
each by their co-equal power in the Senate, was the fun .
&mental condition of the Constitution. Without it the
Union would never have existed. However desirous the
larger States might be to reorgenise the Government so
as to give to their population its proportionate weight in
the common councils, they knew it was impossible,
unless they conceded to the smaller ones authority to
exercise at least a negetive influence on all the measures
of the Government, whether legislative or executive,
through their equal representation in the Senate. In-
deed the larger Sta'es themselves coul I net have
failed to perceive that the same power was equally
necessary to them, for the security of their own domes-
tic interests against the aggregate force of the general
Government. In a word, the original States went into
this permanent league on the agreed premises of exerting
their common strength frr the defence of the whole, and
of all its parts, but of utterly. excluding
all capability of
reciprocal aggression. Each solemnly bound itself to all
the others, neither io undertake nor permit any encroach-
ment upon, or intermedeling with, another's reserved
rights.
Where it was deemed expedient, particular rights of the
States were expressly guaranteed by the Constitution; but
in all things beside these rights were ruarded by the limi-
tation of the powers granted, and by express reservation
of all powers not granted in the compact of nuiou. Thus,
the great power of taxation was limited to Purposes of
common defence and general warfare, excluding objects
appertaining to the local legislation of the several States ;
and these purposes of general welfare and common defence
were afterwards defined by specific enumeration, as being
matters only of co-relation between the States themselves,
or between them and foreign Governments, which, because
of their common and general nature, could not be left to
the separate control of each State.
Of the circumstances of local condition, interests, and
rights, in which a portion of the States, constituting one
great section of the Union, differed from the rest, and from
another section, and, most important was the peculiarity
of a larger relative coloured population iu the Southern
than in the Northern States.
A population of this class, hell in subjection, existed
in nearly all the States, but was more numerous and of
more serious concernment in the south than in the north,
on account of natural differences of climate and produc-
tion; and it was foreseen that, for the same reasons, while
this population would diminish, and sooner or later cease
to exist in some States, it might increase in others. The
peculiar character and magnitude of this question of local
rights, not in material relations only, but still more in so
cial ones, caused it to enter into the special stipulations of
the constitution.

Hence, while the General Government, as well by the
enumerated powers granted to it, as by those not enume-
rated, and therefare refused to it, was forbidden to touch
this matter in the sense of attack or offenca ; it was placed
under the general safeguard of the Union, in the sense of
defence against either invasion or domestic violence, like
all other local interests of the several States. Each State
expressly stipulated; as, well for itself as for each and all of
its citizens, owl every citizen of each State became solemnly
bound by his allegiance to the Constitution, that any per-
son, held to service or labour in one State. escaping into
another, should not in consequence of any law or regula-
tion thereof lee discharged from such service or labour, but
should be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labour might bo due by the Laws of his State.
_ Thus, and thus only, by the reciprocal guaranty of all
the rights of every Stategigainst interference on the part of
another, was the present form of government estabDthed