The Sun.
London, England, 1856-12-16 00:00:00

LONDON, Tt. ESDA EVENING, DECEMBER 16, 1856.

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

[A summary of the follovk ing appeared in our impreP.
sion of yesterday.]
Fellow-citizens of the Senate, and of the House of Re-
presentatives,—The Constitution requires that the Presi-
dent shall, from time to time, not only recommend to the
consideration of Congress such measures as be may judge
necessary and expedient, but also that he shall give infor-
mation to them of the State of the Union. To do this
duty fully involves exposition of all matters in the actual
condition of the country, domestic or foreign, which essen-
tially concern the general welfare. While performing his
constitutional duty in this respect, the President does not
speak merely to express personal convictions, but as the
Executive Minister of the Government, enabled by his
position, and called upon by his official obligations, to scan
with an impartial eye the interests of the whole, and of
every part of the United States.
Of the condition of the domestic interests of the Union,
its agriculture, mines, manufactures, navigation, and com-
merce, it is necess try only to say that the internal pros-
perity of the country, its continuous and steady advance-
ment in wealth and population, and private as well as
public well-being, attest the wis.lom of our institutions, and
the predominant spirit of intelligence and patriotism which,
notwithstanding occasional irregularities of opinion or
action resulting from popular freedom, has distinguished
and characterised the people of America.
In the brief interval between the termination of the last
.ntl the commencement of the present session of Congress
the public mind has been occupied with the care of select-
ing, for another constitutional term, the President and
Vice-President of the United States.
The determination of the persons, who are of right, or
cont;ngently, to preside over the administration of the Go-
vernment is, under our system, committed to the States and
the people. We appeal to them, by their voice pronounced
in the forms of law, to call whomsoever they will to the high
post of Chief Magistrate.
And thus it is that as the senators represent the respective
States of the Union, and the members of the House of Re
presentatives the several constituencies of each State, so ,
the President represents the aggregate population of the
United States. Their election of him is the explicit and I
solemn act of the sole sovereign authority of the Union.

It is impossible to misapprehend the great principles
which, by their recent political action, the people of the
United States have sanctioned and announced.

They have asserted the constitutional quality of each
and all of the States of the Union as States; they have
affirmed the constitutional equality of each and all of the
citizens of the United States as citizens, whatever their
religion, whatever their birth, or their residence; they
have maintained the inviolability of the constitutional
rights of the different sections of the Union; and they
have proclaimed their devoted attachment to the Union

and to the Constitution, as objects of interest superior to

all subjects of local or sectional controversy, as the safe-
guard of the rights of all, as the spirit and the essence of
the liberty, peace, and greatness of the Republic.
In doing this they have at the same time emphatically
condemned the idea of organising in these United States
mere geographical parties ; of marshalling in hostile array
toward each other the different parts of the country, north
or south, east or west.

Schemes of this nature, fraught with incalculable mis-
chief, and which the considerate sense of the people has
rejected, could have had countenance in no part of the
country had they not been disguised by suggestions plau-
sible i❑ appearance, acting upon an excited state of the
public mind, induced by causes temporary in their cha-
racter, and, it is to be hoped, transient in their influence.

THE SLAVERY AND KANSAS AGITATION.
Perfect liberty of association for political objects and the
widest scope of discussion are the received and ordinary
conditions of government in our country. Our institutions,
framed in the spirit of confidence in the intelligence and in-
tegrity of the people, do not forbid citizens, either indivi-
dually or associated together, to attack by writing, speech,
or other methods shortof physical force, the constitutionand
the very existence of the Union. Under the shelter of this
great liberty, and protected by the laws and usages of the
Government they assail, associations have been formed, in
some of the States, of individuals, who, pretending to seek
only to prevent the spread of the institution of slavery
into the present or future inchoate States of the Union,
are really inflamed with desire to change the domestic in-
stitutions of existing States.
To accomplish their objects they dedicate themselves to
the odious task of depreciating the Government organisa-

tion which stands in their way, and of calumniating with
indiscriminate invective, not only the citizens of particular,
States, with whose laws they find fault, but all others of
their fellow-citizens throughout the country who do not
participate with them in their assaults upon the constitution
framed and adopted by our fathers, and claiming for the pri-
vileges it has secured, and the blessings it has conferred,
the steady support and grateful reverence of their children.
They seek an object which they well know to be a revolu-
tionary one. They are perfectly aware that the change in
the relative condition of the white and black races in the
slaveholding States, which they would promote, is be-
yond their lawful authority ; that to them it is• a foreign
object; that it cannot be effected by any peaceful instils
mentality of theirs ; that for them, and the States of which
they are citizens, the only path to its accomplishment is
through burning cities, and ravaged fields, and slaughtered
populations, and all there is most terrible in foreign, com-
plicated with civil and servile war ; and that the first step
in the attempt is the forcible dist uption of a country em-
bracing in its broad bosom a degree of liberty, and an
amount of individual and public prosperity to which there
is no parallel in history, and substituting in its place hostile
governments, driven at once and inevitably into mutual de-
vastation and fratricidal carnage, transforming the now
peaceful and felicitous brotherhood into a vast permanent
camp of armed men like the rival monarchies of Europe
and Asia. Well knowing that such, and such only, are the
means and the consequences of their plans and purposes,
they endeavour to prepare the people of the United States
for civil war by tieing everything in their power to deprive
the constitution and the laws of moral authority, and to
undermine the fabric of the Union by appeals to passion and
sectional prejudice, by indoctrinating its people with reci-
procal hatred, and by educating them to stand face to face
as enemies, rather than shoulder to shoulder as friends.
It is by the agency of such unwarrantable interference,
foreign and domestic, that the minds of many, otherwise
good citizens, have been so inflamed into the passionate
condemnation of the domestic institutions of the Southern
States, as at length to pass insensibly to almost equally
passionate hostility towards their fellow-citizens of those
States, and thus finally to fall into temporary fellowship
with the avowed and active enemies of the constitution.
Ardently attached to liberty in the abstract, they do not
• have
stop to consider practically how thereolbajnetcttshtahteyevweonulit
attain can be accomplished, nor to if
the evil were as great as they
deem it, they
rbeymethdyeir tvoioaleptipcley,
tion which is one of the most difficult of all the pro-
anadndu
nthaaant a
tiitt
uctaina
aable
aocntliyan.aggAravganteensdo-
blems of social institution, political economy, and states-
manship, they treat with unreasoning
intemperance of
thought and language. Extremes beget extremes. Violent
attack from the North finds its inevitable consequence in
the growth of a spirit of angry defiance at the South. Thus
in the progress of events we had reached that consummation,
which the voice of the people has now so pointedly rebuked,
of the attempt of a portion of the States, by a sectional
organisation and movement, to usurp the control of the
Government of the United States.
I confidently believe that the great body of those who
inconsiderately took this fatal step are sincerely attached to
the constitution and the -Union. They would, upon deli-
beration, shrink with unaffected horror from any conscious
act of disunion or civil war. But they have entered into a
path, which leads no .vhere, unless it be to civil war and
disunion, and which has no other possible outlet. They
have proceeded thus far in that direction in consequence of
the successive stages of their progress having consisted of a
series of secondary issues, each of which professed to be
confined within constitutional and peaceful limits, but
which attempted indirectly what few men were willing to
do directly; that is, to act aggro: sively against the consti-
tutional rights of nearly one-half of the 31 States.
In the long series of acts of indirect aggression, the first
was the strenuous agitation, by citizens of the Northern
States, in Congress and out of it, of the question of eman-
cipation in the Southern States.
The second step in this path of evil consisted of acts of
the people of the Northern States, and in several instances
of their Governments, aimed to facilitate the escape of per-
sons held to service in the Southern States, and to prevent
their extradition when reclaimed according to law and in
virtue of express provisions of the constitution. To pro-
mote this object, legislative enactments and other means
were adopted to take away or defeat rights which the
constitution solemnly guaranteed. In order to nullify the
then existing act of Congress concerning the extradition of
fugitives from service, laws were enacted in many States for-
bidding their officers, under the severest penalties, to partici-
pate in the execution of any act of Congress whatever.' In
this way that system of harmonious co-operation between
the authorities of the United States and of the several
States, for the maintenance of their common institutions,
which existed in the early years of the Republic, was de-
stroyed; conflicts ofjurisdiction came to be frequent.; and
Congress found itself compelled, for the support of the
constitution, and the vindication of its power, to authorise
the appointment of new officers charged with the execu.
tion of its acts, as if they and the officers of the States
were the Ministers respectively of foreign Governments in
I.
a state of mutual hostility, rather than follow magistrates
of a common country, peacefully subsisting under the pro-

tection of a well-constitutioned union. Thus, here also
aggression was followed by reaction ; and the attacks upon
the constitution at this point did but serve to raise up new
barriers for its defence and security.
The third stage of this unhappy controversy was in connec-
tion with the organisation of territorial governments, and
the admission of new States into the Union. When it was
proposed to admit the State of Maine, by separation of ter-
ritory from that of Massachusetts, and the State of Missouri
formed of a portion of tiro territory ceded by France to the
United States, representatives in Congress objected to the
admission of the latter, unless with conditions suited to
particular views of public policy. The imposition of such
a condition was successfully resisted. But, at the same
time, the question was presented of imposing restrictions
upon the residue of the territory ceded by France. That
question was for the time disposed of by the adoption of a
geographical line of limitation.
In this connection it should not be forgotten that
France, of her own accord, resolved, for considerations
of the most far-sighted sagacity, to ce 'l3 Louisiana to
the United States, and that accession was accepted by
the United States ; the latter expressly engaged that
"the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incor-
porated in the Union of the United States, and ad-
mitted as soon as possible, according to the principles
of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the
rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United
states ; in the meantime they shall be maintained and
protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property,
and the religion which they profess"—that is to say, while
it remains in a territorial condition, its inhabitants are
maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their
liberty, with a right_ thtit to pass into the condition of
States on a footing of perfect equality with the original
States.
The enactment which established the restrictive geogra-
phical line was acquiesced in rather than approved by the
States of the Union. It stood on the statute book, how-
ever, for a number of years ; and the people of the reaper•
tile States acquiesced in the re-enactment of the principle
As applied to the State of Texas ; and it was proposed to
acquiesce in its further application to the territory ac-
quired by the United States from Mexico. But this pro-
position was successfully resisted by the representatives
from the Northern States, who, regardless of the statute
line, insisted upon applying restriction to the new territory
generally, whether lying north or south of it—thereby re-
pealing it as a legislative compromise, and, on the part of
the North, persistently violating the compact, if compact
there was.

Thereupon this enactment ceased to have binding virtue
in any sense, whether as respects the North or the South ;
and so in effect it was treated on the 'occasion of the ad-
mission of the States of California, and the organisation of
the territories of New Mexico, Utah, and Washington.

Such was the state of this question when the time arrived
for the organisation of the territories of Kansas and Ne-
braska. In the progress of constitutional inquiry and re-
flection, it had now at length come to be seen clearly that
Congress does not possess constitutional power to impose
rastrictions of this character upon. any present or future
State of the Union. In a long series of decisions, on the
fullest argument, and after the most deliberate considera-

tion, the Supreme Court of the United States had finally
determined this point in every form under which the ques-
tion could arise, whether as affecting public •r private
rights—in questions of the public domain, of religion, of
navigation, and of servitude.

The several States of the Union aro, by forcet of the con-
btitntion, coequal in domestic legislative power. Congress
cannot change a law of domestic relation in the State of
Maine; no more can it in the State of Missouri. Any statute
which proposes to do this is a mere nullity ; it takes away
no right, it confers none. If it remains en the statute book
unrepealed, it remains there only as a monument of error,
and a beacon of warning to the legislator and the statesman.
To repeal it will be only to remove imperfection from the
statutes, without affecting, either in the sense of permission
or of prohibition, the action of the States or of their citizens.

Still, when the nominal restriction of this nature, already
a dead letter in law, was, in terms, repealed by the last
Congress, in a clause of the act organising the territories
of Kansas and Nebraska, that repeal was made the occa-
sion of a wide-spread and dangerous agitation.

It was alleged that the original enactment being a com-
pact of perpetual moral obligation, its repeal constituted
an odious breach of faith.

An Act of Congress, while it remains unrepealed, more
especially if it be constitutionally valid in the judgment of
those functionaries whose duty it is to pronounce on that
point, is undoubtedly binding on the conscience of each
good citizen of the Republic. But in what sense can it be
asserted that the enactment in question was invested with
perpetuity and entitled to the respect of a solemn com-
pact ? No distinct contending powers of the Government,
no separate sections of the Union, treating as such, en-
tered into treaty stipulations on the subject. It was a
mere clause of an Act of Congress, and, like any other con-
troverted matter of legislation, received its final shape, and
was passed by compromise of the conflicting opinions or
sentiments of the members of Congress. But if it ha d
authority over men's consciences, to whom did this autho-
rity attach ? Not to those of the North, who had repeat-
edly refused to confirm it by extension, and who had zea-
lously striven to establish other and incompatible regula-
tions upon the subject. And if, as it thus appears, the sup-
posed compact had no obligatory force as to the North, of
course it could not have had any as to the South, for all
such compacts must be mutual and of reciprocal obligation.
It has not nnfrequently happened that law-givers, with
undue estimation of the value of the law they give, or in
the view of imparting to it peculiar strength, make it per-
petual in terms ; but they cannot thus bind the conscience,
the judgment, and the will of those who may succeed them
invested with similar responsibilities, and clothed with
equal authority. More careful investigation may prove the
law to be unsound in principle. Experience may showi
to be imperfect in detal and impracticable in execution.
And then both reason and right combine, not merely to
justify, but to require its repeal.

The constitution, supreme as it is over all the depart-
ments of the Government, legislative, executive, and judi-
cial, is open to amendment by its ♦ery terms; and Congress
or the States may, in their discretion, propose amendment
to it, solemn compact though it in truth is between the
sovereign States of the Union. In the present instance, a
political enactment, which had ceased to have legal power
or authority of any kind, was repealed. The position
assumed that Congress had no moral right to enact each
repeal, was strange enough, and singularly in view of the
fact that the argument came from those who openly re-
fused obedience to existing laws of the land, having the
same popular designation and quality as compromise acts
—nay, more, who unequivocally disregarded and con-
demned the most positive and obligatory injunctions of
the constitution itself, and sought by every means within
their reach, to deprive a pdrtion of their fellow-citizens
of the equal enjoyment of those rights and privileges gua-
ranteed alike to all by the fundamental compact of our
Union.

This argument against the repeal of the, statute line in
question, was accompanied by another of congenial charac-
ter, and equally with the former destitute of foundation in
rcison and truth. it was imputed that the measure origi-
nated in the conception of extending the limits of slave•
labour beyond those recently assigned to it, and that such
was its natural as well as intended effect; and these base
less assumptions were made, in the northern States, the
ground of unceasing assault upon constitutional right.
The repeal in terms of a statute which was already obso-
lete, and also null for unconstitutionality, could have no
influence to obstruct or to promote the propagation of con-
flicting views of political or social institution. When the
act organising the territories of Kansas and Nebraska was
passed, the inherent effect upon that portion of the public
domain thus opened to legal settlement was to admit set-
tlers from all the States of the Union alike, each with his
convictions of public policy and private interest, there to
found in their discretion, subject to such limitations as the
constitution and acts of Congress might prescribe, new
States, hereafter to be admitted into the Union.

It was a free field, open alike to all, whether the statute
lino of assumed restriction were repealed or not. That re-
peal did not open to free competition of the diverse opi-
nions and domestic institutions a field, which, without
such repeal, would have been closed against them ; it found
that field of competition already opened, in fact and ia
law. All the repeal did was to relieve the statute-book
of an objectionable enactment, unconstitutional in effect,
and injurious in terms to a large portion of the States.
Is it the fact that in all the unsettled regions of the
United States, if emigration be left free to act in this re-
spect for itself, without legal prohibition on either side,
slave labour will spontaneously go everywhere in prefer-
ence to free labour ? Is it the fact, that the peculiar do-
mestic institutions of the Southern States possess relatively
so much of vigour, that wheresoever an avenue is freely
open to all the world they will penetrate to the exclusion
of those of the Northern States ? Is it the fact that the
former enjoy, compared with the latter, such irresistible
superior vitality, independent of soil, and all other acci-
dental circumstances, as to be able to produce the supposed
result, in spite of the assumed moral and natural obstacles
to its accomplishment, and of the more numerous popula-
tion of the Northern States?
The argument of those who advocate the enactment of
new laws of restriction, and condemn tue repeal of old ones,
in effect aver their particular views of government have
no self-extending or self-sustaining powers of their own,
and will go nowhere unless forced by act of Congress. And
if Congress do but pause for a moment in the policy of
stern coercion—if it venture to try the experiment of leav-
ing men to judge for themselves what institutions will best
suit them—if it be not strained up to per,,etual legislative
exertion on this point—if Congress proceeded thus to act
in the very spirit of liberty, it is at once charged with aim-
ing to extend slave labour into all the new territories of
I the United States. _

Of course these imputations on the intentions of Con-
gress in this respect, conceived as they were in prejudice,

and disseminated in passion, are utterly destitute of any
justification of the nature of things, and contrary to all the
fundamental doctrines and principles of civil liberty and
i M-government.
While, therefore, in general, the people of the Northern
States have never, at any time, arrogated for the feudal
government the power to interfere directly with the do-
mestic condition of persons in the Southern States, but,
on the contrary, have disavowed all such intention
and have shrunk from conspicuous affiliation with those
few who pursue their fanatical objects avowedly t:irough
the contemplated means of revolutionary change of the go-
vernment, and with acceptance of the necessary conse-
quences—a civil and servile war—yet many citizens have
suffered the_nselv,s to be drawn into one evanescent politi-
cal issue of agitation after another, appertaining to the
same set of opinions, and which subsided as rapidly as they
arose when it came to be seen, as uniformly it did, that
they were incompatible with the compacts of the constitu-
tion and the existence of the Union.
Thus, when the acts of some of the States to nullify the
existing extradition law imposed upon Congress the duty of
passing a new one, the country was invited by agitators to
enter into party organisation for its repeal ; but that agita-
tion speedily ceased by reason of the impracticability of its
object. So, when the statute rest iction upon the institu-
tiocs a new States, by a geographical line, had been re.
p laled, the country was urged to demand its restoration,
and that project died almost with its birth. Then fol-
lowed the cry of alarm from the North against imputed
Southern encroachments, which cry sprang in reality from
the spirit of revolutionary attack on the domestic institu-
tions of the South, and after a troubled existence of a few
months has been rebuked by the voice of a patriotic people.
Of this last agitation one lamentable feature was, that
it was carried on at the immediate expense of the peace
and happiness of the people of the territory of Kansas.
That was made the battle-field, not so much of opposing
factions or interests within itself, as of the conflicting pas-
sions of the whole people of the United States. Revolu-
tionary disorder itf Itsristis had its origin in-Prejaataa,
iutervention, deliberately arranged by certain teembers of
that Congress whiel enacted the law for the organisation
of the territory. And when propagandist colonisation of
Kansas had thus been undertaken in one section of the
Union, for the systematic promotion of its peculiar views
of policy, there ensued, as a matter of course, a counter-
act on with opposite views in other sections of the Union.
In consequence of these and other incidents many
acts of disorder, it is undeniable, have been perpetrated in
Kansas, to the occasional interruption, rather than the
permanent suspension, of regular ,overnment. Aggressive
and most reprehensible incursions into the territory were
undertaken, both in the North and the South, and entered
it on its northern border by way of lowa, as well as on its
eastern by way of Missouri; and there has existed within
it a state of insurrection against the constituted authori-
ties, not without countenance from inconsiderate persons
in each of the great sections of the Union. But the diffi-
culties in that territory have been extravagantly exagge-
rated for purposes of political agitation elsewhere.
The number and gravity of the acts of violence have been
magnified partly by statements entirely untrue, and partly
by reiterated accounts of the same rumours or facts. Thus
the territory has been seemingly filled with extreme vio-
lence, when the whole amount of such acts have not been

greater than what occasionally passes before us i❑ single
cities to the regret of all good citizens, but without being re-
garded as of general or permanent political consequence.
Imputed irregularities in the elections had in Kansas,
like occasional irregularities of the same description in the
States, were beyond the sphere of action of the Executive.
But incidents of actual violence or of organised obstruction
of law, pertinaciously rune wed from time to time, have been
met as tkey occurred, by such means as were available and
as the circumstances required ; and nothing of this charac-
ter now remains to affect the general peace of the Union.
The attempt of a part of the inhabitants of the territory to
erect a revolutionary government, though sedulously en-
couraged and supplied with pecuniary aid from active
agents of disorder in wine of the States, has completely
fa led.

Bodies of armed men, foreign to the territory, have been
prevented from entering or compelled to leave it. Preda-
tory bands, engaged in acts of rapine, under cover of the
existing political disturbances, have been arrested or dis-
persed. And every well-disposed personti now enabled
once more to devote himself in peace to the pursuits of
prosperous industry, for the prosecution of which he un-
dertook to participate in the settlement of the country.
It affords me unmingled satisfaction thus to announce the
peaceful condition of things in Kansas, especially consider-
ing the means to which it was necessary to have recourse for
tho attainment of the end, viz., the employment of a part
of the military force of the United States. The withdrawal
of that force from its proper duty of defending the country
against foreign foes or the savages of the frontier to employ
it for the suppreasion of domestic insurrection is, when the
exigency occurs, a matter of the most earnest solicitude. Oa
this occasion of imperative necessity it has been done with
the best results, and my satisfaction in the attainment of
such results by such means is greatly enhanced by the con-
sideration that through the wisdom and energy of the pre-
sent Executive of Kansas, and the prudence, firmness, and
vigilance of the military officers on duty there, tranquillity
has been restored without a drop of blood having been shed
in its accomplishment by the forces of the United States.
The restoration of comparative tranquillity in that terri-
tory furnishes the means of observing calmly, and appre-
ciating at their just value, the events which have occurred
there, and the discussions of which the Government of the
territory has been the subiect.
We perceive that controversy concerning its future do-
mestic institutions was inevitable; that no human pru-
dence, no form of legislation, no wisdom on the part of
Congress, could have prevented this.
It is idle to suppose that the particular provisions of their
organic law were the cause of agitation. Those provisions
were but the occasion, or the pretext, of an agitation which
was inherent in the nature of things. Congress legislated
upon the subject in such terms as were most consonant
with the principle of popular sovereignty which underlies
our Government, It could not have legislated otherwise
without doing violence to another great principle of our
institutions, the imprescriptible right of equality of the
several States.

We perceive, also, that sectional interests and party pas-
sions have been the great impediment to the salutary opera-
tions of the organic principles adopted, and the chief cause
of the successive disturbances in Kansas. The assumption
that, because in the organisation of territories of Nebraska
and Kansas, Congress abstained from imposing restraints
upon them to which certain other territories had been sub-
ject, therefore disorders occurred in the latter territory, is
emphatically contradicted by the fact that none have oc-
curred in the former. Those disorders were not the con-
sequence in Kansas of the freedom of selt-government
conceded to that territory by Congress, but of unjust in-
terference on the part of persons not inhabitants of the ter-
ritory. Such interference, wherever it has exhibited itself,
by acts of insurrectionary character, or of obstruction to
processes of law, has been repelled or suppressed, by rql
the means which the constitution and the laws place in the
hands of the Executive.

In these parts of the United States, where, by reason of
the inflamed state of the public mind, false rumours and
misrepresentations have the greatest currency, it has been
assumed that it was the duty of the Executive not only to
suppress insurrectionary movements in Kansas, but also to
see to the regularity of local elections. It needs little argu-
ment to show that the President has no such power. All
government in the United St des rests substantially upon
popular election. The freedom of elections is liable to be
impaired by the intrusion of unlawful votes, or the exclu-
sion of unlawful ones, by improper influences, by violence,
or by fraud. But the people of the United States are the
all-sufficient guardians of their own rights, and to suppose
that they will not remedy in due season any such incidents
of civil freedom, is to suppose them to have ceased to be
capable of self-government.
The President of the United States has not power to in-
terpose in elections, to see to their freedom, to canvass their
votes, or to pass an opinion upon their legality in the terri-
tories any more than in the States. If he had such power
therovernment might be republican in form, but it would
be a monarchy in fact ; and if he had undertaken to exer•
ju
stly
subject it in the case of Kansas, he would have been
subject to the charge of usurpation and of violation of the
dearest rights of the people of the United States.
Unwise laws, equally with itregula.ities at elections, are,
in periods of great excitement, tke occasional incidents of
even the freest and best political institutions. But all ex-
perience demonstrates that in a country like ours, where
the right of self-constitution exists in the completest form,
the attempt to remedy unwise legislation by resort to re-
volution is totally out of place, inasmuch as existing legal
institutions afford more prompt and efficacious means for
the redress of wrong.
I confidently trust that now, when the peaceful condition
of Kansas affords opportunity for calm reflection and wise
legislation, either the Legislative Assembly of the territory,
or Congi egg, will see that no act shall remain on its statute-
book violative of the provisions of the constitution, or sub-
versive of the great objects for which that was ordained and
established, and will take all the necessary steps to assure
to its inhabitants the enjoyment, without obstruction or
abridgment, of all the constitutional rights, privileges,
and immunities of citizens of the United States, as con-
templated by the organic law of the territory.
Full information in relation to recent events in this ter-
ritory will be found in the documents communicated here-
with from the Departments of State and War.

FINANCE.
I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury
for particular information concerning the financial condi-
tion of the Government, and the various branches of the
public service connected with the Treasury Department.
During the last fiscal year the receipts from customs were
for the first time, more than 64,000,000 dole., and all
sources, 73,916,141 doll. ; which, with the balance on hand
up to the let of July, 1855, made the total resources of the
year amount to 92,85u,117 &As. The expenditures, in-
cluding 3,000,000 dollars in execution of the treat? with
Mexico, and excluding sums paid on account of the p.oblie
debt, amounted to 60,172,401 dole.; and, including the lat-
ter, to 72,911,798 dole., the payment on this account hiv-
ing amounted to 12,776,390 dol.
On the 4th of March, 1853, the amount of the public
debt was 69,129,937 dole. There was a subsequent in-
crease of 2,750,000 dole. for the debt of Texas—making a
total of 71,879.9,37 dels. Of this sum 45,525,319 dollars,
including premium, has been discharged, reducing the debt
to 30,737,129 dohs., all of which might be paid within a
year without embarrassing the public service; but being
not yet due, and only redeemable at the option of the
holder, cannot be pressed to payment by the Government•
On examining the expenditure of the last five years, it
will be seen that the average, deducting payments on ac-
count of the public debt and $lO,OO ',OW paid by treaty to
Mexico, has been but about $18,000,000. It is believed
that, under an economical administration of the Govern-
ment, the average expenditure for the ensuing five years
will not exceed that sum, unless extraordinary occasion for
its increase should occur. The acts grant ing bounty lands
will soon have been executed, while the extension of ow.
frontier settlements will cause a continued demand for land,4
and augmented receipts, probably, from tl IA source. Theta
considerations will justify a reduction of the revenue from
customs so as not to exceed 148,t)00,000 or $50,000,000. I
think the exigency for such reduction is imperative, and
again urge it upon the consideration of Congress.
The amount of reduction, as well as f he manner of effect-
ing it, are questions of great and goner: d interest ; it beiu
essential to industrial enterprise and g. sneral prosperity, as
well as the dictate of obvious justice, that the burden of
taxation be made to rest as equally a s possible upon all
elasses and all sections and interests o f the country.
Ihave heretofore recommended toy (our consideration the

[ PUICI, 4D. STAMPED E.•

revision of the revenue laws, prepared under the direction
of the Secretary to the Treasury, and also legislation upon
come special questions affecting the business of that depart-
ment, more especially the enactment of a law to punish the
abstraction of official books or papers from the files of the
Government, and requiring all such books and papers, and
all other public property, to be turned over by the out-going
officer to his successor : of a law requiring disbursing officers
to deposit all public moneys in the vaults of the Treasury,
or iu other legal depositories, where the same are conve-
niently accessible; and a law to extend existing penal pro-
visions to all persons who may become possessed of public
mo ley, by deposit or otherwise, who shall refuse or
neglect, on due demand, to pay the same into the T, easury.
I invite your attention anew to each of these objects.
THE ARMY AND NAVY.

The army during the past year has been so constantly
employed agains hostile Indians in various quarters that
it can soarcely be said, with propriety of language, to have
been a pe: ce establishment. Its duties hare been satisfac-
torily performed, and we have reason to expect, as a re-
t.ult of the year's operations, greater security to the fron-
tier inhabitants than has been hitherto enjoyed. Extensive
combinations among the hostile Indians of the territories
of Washington and Oregon at one time threatened the de-
vastation of the newly-formed settlements of that remote
pat of the country. From recent information, we are
permitted to hope that the energetic and successful opera-
tions conducted these will prevent such combinations in
future, awl secure to those territories an opportunity to
make steady progress in the development of their agricul-
tural and mineral resources.
Legislation has been recommended by me on previous
occasions to cure defects in the existing organisation, and
to increase the efficiency of the army, and further observa-
tion has but served to confirm me in the views then ex-
pressed, and to enforce on my mind the conviction that
such measure's are not only proper, but necessary.
I have in addition to invite the attention of Congress to
a change of policy in the distribution of troops, and to the
:..P.raessig of providing a more rapitlincrease of the militory
armament. For details of these and other subject* re-
lating to the army, I refer to the report of the Secretary
of War.

The condition of the navy is not merely satisfactory,
but exhibits the most gratifying evidences of itioreased
vigour. As it is comparatively small, it is more important
that it should be as complete as possible in all the elements
of strength; that it should be efficient in the character of
its officers, in the zeal and discipline of its men, in the re-
liability of its ordnance, and in the capacity of its ships.
In all these vas ions qualities the navy has made great pro-
gress within the last few years. The execution of the law
of Congress of February 28, 1855, " to promote the efficacy
of the navy," has been attended to by the most advanta-
geous results. The law for promoting discipline among
the men is found convenient and salutary.
Tho system of granting an honourable discharge to faith-
ful seamen on the expiration of the period of their enlist-
ment, and permitting them to re-enlist after a leave of ab-
sence of a few months. without cessation of pay, is highly
beneficial iu its influence. The apprentice system recently
adopted is evidently destined to incorporate into the ser-
vice a large number of our countrymen hitherto so difficult
to procure. Several hundred American boys are new on a
three years' cruise in. our national vessels, and will return
well trained seamen. In the Ordnance Department there
is a decided and gratifying indication of progress creditable
to it and to the country. The suggestions of the Secretar,
of toe Navy, in regard to further improvement in that
branch of the service, I commend to your favourable
action.

The new frigatas ordered by Congress are now afloat,
and two of thent in active service. They are superior
models of naval architecture, and, with their formidable
battery, add largely to public strength and security.
I concur in the views expressed by the Secretary of the
Department in favour of a still further increase of our
naval force.