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been secured upon this important and embarrassing subject.

From attempts to appropriate the national funds to ob→ jects which are confessedly of a local character, we cannot, I trust, have any thing further to apprehend. My views in regard to the expediency of making appropriations for works which are claimed to be of a national character, and prosecuted under State authority, assuming that Congress have the right to do so, were stated in my annual message to Congress in 1830, and also in that containing my objections to the Maysville Road bill.

So thoroughly convinced am I that no such appropriations ought to be made by Congress, until a suitable constitutional provision is made upon the subject, and so essential do I regard the point to the highest interests of our country, that I could not consider myself as discharging my duty to my constituents in giving the Executive sanction to any bill containing such an appropriation. If the people of the United States desire that the public Treasury shall be resorted to for the means to prosecute such works, they will concur in an amendment of the constitution, prescribing a rule by which the national character of the works is to be tested, and by which the greatest practicable equality of benefits may be secured to each member of the confederacy. The effects of such a regulation would be most salutary in preventing unprofitable expenditures, in securing our legislation from the pernicious consequences of a scramble for the favors of Government, and in repressing the spirit of discontent which must inevitably arise from an unequal distribution of treasures which belong alike to all.

There is another class of appropriations for what may be called, without impropriety, internal improvements, which have always been regarded as standing upon different grounds from those to which I have referred. I allude to such as have for their object the improvement of our harbors, the removal of partial and temporary obstructions in our navigable rivers, for the facility and security of our foreign commerce. The grounds upon which I distinguished appropriations of this character from others, have already been stated to Congress. I

will now only add, that, at the first session of Congress under the new constitution, it was provided, by law, that all expenses which should accrue from and after the 15th day of August, 1789, in the necessary support and maintenance and repairs of all light-houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers, erected, placed, or sunk, before the passage of the act, within any bay, inlet, harbor, or port of the United States, for rendering the navigation thereof easy and safe, should be defrayed out of the Treasury of the United States; and, further, that it should be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to provide by contracts, with the approbation of the President, for rebuilding when necessary, and keeping in good repair, the light-houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers in the several States, and for furnishing them with supplies. Appropriations for similar objects have been continued from that time to the present, without interruption or dispute. As a natural consequence of the increase and extension of our foreign commerce, ports of entry and delivery have been multiplied and established, not only upon our seaboard, but in the interior of the country, upon our lakes and navigable rivers. The convenience and safety of this commerce have led to the gradual extension of these expenditures; to the erection of light-houses, the placing, planting, and sinking of buoys, beacons, and piers, and to the removal of partial and temporary obstructions in our navigable rivers, and in the harbors upon our great lakes, as well as on the seaboard. Although I have expressed to Congress my apprehension that these expenditures have sometimes been extravagant, and disproportionate to the advantages to be derived from them, I have not felt it to be my duty to refuse my assent to bills containing them, and have contented myself to follow in this respect in the footsteps of all my predecessors. Sensible, however, from experience and observation, of the great abuses to which the unrestricted exercise of this authority by Congress was exposed, I have prescribed a limitation for the government of my own conduct, by which expenditures of this character are confined to places below the ports of entry or delivery es

tablished by law. `I am very sensible that this restriction is not as satisfactory as could be desired, and that much embarrassment may be caused to the Executive Department in its execution, by appropriations for remote and not well understood objects. But as neither my own reflections, nor the lights which I may properly derive from other sources, have supplied me with a better, I shall continue to apply my best exertions to a faithful application of the rule upon which it is founded. I sincerely regret that I could not give my assent to the bill entitled "An act to improve the navigation of the Wabash river;" but I could not have done so without receding from the ground which I have, upon the fullest consideration, taken upon this subject, and of which Congress has been heretofore apprised, and without throwing the subject again open to abuses which no good citi zen, entertaining my opinions, could desire.

I rely upon the intelligence and candor of my fellowcitizens, in whose liberal indulgence I have already so largely participated, for a correct appreciation of my motives in interposing, as I have done, on this, and other occasions, checks to a course of legislation which, without, in the least degree, calling in question the motives of others, I consider as sanctioning improper and unconstitutional expenditures of public treasure.

I am not hostile to internal improvements, and wish to see them extended to every part of the country. But I am fully persuaded, if they are not commenced in a proper manner, confined to proper objects, and conducted under an authority generally conceded to be rightful, that a successful prosecution of them cannot be reasonably expected. The attempt will meet with resistance where it might otherwise receive support, and, instead of strengthening the bonds of our confederacy, it will only multiply and aggravate the causes of disunion.

SEVENTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.

DECEMBER 2, 1835.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate

and House of Representatives:

In the discharge of my official duty, the task again devolves upon me of communicating with a new Congress. The reflection that the representation of the Union has been recently renewed, and that the constitutional term of its service will expire with my own, heightens the solicitude with which I shall attempt to lay before it the state of our national concerns, and the devout hope which I cherish, that its labors to improve them may be crowned with success.

You are assembled at a period of profound interest to the American patriot. The unexampled growth and prosperity of our country having given us a rank in the scale of nations which removes all apprehension of danger to our integrity and independence from external foes, the career of freedom is before us, with an earnest from the past, that, if true to ourselves, there can be no for idable obstacle in the future, to its peaceful and unin rupted pursuit. Yet, in proportion to the disappeara of those apprehensions which attended our weaknes once contrasted with the power of some of the State the old world, should we now be solicitous as to t

which belong to the conviction, that it is to our own conduct we must look for the preservation of those causes on which depend the excellence and the duration of our happy system of Government.

In the example of other systems founded on the will of the people, we trace to internal dissension the influences which have so often blasted the hopes of the friends of freedom. The social elements, which were strong and successful when united against external danger, failed in the more difficult task of properly adjusting their own internal organization, and thus gave way the great principle of self-government. Let us trust that this admonition will never be forgotten by the Government or the People of the United States; and that the testimony . which our experience thus far holds out to the great human family, of the practicability and the blessings of free government will be confirmed in all time to come.

We have but to look at the state of our agriculture, manufactures and commerce, and the unexampled increase of our population, to feel the magnitude of the trust committed to us. Never, in any former period of our history, have we had greater reason than we now have, to be thankful to Divine Providence for the blessings of health and general prosperity. Every branch of labor we see crowned with the most abundant rewards: in every element of national resources and wealth, and of individual comfort, we witness the most rapid and solid improvements. With no interruptions to this pleasing prospect at home, which will not yield to the spirit of harmony and good will that so strikingly pervades the mass of the people in every quarter, amidst all the diversity of interest and pursuits to which they are attached and with no cause of solicitude in regard to our external affairs, which will not, it is hoped, disappear before the principles of simple justice and forbearance that mark our intercourse with foreign powers,-we have every reason to feel proud of our beloved country.

The general state of our Foreign Relations has not materially changed since my last annual message.

In the settlement of the question of the Northeastern

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