Among the subjects which have heretofore occupied the earnest solicitude and attention of Congress, is the management and disposal of that portion of the property of the nation which consists of the public lands. The acquisition of them, made at the expense of the whole Union, not only in treasure but in blood, marks a right of property in them equally extensive. By the report and statements from the general land office, now communicated, it appears that, under the present government of the United States, a sum little short of thirty-three millions of dollars has been paid from the common treasury, for that portion of this property which has been purchased from France and Spain, and for the extinction of the aboriginal titles. The amount of lands acquired is near two hundred and sixty millions of acres, of which, on the first of January, 1826, about one hundred and thirty-nine millions of acres had been surveyed, and little more than nineteen millions of acres had been sold. The amount paid into the treasury by the purchasers of the lands sold, is not yet equal to the sums paid for the whole, but leaves a small balance to be refunded; the proceeds of the sales of the lands have long been pledged to the creditors of the nation; a pledge from which we have reason to hope that they will in a very few years be redeemed.

The system upon which this great national interest has been managed, was the result of long, anxious, and persevering deliberation; matured and modified by the progress of our population and the lessons of experience, it has been hitherto eminently successful. More than nine tenths of the lands still remain the common property of the Union, the appropriation and disposal of which are sacred trusts in the hands of Congress. Of the lands sold, a considerable part were conveyed under extended credits, which, in the vicissitudes and fluctuations in the value of lands, and of their produce, became oppressively burdensome to the purchasers. It can never be the interest or the policy of the nation to wring from its own citizens the reasonable profits of their industry and enterprise, by holding them to the rigorous import of disastrous engagements. In March, 1821, a debt of twentytwo millions of dollars, due by purchasers of the public lands, had accumulated, which they were unable to pay. An act of Congress of the 2d of March, 1821, came to their relief, and has been succeeded by others, the latest being the act of the 4th of May, 1826, the indulgent provisions of which expired on the 4th of July last. The effect of these laws has been to reduce the debt from the purchasers, to a remaining balance of about four millions three hundred thousand dollars due; more than three fifths of which are for lands within the state of Alabama. I recommend to Congress the revival and continuance for a further term, of the beneficent accommodations to the public debtors of that statute, and submit to their consideration, in the same spirit of equity, the remission, under proper discriminations, of the forfeitures of partial payments on account of purchases of the public lands, so far as to allow of their application to other payments.

There are various other subjects of deep interest to the whole Union, which have heretofore been recommended to the consideration of Congress, as well by my predecessor, as under the impression of the duties devolving upon me, by myself. Among these are: the debt, rather of justice than gratitude, to the surviving warriors of the revolutionary war; the extension of the judicial administration of the federal government to those extensive and important members of the Union which, having risen into existence since the organization of the present judiciary establishment, now constitute at least one third of its territory, power, and population; the formation

of a more effective and uniform system for the government of the militia; and the amelioration, in some form or modification, of the diversified and often oppressive codes relating to insolvency. Amid the multiplicity of topics of great national concernment which may recommend themselves to the calm and patriotic deliberations of the legislature, it may suffice to say, that, on these and on all other measures which may receive their sanction, my hearty co-operation will be given, conformably to the duties enjoined upon me, and under the sense of all the obligations prescribed by the constitution.

FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.

DECEMBER 2, 1828.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:IF the enjoyment in profusion of the bounties of Providence forms a suitable subject of mutual gratulation and grateful acknowledgment, we are admonished at this return of the season, when the representatives of the nation are assembled to deliberate upon their concerns, to offer up the tribute of fervent and grateful hearts for the never-failing mercies of Him who ruleth over all. He has again favored us with healthful seasons and abundant harvests. He has sustained us at peace with foreign countries, and in tranquillity within our borders. He has preserved us in the quiet and undisturbed possession of civil and religious liberty. He has crowned the year with his goodness, imposing on us no other conditions than of improving, for our own happiness, the blessings bestowed by his hands; and in the fruition of all his favors, of devoting the faculties with which we have been endowed by him, to his glory and to our own temporal and eternal welfare.

In the relations of our federal Union with our brethren of the human race, the changes which have occurred since the close of your last session have generally tended to the preservation of peace, and to the cultivation of harmony. Before your last separation, a war had unhappily been kindled between the empire of Russia, one of those with which our intercourse has been no other than a constant exchange of good offices, and that of the Ottoman Porte, a nation from which geographical distance, religious opinions, and maxims of government, on their part, little suited to the formation of those bonds of mutual benevolence which result from the benefits of commerce, had kept us in a state, perhaps too much prolonged, of coldness and alienation. The extensive, fertile, and populous dominions of the sultan, belong rather to the Asiatic than the European division of the human family. They enter but partially into the system of Europe; nor have their wars with Russia and Austria, the European states upon which they border, for more than a century past, disturbed the pacific relations of these states with the other great powers of Europe. Neither France, nor Prussia, nor Great Britain, has ever taken part in them; nor is it to be expected that they will at this time. The declaration of war by Russia has received the approbation or acquiescence of her allies, and we may indulge the hope that its progress and termination will be signalized by the moderation and forbearance, no less than by the energy of the emperor Nicholas, and that it will afford the opportunity for such collateral agency in behalf of

the suffering Greeks as will secure to them ultimately the triumph of humanity and of freedom.

The state of our particular relations with France has scarcely varied in the course of the present year. The commercial intercourse between the two countries has continued to increase for the mutual benefit of both. The claims of indemnity to numbers of our fellow-citizens for depredations upon their property, heretofore committed during the revolutionary governments, still remain unadjusted, and still form the subject of earnest representation and remonstrance. Recent advices from the minister of the United States at Paris, encourage the expectations that the appeal to the justice of the French government will ere long receive a favorable consideration.

The last friendly expedient has been resorted to for the decision of the controversy with Great Britain, relating to the northeastern boundary of the United States. By an agreement with the British government, carrying into effect the provisions of the fifth article of the treaty of Ghent, and the convention of the 29th of September, 1827, his majesty the king of the Netherlands has by common consent been selected as the umpire between the-parties. The proposal to him to accept the designation for the performance of this friendly office will be made at an early day, and the United States, relying upon the justice of their cause, will cheerfully commit the arbitrament of it to a prince equally distinguished for the independence of his spirit, his indefatigable assiduity to the duties of his station, and his inflexible personal probity.

Our commercial relations with Great Britain will deserve the serious consideration of Congress, and the exercise of a conciliatory and forbearing spirit in the policy of both governments. The state of them has been materially changed by the act of Congress passed at their last session, in alteration of the several acts imposing duties on imports, and by acts of more recent date of the British parliament. The effect of the interdiction of direct trade, commenced by Great Britain, and reciprocated by the United States, has been, as was to be foreseen, only to substitute different channels for an exchange of commodities indispensable to the colonies, and profitable to a numerous class of our fellow-citizens. The exports, the revenue, the navigation of the United States, have suffered no diminution by our exclasion from direct access to the British colonies. The colonies pay more dearly for the necessaries of life, which their government burdens with the charges of double voyages, freight, insurance, and commission, and the profits of our exports are somewhat impaired, and more injuriously transferred from one portion of our citizens to another. The resumption of this old and otherwise exploded system of colonial exclusion has not secured to the shipping interests of Great Britain the relief which, at the expense of the distant colonies and of the United States, it was expected to afford. Other measures have been resorted to, more pointedly bearing upon the navigation of the United States, and which, unless modified by the construction given to the recent acts of parliament, will be manifestly incompatible with the positive stipulations of the commercial convention existing between the two countries. That convention, however, may be terminated with twelve months' notice, at the option of either party.

A treaty of amity, navigation, and commerce, between the United States and his majesty the emperor of Austria, king of Hungary and Bohemia, has been prepared for signature by the secretary of state, and by the Baron de Lederer, intrusted with full powers of the Austrian government. Independently of the new and friendly relations which may be thus commenced

with one of the most eminent and powerful nations of the earth, the occasion has been taken in it, as in other recent treaties concluded by the United States, to extend those principles of liberal intercourse and of fair reciprocity which intertwine with the exchanges of commerce the principles of justice, and the feelings of mutual benevolence. This system, first proclaimed to the world in the first commercial treaty ever concluded by the United States, that of 6th February, 1778, with France, has been invariably the cherished policy of our Union. It is by treaties of commerce alone that it can be made ultimately to prevail as the established system of all civilized nations. With this principle our fathers extended the hand of friendship to every nation of the globe, and to this policy our country has ever since adhered--whatever of regulation in our laws has ever been adopted unfavorable to the interest of any foreign nation has been essentially defensive, and counteracting to similar regulations of theirs operating against us.

Immediately after the close of the war of independence, commissioners were appointed by the Congress of the confederation, authorized to conclude treaties with every nation of Europe disposed to adopt them. Before the wars of the French revolution, such treaties had been consummated with the United Netherlands, Sweden, and Prussia. During these wars, treaties with Great Britain and Spain had been effected, and those with Russia and France renewed. In all these, some concessions to the liberal principles of intercourse proposed by the United States had been obtained; but as, in all the negotiations, they came occasionally in collision with previous internal regulations, or exclusive and excluding compacts of monopoly with which the other parties had been trammelled, the advances made in them toward the freedom of trade were partial and imperfect. Colonial establishments, chartered companies, and ship-building influence, pervaded and encumbered the legislation of all the great commercial states; and the United States, in offering free trade and equal privileges to all, were compelled to acquiesce in many exceptions with each of the parties to their treaties, accommodated to their existing laws and anterior engagements.

The colonial system by which this whole hemisphere was bound has fallen into ruins. Totally abolished by the revolutions converting colonies into independent nations, throughout the two American continents, excepting a portion of territory chiefly at the northern extremity of our own, and confined to the remnants of dominion retained by Great Britain over the insular archipelago, geographically the appendages of our part of the globe. With all the rest we have free-trade; even with the insular colonies of all the European nations, except Great Britain. Her government also had manifested approaches to the adoption of a free and liberal intercourse between her colonies and other nations, though, by a sudden and scarcely explained revulsion, the spirit of exclusion has been revived for operation upon the United States alone.

The conclusion of our last treaty of peace with Great Britain was shortly afterward followed by a commercial convention, placing the direct intercourse between the two countries upon a footing of more equal reciprocity than had ever before been admitted. The same principle has since been much further extended by treaties with France, Sweden, Denmark, the Hanseatic cities, Prussia, in Europe, and with the republics of Colombia and of Central America, in this hemisphere. The mutual abolition of discriminating duties and charges, upon the navigation and commercial inter

course between the parties, is the general maxim which characterizes them all. There is reason to expect that it will, at no distant period, be adopted by other nations, both of Europe and America, and to hope that, by its universal prevalence, one of the fruitful sources of wars of commercial competition will be extinguished.

Among the nations upon whose governments many of our fellow-citizens have had long pending claims of indemnity, for depredations upon their property during a period when the rights of neutral commerce were disregarded, was that of Denmark. They were, soon after the events occurred, the subject of a special mission from the United States, at the close of which the assurance was given by his Danish majesty, that at a period of more tranquillity, and of less distress, they would be considered, examined, and decided upon, in a spirit of determined purpose for the dispensation of justice. I have much pleasure in informing Congress that the fulfilment of this honorable promise is now in progress; that a small portion of the claims has already been settled to the satisfaction of the claimants; and that we have reason to hope that the remainder will shortly be placed in a train of equitable adjustment. This result has always been confidently expected, from the character of personal integrity and of benevolence which the sovereign of the Danish dominions has through every vicissitude of fortune maintained.

The general aspect of the affairs of our neighboring American nations of the south, has been rather of approaching than of settled tranquillity. Internal disturbances have been more frequent among them than their common friends would have desired. Our intercourse with all has continued to be that of friendship and mutual good will. Treaties of commerce and of boundaries with the United Mexican States have been negotiated, but from various successive obstacles, not yet brought to a final conclusion.

The civil war which unfortunately still prevails in the republic of Central America has been unpropitious to the cultivation of our commercial relations with them; and the dissensions and revolutionary changes in the republics of Colombia and of Peru, have been seen with cordial regret by us, who would gladly contribute to the happiness of both. It is with great satisfaction, however, that we have witnessed the recent conclusion of a peace between the governments of Buenos Ayres and Brazil, and it is equally gratifying to observe that indemnity has been obtained for some of the injuries which our fellow-citizens had sustained in the latter of those countries. The rest are in a train of negotiation, which we hope may terminate to mutual satisfaction, and that it may be succeeded by a treaty of commerce and navigation, upon liberal principles, propitious to a great and growing commerce already important to the interests of our country.

The condition and prospects of the revenue are more favorable than our most sanguine expectations had anticipated. The balance in the treasury, on the first of January last, exclusive of the moneys received under the convention of 13th of November, 1826, with Great Britain, was five millions eight hundred and sixty-one thousand nine hundred and seventy-two dollars, eighty-three cents. The receipts into the treasury from the first of January to the 30th of September last, so far as they have been ascertained, to form the basis of an estimate, amount to eighteen millions six hundred and thirty-three thousand nine hundred and eighty dollars, twenty-seven cents, which, with the receipts of the present quarter, estimated at five millions four hundred and sixty-one thousand two hundred and eighty-three dollars, forty cents, form an aggregate of receipts during the year, of twenty-four